Your Longing Has a Name 5-Day Reading PlanSample

What Your Soul Hears One of the biggest factors that determines whether or not our soul flourishes is the voices we choose to listen to. Our lives bend to the sound of its loudest voices.If the loudest voices are encouraging, godly, and life-giving, we’ll be more inspired to stay true to God’s call for our lives. But if we’re surrounded by voices that undermine, critique, tear down, or belittle us, it’s like death by paper cuts. Over time those wounds cut away at our soul until we’re ready to give up. Words create worlds. You might be thinking, That’s why I feel so discouraged. Maybe you’re in a season right now where the loudest voices in your life are critical: angry emails, bad reviews, bitter parents, jealous coworkers who are positioning for your job. Or maybe it’s the deafening sound of secular culture that’s working overtime to disciple our souls away from flourishing. We’re inundated by soul-destroying noise. But here’s the good news: even when every voice in our lives is shouting us down, there’s another Voice. A Voice your soul longs to hear. A Voice that first spoke you into existence and whispers your name. A Voice that speaks love, acceptance, compassion, and grace: “He calls his own sheep by name and leads them” (John 10:3). What does God’s voice sound like? There’s a beautiful story in the Gospel of Matthew that gives us a clue. The cousin of Jesus, John the Baptist, was baptizing people in the middle of an arid desert. The Bible says he wore clothing made of camel’s hair and a leather belt, and he ate locusts with wild honey. In my mind, he resembles someone from one of the Mad Max movies; a thirty-year-old long-haired hipster with a beanie, beard, and skinny camel-hair jeans, washing down a few organic locusts with his kombucha. People came out to see John by the thousands, including Jesus, who asked John to baptize him. Together they waded into the Jordan River. Matthew 3:16–17 reads: “When He had been baptized, Jesus came up immediately from the water; and behold, the heavens were opened to Him, and He saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting upon Him. And suddenly a voice came from heaven, saying, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” Beloved. For most of my life, I figured God told him that because, well, he was Jesus. Of course he was “well pleased” with him; he’s the second member of the Trinity! But when I learned that the Bible calls us ‘beloved’ too, it completely reframed how I understood Jesus’ baptism. The same word the Father spoke over Jesus at his baptism, he also utters over you: You are beloved. You are dearly loved. You, the object of his affection, are his delight, his joy. In you he is well-pleased. Maybe you grew up in a home where you never heard the affirmation of your father or mother. Maybe all you heard was their anger, criticism, or deafening absence in your life. Even now, you’re coming to terms with how their words, or lack of words, shaped you. Our lives are built by the voices we hear. It’s why they matter. But God speaks louder. Even if your story has been carved by voices of hate, bitterness, judgment, gossip, or indifference, your heavenly Father thunders: You belong. As God sees it, you are: • his child (John 1:12) • his friend (John 15:15) • his righteousness (2 Corinthians 5:21) • his handiwork (Ephesians 2:10) • his joy (Zephaniah 3:17) • his delight (Psalm 18:19) • his body (1 Corinthians 12:27) • his bride (Revelation 21:9) Accept you are accepted. Response As every athlete knows, a key to perseverance is learning to listen to the right voices. Who are the voices in your life that have been most encouraging? Who are the voices in your life that have been most destructive? What steps can you take to tune in the good voices and tune out those that have been harmful?