When I think I hear God, I can never tell if it is him or just my own head talking. How do I know the difference?

“I will hear what God the LORD will speak: for he will speak peace unto his people, and to his saints: but let them not turn again to folly.”

This psalm belongs to a community that had come home from exile to a ruined country and needed to know whether God still had anything to say to them. The writer stops mid-complaint and takes the posture of someone listening rather than lobbying. The listening is deliberate and unhurried. For anyone trying to sort a genuine prompting from their own noise, that posture has to come first.

“My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me:”

Jesus is arguing with religious leaders in the temple courts during a winter festival, and he reaches for the most ordinary image his hearers knew: a shepherd whose sheep pick his voice out of a crowded fold. Recognition, in that picture, grows out of long familiarity rather than one dramatic moment. It develops over years of proximity, which is oddly encouraging when you feel like a beginner.