September 13th, 2026
by Pastor Pendegrass
by Pastor Pendegrass
Are You Listening? The Lost Art of Hearing God's Voice
There is a quiet crisis unfolding in the lives of believers today. Not a crisis of belief, not a crisis of doctrine, but a crisis of attention. Somewhere between the buzzing of notifications, the endless scroll of social media feeds, and the relentless noise of modern life, many of us have lost the ability to do one of the most fundamental things we were designed to do: hear the voice of God.
You Were Built to Hear Him
John 10 contains one of the most personal and powerful statements Jesus ever made. He declared that His sheep hear His voice, that they know it, and that they will not follow the voice of a stranger. This is not a command. It is not a challenge. It is a statement of identity. The sheep hear the shepherd because that is what sheep do.
This distinction matters enormously. Hearing God is not something reserved for preachers, theologians, or spiritual giants who have spent decades in prayer closets. It is not a reward for exceptional behavior or a gift given only to the spiritually elite. Hearing God is a reflection of who you are. If you have been born again, you have been reborn with spiritual ears tuned to the frequency of heaven. It is woven into your new nature the same way instinct is woven into the DNA of a sheep.
God and humanity were always meant to communicate. From the very beginning, His voice walked in the cool of the garden, and Adam conversed with Him freely. That design has never changed. What has changed is our capacity to pay attention.
The Rewiring of a Generation
In 2007, the smartphone arrived. By 2008, the App Store followed. By 2015, researchers and sociologists were documenting something alarming: the fundamental rewiring of how an entire generation processes information, builds relationships, and pays attention. Jonathan Haidt, in his book "The Anxious Generation," describes this shift as the replacement of a play-based childhood with a phone-based childhood, and the consequences have been staggering.
The platforms that now occupy the majority of our waking hours were not designed with your wellbeing in mind. They were engineered for one purpose: to hold your attention as long as possible. Every notification, every like button, every algorithmically curated feed is a carefully constructed trigger designed to pull you back, to keep you pressing, to keep you scrolling. The average teenager today spends seven hours per day on their phone during leisure time. When you account for the mental bandwidth consumed by social media even while doing other things, nearly half of all teens report being online almost constantly.
This is not an accident. It is a design.
One researcher described the smartphone as a modern-day hypodermic needle delivering digital dopamine around the clock. Another lamented that the internet had transformed him from a scuba diver exploring the depths of ideas into someone zipping along the surface on a jet ski, never going deep, never staying still.
The wearing smooth of a path in the brain. That is what behavioral scientists call it. The more a stimulus triggers a response, the more deeply that neural pathway is carved. And for millions of people, the deepest paths being carved in their minds lead not to Scripture, not to prayer, not to quiet reflection, but to a glowing screen.
What We Are Missing
When we do not hear God, things do not simply stay the same. They get worse. Decisions get made without divine guidance. Relationships drift without heavenly wisdom. Paths that could have been redirected continue toward destruction. The shepherd is speaking, but the sheep are not listening.
Romans 10 makes a declaration that connects everything: faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God. Faith, the very substance of the Christian life, is dependent on hearing. Consider how much rests on faith. We are saved by faith, sanctified by faith, justified by faith, and we walk by faith. Our prayers are prayers of faith. Our shield in spiritual warfare is the shield of faith. Without faith, it is impossible to please God. And faith comes by hearing.
If we are not hearing, we are not building faith. If we are not building faith, we are not growing. If we are not growing, we are drifting. And if we are drifting long enough, we find ourselves far from the shepherd's voice, wondering why God feels distant, why prayer feels hollow, why the Bible feels dry.
Ordinary People Who Listened
Throughout Scripture and throughout history, God has spoken to ordinary people in extraordinary moments. Not just to prophets and apostles, but to parents, to travelers, to doctors sitting at a nurse's station reading a patient's chart. A physician, burdened by the suffering documented in a woman's medical records, whispered a prayer before entering her room. When he held out a gospel tract and asked if she knew how to find God, her response stopped him cold. She said, "How can I, except somebody show me?" The very words the Ethiopian eunuch spoke to Philip in Acts 8, echoed across centuries into a hospital room because one man was listening and one woman was ready.
God is still speaking. The question is whether we are still listening.
Reclaiming Your Hearing
Attention is a choice. In a world engineered to steal it, reclaiming your attention is an act of spiritual warfare. It begins with small, deliberate decisions. Put the phone down. Open the Bible. Take a walk without earbuds. Sit in silence long enough to hear something other than noise.
Jeremiah 6 records God's plea to a distracted people: stand in the ways and see, ask for the old paths, where the good way is, and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls. The old paths have not moved. The good way is still there. The shepherd's voice has not gone silent.
He is speaking to you today. He is speaking to your family, your marriage, your future, your fears. The only question that remains is the same one it has always been.
