by Dennis Gladden, By Green Pastures, ©2026
(Jul. 15, 2026) — When she was little, our oldest granddaughter, Allison, took to calling my wife and me before she went to bed.
We weren’t home one evening to take her call, and the answering machine kicked in.
There was a moment of hesitation.
Silence.
With some prompting from our daughter in the background, Allie proceeded to leave her good night message.
The next morning, she remembered she had called and announced to her family, “I talked to Baba’s voice.”
I talked to Baba’s voice.
Allie hadn’t used our answering machine before, but she recognized who was talking. It wasn’t my wife or a stranger at the wrong number.
She knew me even without seeing me.
Just so, we know our heavenly Father by His voice.
We know, even though we don’t see Him.
Voice recognition is so vital that we have built it into our technology. When I call one of our financial institutions, the system guides me through the usual authentication prompts and concludes, “Your voice is confirmed.”
I’m sure you’ve encountered it, too.
The first to experience voice recognition were Adam and Eve.
The two had just sinned and were painfully aware of their predicament. Stripped of their integrity, Adam and Eve fashioned coverings for their shame. The garden dressers became dressmakers.
But fig leaves are not suit-worthy.
They heard the voice of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden. Then the LORD God called…
They heard the voice of the LORD God.
The consequence of their sin was immediate: their eyes opened to their nakedness but closed to seeing God.
Yet He still allowed them to hear.
God spoke, and they talked to His voice.
Hesitant at first because of their guilt, they grew confident and even brash as they realized this was neither the serpent hissing nor their own whispers. What they heard was not the chorus of heavenly hosts.
This was the Creator, the voice they had come to know on previous outings (Genesis 3).
Shepherd or stranger: we need to hear the difference
In a beautiful parable, Jesus compared Himself to a shepherd and His audience to sheep. The shepherd enters the sheepfold and calls.
And the sheep hear his voice… he brings out his own sheep… and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice.
They will by no means follow a stranger, but will flee from him, for they do not know the voice of strangers (John 10:3–5).
There are voices in the occult, but not God’s. Flee from them.
Different voices evoke different responses.
Voice recognition is as old as the beginning. And the skill to acquire it hasn’t changed. Recognition comes from training, from time together. Even voice recognition software must be fed enough samples of a person’s voice to learn the speech patterns, intonations, and reflections.
To know God’s voice, our ears need grooming. This happens in two ways:
- Train ourselves by spending time with the Lord, and
- Learn from a trainer—someone who is experienced in conversing with God.
As for training ourselves, this is how my granddaughter recognized me on the answering machine. Before that night, we had spent hours visiting and doing things together. Baba’s voice on the machine was the one she had come to know by our time in person.
What a different perspective this puts on our devotions, Bible study, and church attendance. We are not gracing God with our presence; these are times of attending to Him to listen, to train our ears, to authenticate.
These are opportunities to be like Mary, who chose to sit at Jesus’ feet “and heard His word,” as opposed to her sister Martha, who busied herself in the kitchen (Luke 10:38–40).
We devote ourselves to these means of grace and shun the channels that God has said not to tune in: witchcraft, sorcery, spells, seances, Ouija boards, horoscopes, and such. There are voices in the occult, but not God’s. They are strange and should spur us “by no means to follow, but flee.”
Learn to hear from those who have heard.
As for learning from someone who has experience hearing the Lord, the Bible tells us to walk in the counsel of the godly. Who among your acquaintances is a seasoned follower of Jesus? Who do you know can say, like the Apostle John, “Let me tell you the things I have seen and heard” (1 John 1:–4)?
Cherish and consult that one in the way David did when he wrote, “Your testimonies also are my delight and my counselors” (Psalm 119:24).
One of my favorite examples of this kind of exchange is the prophet Samuel (1 Samuel 3).
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