Things Too Marvelous for Me: Shepherds, Sheep and the Voice Beneath the Noise
Doug Wekenman
5 min read ⭑
When we’re scrolling on our smartphones, it’s almost like we’ve got the whole world in our hands.
I think a lot of us are experiencing omniscience fatigue. We know everything about everything — this disaster, that tragedy, a bit of celebrity drama — and everybody’s opinions on it. The temptation is to know and carry all of it.
But this exhausts our souls.
As a man before his time, King David knew something we’d be wise to learn: God never designed me to do that, even as a king.
David was familiar with sheep. He grew up near Bethlehem as a shepherd boy in the southern Judean mountains, tending his father’s flock.
And everywhere that David went, the lambs were sure to go.
Gala Iv; Unsplash
He would guide and take care of them. He even fought off a lion and a bear on two separate occasions to protect them. Alone for months at a time, with nobody to keep him company but his four-legged friends, David developed a passionate relationship with God. Those lonely mountains forged a kind of spiritually tuned ear in David. He was the only king in the history of Israel to ever be called “a man after [God’s] own heart” (1 Samuel 13:14, ESV).
Gene Edwards poetically painted a scene of David next to a dying fire: “Long into the night, he wove the day’s saga into a song. He hurled that hymn to the skies again and again until he had taught the melody and words to every angel that had ears. They, in turn, became custodians of this wondrous song and passed it on as healing balm to brokenhearted men and women in every age to come.”
Later in life, when David graduated from pasture to palace, he continued transcribing heaven’s wisdom from God’s heart to papyrus.
O Lord, my heart is not lifted up;
my eyes are not raised too high;
I do not occupy myself with things
too great and too marvelous for me.
But I have calmed and quieted my soul.
(Ps. 131:1–2, ESV).
A calm and quiet soul is attuned and available to the voice of God, which sounds like a wonderful way to live, if you ask me. God is always speaking. The problem is, we live loud lives in a noisy world — often too hurried and distracted to hear him.
We can learn a life-changing lesson from David, because in many ways, he was a man before his time. David was a literal legend — the giant killer and the anointed celebrity king. He didn’t have a smartphone buzzing in his front pocket, but through messengers, prophets, servants and scholars, he did have access to all the information in the known world.
Just like we do today.
And yet, David seemed to limit his information intake. “My eyes are not raised too high; I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me.” Translation: I might be king, but I’m not God, and I don’t need to know everything. Some things are simply above my pay grade.
The human condition, going back to the Garden of Eden, is the desire to be the god of our own lives. We want our plans to unfold in our timing. It’s the seed of sin that germinates into fear and sprouts up as a million different symptoms. The reason we try to control our next chapter, plotting out every detail, is the same reason we’re glued to news about everything happening all over the world.
Control feels comforting in a chaotic world.
But what if we struggle to hear God’s voice because we’re drowning in hustle, data, and noise? We pray for insight and direction, and God is saying, “I’d love to give you those things, but there’s nowhere in your life to put them.”
When the hard drive of your mind gets too full, anxiety shows up like one of those annoying pop-up notifications. It’s your soul’s way of saying, “Something’s off.”
It might be a nuisance, but it could also be a signal flare from beneath the surface, trying to get your attention.
Thankfully, God built a solution right into the system.
Prayer is how you start closing tabs and offloading the worries and weight. It’s where you hand over what you were never meant to carry.
“Take a few small steps into a prayer life, and soon enough, not only will you be close enough to hear the voice of God, but you’ll be close enough to feel the heart of God.”
My brother Ryan’s laptop desktop is like a digital yard sale, a horror movie for minimalists. If you have even a drop of Type A in your blood, you’ll need a sedative. And yet somehow, it works for him, because he also happens to be one of the best preachers and authors out there.
He once preached a sermon about talking to God and said prayer is how you “click and drag” everything from the cluttered desktop of your heart onto an infinite external hard drive that actually has space for it.
It’s time to stop clicking “remind me tomorrow” and pray instead. Philippians tells us, “Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God” (Phil. 4:6, NIV).
Stop worrying and calling it prayer. Talk to God. He will listen to every word you say with eager, undivided attention.
David limited the stream of information flowing to his head and heart. He calmed and quieted his soul so he could hear God’s voice. Jesus said what David knew: “My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me” (John 10:27, NIV).
You have a God instinct, so to speak. God gave it to you. The sheep know the sound of the shepherd’s voice. The question becomes: When and where can the sheep actually hear it?
Ask yourself, Am I close enough to my Shepherd to hear his voice? Maybe take a few minutes to journal the journey. What other voices are drowning out his voice, and how can I quiet them?
God is speaking to you, but it’s possible your life is too noisy to hear him. God wants to download plans into your heart. He wants to lead you and guide you into the next chapter of your life, but your soul might be too cluttered to accommodate his wisdom and direction.
True story: A few years ago, two men were stranded at sea in the South Pacific for 29 days when their GPS stopped working. They survived on rainwater and some coconuts they found floating in the ocean. When they were finally rescued and asked about their experience, one of the guys said, “It was a nice break from everything.”
If that doesn’t speak to the condition of our world right now, I don’t know what does.
This is where trusting your Shepherd comes into play. You should be informed, but you don’t need to know about every horrible event on the news. Why? Because God does. He holds everything together. He’s got this.
Calm and quiet your soul. Clear your hard drive. Prayer has no prerequisites — it’s just talking to God. Bring anything and everything to him. Maybe your soul is restless because it’s aware of every tragedy around the globe.
Maybe you’d worry less if you had less to worry about.
Spend time with the Shepherd who knows what you need. What does this look like? Maybe download the YouVersion Bible app and try a reading plan, or listen to worship music on your commute to work. If you’re brave enough, turn the music off altogether, drive in silence and just listen.
Take a few small steps into a prayer life, and soon enough, not only will you be close enough to hear the voice of God, but you’ll be close enough to feel the heart of God.
Doug Wekenman is the teaching pastor at Red Rocks Church and leads the Austin location alongside his wife and best friends. Passionate about making faith come alive for people, Doug writes and teaches about trusting God and taking the next step in life with confidence, including What Does God Have Planned for Me Next? He lives in Austin, Texas, with his wife, Samantha, their three children and their black lab, Luna. Doug loves people, the ocean, golf, sneakers and tacos — though not always in that order.
Taken from “What Does God Have Planned for Me Next?” by Doug Wekenman. Copyright © 2026. Used by permission of WaterBrook.
