Listening for the Voice of Love

By Sam Caldwell

The voice of Love is often a gentle and quiet voice. It takes slowing down to take it in. Like Elijah, we look for lightening, we listen for thunder, but God would have us bend for the whisper.

God wants us to perceive, to hear this voice, and in so doing He wants to sharpen our very powers of perception, of hearing. It would seem that Love Himself desires that the lovers learn to love.

This hearing, then, is not automatic. It is not cheap. The beautiful voice of Love requires attunement, sensitivity, calm, slowing down.

And the place of attunement is also a place of allurement, and therefore a place of solitude, and at times a place of monastic loneliness. That is, for us to hear God, God is pleased to woo us onto a path where, at least for a time, we find ourselves walking with God alone.

Let's think now about why the process of attunement to God's voice can be both frustrating and exhilarating.  

The whole journey, pursuing the voice of Love, is just that – it is a journey. It may even be helpful for us to liken it to a path. The journey of interior attunement to God's voice may be likened to a little woodland path, primal and basic. It is a trail that we walk on. It is a trail strewn about with leaves falling, with ferns growing, with well worn sections, muddy sections, sections bright with sun, sections dappled and soothing, sections ignored, sections as yet unexplored. And God calls us simply to walk down this path – a path of exploration, of solitude, of occasional loneliness, of personal attunement to His voice.

Embracing this path is the safest thing we could do. And it is the loveliest thing we could do. Just keep walking, and God will keep speaking.

But many do not want this path. They do not want a path at all. They simply want results, knowledge, arrival – nothing challenging or muddy. And of course, if that is what you want, you can have it. You can have it on the little computers that we carry in our pockets. We must admit: you CAN have just about everything, with one swipe on a phone, and without even one step on a path. But you can’t have the voice of Love.

That voice takes a wonderful thing called walking with God...

“Enoch walked with God, and then he was not, for God took him" (Genesis 5:24).

"Can two walk together, unless they are agreed?" (Amos 3:3)

“You will guide me with Your counsel, And afterward receive me to glory” (Psalm 73:24).

This walking on a path is not a chore, and it is not a ladder to heaven. It is not works-based salvation. It is rather the simple acknowledgement that hearing the voice of Love comes just as steps along a path come – gradually.

So keep walking.

Take another step.

Trip, discover, skip forth.

Stop and listen.

God desires living union with His people – living, breathing, pulsing, walking, pathfinding, exploring, pioneering union. He desires a people alive to His breath, and taken up in His dance.

Oh the marvel that Jesus has established us in this freedom: A life of hearing His voice will unfold in stages. It will be walked out in steps.

And sometimes you will look up and find that the path has a little, worn, rickety sign, designating its name right where you're at:

"Fearless Exploration,"

"Ever-Deepening Intimacy,"

"Welcome."