YEARNING FOR YOUR BELOVED
Hearing God’s voice begins as a matter of affection. We have to listen for the voice of God the way a lover listens for the voice of the beloved.
During the year before my wife and I were married, I lived in a remote city, and what I discovered is that there is no pain like the pain of longing for someone you love. I went to the mail box every day, and the only reason I went was to see if there was a letter from her. If there was no letter, I moped about through the course of the day, but if there was one, my heart was filled with joy. I carefully opened it and read it the same way a man dying of thirst drinks water. Then I would carry it about with me as though it were a rare and precious jewel--and, to me, it was--and several times during the day I would open it and read it again, weighing each word.
In the Song of Solomon, the beloved says that, even in her sleep, she was on alert for the sound of her lover. "'I slept but my heart was awake,' she says" (Song 5:2). If we love God, we will yearn to hear his voice.