{Be Real} Following the Voice of Love

It was a beautiful morning, one where I felt a stillness calling me that I haven’t felt in awhile. Time to catch up with emotions and look at fears I had inside. I walked down a narrow bridge and stood at the edge of a creek. The water was gushing, moving fast. I watched, in awe, as the water moved swiftly over the rocks, as it flowed down the river from the high point, to a lower point; how it narrowed around the banks as they turned. The water seemed to not know where it was going, but just know that it had to move. I watched it move and something moved in me. I realized that the force under the current was what drove everything. Suddenly, I was watching a movement of love.

Love moves us when we don’t know how to move ourselves. When we don’t know what’s next.

It’s easy to get caught up in all the things we don’t know. What is being faithful in those seasons? When we’re not sure if God is calling us here or there? What is faithfulness when it’s taking all of our energy just to get through today and we’re not even sure what His calling looks like anymore?

I think some times we can get so busy – so busy that we’re not listening. We can fill our lives with what we feel is being faithful. We can tell ourselves we’re following God’s call, but somehow feel empty and disconnected from it. It’s noisy. There’s movement. But we’re not moving closer to home.

Being faithful is listening to the small voice. The one that doesn’t shout inside of you. The one that whispers to you to do the hard thing and just. be. still. To remind your soul of that one thing that it wants to forget.

“Be still and know that I am God.”

-Psalm 46:11

He is God, and we are not. HE is God.

He is God and because He is a faithful God, He will be faithful to you. The bible says that “When we are faithless, He is faithful -for He cannot deny Himself.” His faithfulness will chase after you, like the water in that stream.

And sometimes, being faithful to Him is just listening. Listening for His voice. Showing Him your heart, that you want to follow Him. Even if we don’t know how that looks. This week, I was reminded of a prayer…

“Lord, I have no idea where I am going.
I do not see the road ahead of me…
and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean
that I am actually doing so.
But I believe that the desire to please you
does in fact please you.
And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing…”

-Thomas Merton

Being faithful is saying to God, I’m with you. My soul follows close behind you. And though I don’t know where you’re leading, knowing the where is not as important as being with you.

This is faithfulness. Having a heart that follows close behind His. Surrendering to God’s creative breath as He creates something new in you.

What He wants you to hear today, sister…is the voice of love. And He wants me to hear it too. Hear it sing over you and breathe into you fresh and new.

Love is the voice that should always be the loudest.

When love grows dim and distant, we can worry ourselves into the future and right out of being faithful. We can ask so many questions that we are paralyzed from taking that first step. Paralyzed from taking any step at all.

But listening to love, we see it beckon us onward, into places unknown, not by forcing us there, but by drawing us there, gently.

“God can do anything, you know – far more than you could ever imagine or guess or request in your wildest dreams! He does it not by pushing us around but by working in us, his Spirit deeply and gently within us.”

-Ephesians 3:18, 20

His love moves us because it casts out fear.

His love moves us because it reminds us who we are as His beloved daughters. And from that place of identity, we are free to move. One step at a time.

A bunch of women around the country declared at this year’s IF: Gathering conference,

“The hopeful stare up the steps.
The faithful step up the stairs.”

Of course we don’t know where love is leading us. Just like the stream, it moves without fully knowing where it is going. But the current and the force of gravity pulls strong enough, that it goes anyway.

God gives us just enough light, and keeps the future partially in the dark on purpose. He wants us to grow in our trust in Him as we remain faithful. He wants us to reach into the dark places to find Him as we keep stepping into the light that we see.

Whatever bridge we need to cross, we can cross it because of His love. Whatever step He’s calling you us take, we can take it because of His love. It’s His love that leads us on, it’s His love that frees us from fear. It’s His love that gives us all the grace we need, it’s His love that lights our path.

“For You will light my lamp;
The Lord my God will enlighten my darkness.”

-Psalm 18:28

No, I don’t know where I am going, sister. I’m with you. I may not know exactly what faithfulness is going to look like in the next few months, or even the next year. But I know what it looks like now.

Faithfulness is staying close to the voice of love as He leads on.

One. Step. At a Time.

 

“My soul follows close behind you;
Your right hand upholds me.”

-Psalm 63:8