Song of Solomon 2:8 "The voice of my beloved! behold, he cometh leaping upon the mountains, skipping upon the hills."
Song of Solomon 5:2 "I sleep, but my heart waketh: it is the voice of my beloved that knocketh, saying, Open to me..."
A few years back, I did a twenty-five page study on the book of Song of Solomon. Before that point, I had simply seen it as a Christian love novel of sorts—a mushy exchange of ancient love-jargon between a man and woman in their pursuit of each other. However, the more I read, reread, and studied each passage, I realized that there is a lot more to the book.
Though Song of Solomon might be found in the romance section in a Hebrew library, it means much more to us as New Testament Christians. Ephesians 5 shows us that Christ is a picture of the Bridegroom, and we are His bride. Song of Solomon is a wonderful parallel/picture of Christ pursuing a love relationship with His bride (us, as believers) and of us pursuing Him in return. As a couple pursues each other on the road to marriage, and ought to continue to pursue each other on a deeper and more meaningful level after marriage, so our pursuit of Christ ought to be lifelong, and more intimate and meaningful as the years go on.
In the verses above, we see the simple, yet foundational desire of any lady that is being pursued by the man of her dreams: a desire to hear his voice. Young people of today don't understand this as much as those of us who had to live through the first 6,000 or so years of human history. We didn't know unlimited calling. There was no such thing as FaceTime! There was no Marco Polo, Google Video, or the like. Bro. Ros revealed his age recently when he reminisced on his long-distance relationship with his wife (then girlfriend or fiancé). He spoke of their weekly (not daily, or hourly) phone calls on the college payphone! We remember those dating (courting) days, when the voice of the one we loved was precious, even sometimes rare, and we longed to hear from them.
In any healthy relationship, one is happy and desirous to hear the voice of the one they love. If it's been a while—then we long for, and miss hearing, that voice. In the verses above, we can sense the great excitement when this lady hears the voice of her beloved. In fact, the first exclamation point in the entire book comes when she says, "The voice of my beloved! behold, he cometh..." She was thrilled to hear his voice as he came near to spend time with her and to speak with her.
Likewise, as Christ's bride-to-be, a foundational part of a healthy relationship in the pursuit of Christ is a desire to hear His voice. Do you desire to hear His voice today? I sure hope so. Christ desires to speak to you and to me, and wants to hear our voice in return.
This is done most practically through reading our Bible and allowing the Lord to speak. It's a wonderful thing to sit down, open the living Word, and know that Christ spoke to ME, personally. He knows us, and loves us, and speaks to us accordingly. Did you hear His voice today? Reciprocally, the Lord desires to hear our voice to Him in prayer. Did you set aside time to speak to Him? Has He heard your voice today?
As a healthy relationship with our spouse requires meaningful, loving communication, so does a healthy relationship with our heavenly Bridegroom. This lady was thrilled to hear the voice of the one she loved. Let's continue to desire to hear His voice, heed His voice, and obey His voice.
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