Are you listening?
There is a quiet crisis unfolding in the lives of believers today. Not a crisis of belief, not a crisis of doctrine, but a crisis of attention. Somewhere between the buzzing of notifications, the endless scroll of social media feeds, and the relentless noise of modern life, many of us have lost the ability to do one of the most fundamental things we were designed to do: hear the voice of God.
You Were Built to Hear Him
John 10 contains one of the most personal and powerful statements Jesus ever made. He declared that His sheep hear His voice, that they know it, and that they will not follow the voice of a stranger. This is not a command. It is not a challenge. It is a statement of identity. The sheep hear the shepherd because that is what sheep do.
This distinction matters enormously. Hearing God is not something reserved for preachers, theologians, or spiritual giants who have spent decades in prayer closets. It is not a reward for exceptional behavior or a gift given only to the spiritually elite. Hearing God is a reflection of who you are. If you have been born again, you have been reborn with spiritual ears tuned to the frequency of heaven. It is woven into your new nature the same way instinct is woven into the DNA of a sheep.
God and humanity were always meant to communicate. From the very beginning, His voice walked in the cool of the garden, and Adam conversed with Him freely. That design has never changed. What has changed is our capacity to pay attention.
The Rewiring of a Generation
In 2007, the smartphone arrived. By 2008, the App Store followed. By 2015, researchers and sociologists were documenting something alarming: the fundamental rewiring of how an entire generation processes information, builds relationships, and pays attention. Jonathan Haidt, in his book "The Anxious Generation," describes this shift as the replacement of a play-based childhood with a phone-based childhood, and the consequences have been staggering.
The platforms that now occupy the majority of our waking hours were not designed with your wellbeing in mind. They were engineered for one purpose: to hold your attention as long as possible. Every notification, every like button, every algorithmically curated feed is a carefully constructed trigger designed to pull you back, to keep you pressing, to keep you scrolling. The average teenager today spends seven hours per day on their phone during leisure time. When you account for the mental bandwidth consumed by social media even while doing other things, nearly half of all teens report being online almost constantly.
This is not an accident. It is a design.
One researcher described the smartphone as a modern-day hypodermic needle delivering digital dopamine around the clock. Another lamented that the internet had transformed him from a scuba diver exploring the depths of ideas into someone zipping along the surface on a jet ski, never going deep, never staying still.
The wearing smooth of a path in the brain. That is what behavioral scientists call it. The more a stimulus triggers a response, the more deeply that neural pathway is carved. And for millions of people, the deepest paths being carved in their minds lead not to Scripture, not to prayer, not to quiet reflection, but to a glowing screen.
What We Are Missing
When we do not hear God, things do not simply stay the same. They get worse. Decisions get made without divine guidance. Relationships drift without heavenly wisdom. Paths that could have been redirected continue toward destruction. The shepherd is speaking, but the sheep are not listening.
Romans 10 makes a declaration that connects everything: faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God. Faith, the very substance of the Christian life, is dependent on hearing. Consider how much rests on faith. We are saved by faith, sanctified by faith, justified by faith, and we walk by faith. Our prayers are prayers of faith. Our shield in spiritual warfare is the shield of faith. Without faith, it is impossible to please God. And faith comes by hearing.
If we are not hearing, we are not building faith. If we are not building faith, we are not growing. If we are not growing, we are drifting. And if we are drifting long enough, we find ourselves far from the shepherd's voice, wondering why God feels distant, why prayer feels hollow, why the Bible feels dry.
Ordinary People Who Listened
Throughout Scripture and throughout history, God has spoken to ordinary people in extraordinary moments. Not just to prophets and apostles, but to parents, to travelers, to doctors sitting at a nurse's station reading a patient's chart. A physician, burdened by the suffering documented in a woman's medical records, whispered a prayer before entering her room. When he held out a gospel tract and asked if she knew how to find God, her response stopped him cold. She said, "How can I, except somebody show me?" The very words the Ethiopian eunuch spoke to Philip in Acts 8, echoed across centuries into a hospital room because one man was listening and one woman was ready.
God is still speaking. The question is whether we are still listening.
Reclaiming Your Hearing
Attention is a choice. In a world engineered to steal it, reclaiming your attention is an act of spiritual warfare. It begins with small, deliberate decisions. Put the phone down. Open the Bible. Take a walk without earbuds. Sit in silence long enough to hear something other than noise.
Jeremiah 6 records God's plea to a distracted people: stand in the ways and see, ask for the old paths, where the good way is, and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls. The old paths have not moved. The good way is still there. The shepherd's voice has not gone silent.
He is speaking to you today. He is speaking to your family, your marriage, your future, your fears. The only question that remains is the same one it has always been.
Are you listening?
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