Have you ever been moved by an inbreaking of the Light – awakened by the inflowing love of God? Even a very small experience of something deep and holy can make you want to find the Light again. If you are fortunate enough to have had many of these experiences, or even a few profound ones, you know how much it is worth trying to align your life in a way that will help to keep open a channel go God’s Living Presence.

God is continually calling us to faithfulness and into the gifts and ministries that we are given. In so calling us God gives us a hunger for more experience of God and for greater faithfulness. One way to feed that hunger is through expectant listening.

Expectant listening is a gift. It is the ability to sink deep, to wait, and to trust the Living Presence, which has drawn us to this listening through our own experience of it. God is constantly offering us profound wisdom, amazing guidance, and infinite love. Once we have experienced this indwelling nature of God, we are eager to seek it again and again, and we are more expectant of finding it. Thus God helps us to grow in expectant listening….

We Quakers are a listening people. We seek God experientially. We worship in silence. We gather together to wait and to listen for the “still small voice.” Listening is at the core of our Quaker faith and practice. In addition to attending meetings for worship, many of us develop daily spiritual disciplines to seek God’s guidance more fully. It is my experience that in seeking, we find. In listening, we hear God’s messages. That is what I mean by “expectant listening”: listening to hear God’s messages.

–Michael Wajda in Pendle Hill Pamphlet 388: Expectant Listening