Learning to Listen Before the Year Begins

I have been living in 2027 for months now, while the rest of the world is still finishing 2026.

Odd? Yup; the strange thing about making a journal. Long before anyone else is thinking about next January, I’m already sitting with the whole year laid out in front of me, trying to work out what it needs to say. Not what I want to say. What it needs to say, on behalf of whoever ends up holding it next spring on an ordinary Tuesday, not sure why they picked it up.

This year, the answer came from one verse I couldn’t put down.

“My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.” — John 10:27

I kept turning it over. Not as a nice sentiment for a cover, but as a genuine question. What does it actually mean to hear His voice? Not in a dramatic, audible way, but in the ordinary run of a Tuesday. In the reading that suddenly feels aimed at you. In the quiet nudge you almost talk yourself out of. In the peace that doesn’t match the situation.

So the 2027 journal, My Sheep Hear My Voice, is built entirely around that question. Twelve months, each one taking a different angle on listening: being known by name, waiting, abiding, following, discerning what’s actually from Him. Every month opens with its own theme and key verse, then gives you the weekly space to actually practise it, not just read about it.

If a word for the year has been sitting on your heart lately, or you already sense it’s going to be about listening, I’d love to know. It might end up being exactly why this one finds its way to you.