Longing For His Appearing

In the past several months, I have had a recurring dream where the main theme is relatively the same and the details are just slightly different each time.  In these dreams, I am being approached by a man who begins to flirt with me, flatter me with nice words, tries to make physical advances, and even speaks poorly about my husband.  My response to these men varies – sometimes I listen to what they’re saying, because their flattery sort of makes me feel good, sometimes I react with violence and physically assault them, sometimes I just try to run away, and at other times I have called out to my husband to come to my aid.  My husband’s response was also varied – he was often nearby, but just out of earshot or line of sight – seemingly unaware of what was happening.  In one dream, he approached me and the man who was flirting with me and he began to speak words of love to me and kiss me.  In another dream, he firmly took the man aside and warned him to stay away from me. 

Since I believe that the Lord speaks to me through dreams, I have begun to ask Him what He is trying to say to me, since apparently I’m not getting the message, as He’s having to repeatedly give me the same dream to try and get through my thick skull!    To be clear, I don’t believe these dreams are literal and I don’t think the Lord is trying to warn me about committing adultery against my actual husband – I love my husband dearly and am committed to stay true and faithful to him for all of our days.  What I believe these dreams are, is a picture or analogy for my relationship with my heavenly Bridegroom, Jesus.

In Proverbs, it says that “jealousy is a husband’s fury” and in Hosea, the Lord talks about how he will jealously win back his adulterous wife, Israel, and block her path from going after her other lovers.  In Hosea, Israel’s other lovers were wealth, food, possessions, and worshipping other gods, forgetting her first love.  I think I can often be tempted to console myself that I am not committing adultery against the Lord, because I don’t think I’m being unfaithful or completely giving myself away to other loves.  Yet, what I believe these dreams are suggesting, is that I need to be wary of not just committing adultery, but also of even listening to the flattering words of these other loves that would seek to steal my affections from my Husband, if even for just a moment.  It may seem innocent, but in reality, it is very dangerous.  I don’t know much about what people have experienced when they’ve gone through unfaithfulness in their marriage, but I’m sure it wasn’t a sudden decision to go and commit adultery – it probably began with simply listening to someone’s flattering words. 

I’m beginning to realize that I don’t just want to avoid committing adultery against the Lord – I don’t even want any suitors!  I don’t want to even allow them to whisper their alluring words in my ear.  I want to respond to their flirtation in the same way I would respond in real life if a man approached me.  I wouldn’t stand for it!  I would definitely tell my husband about it and I would clearly let the man know that his advances were unwelcome and to stop, because I’m a married woman!  Similarly, if I think about the things in my life that distract me from the Lord as suitors who are trying to steal my affections from my Husband, I think it would help me to respond to them with a greater severity and sobreity.  These things – whether they be television, surfing the internet, busyness, even doing good things when I know I need to spend time with the Lord – are all trying to flatter me and flirt with me and tell me how much they want to be with me and that I’ll enjoy their company more than my Husband’s.  They try to convince me that they will bring me more joy and satisfaction and that He doesn’t really care about me that much anyways.

Well, if I think about the way my husband would respond if a guy was making advances at me, he would definitely take action if it was required and come to make his claim of me clearly known!  In the dream where my husband came and began to kiss me and tell me he loved me, I felt so affirmed and reassured in his love and it was like a slap in the face of the suitor who had just been trying to convince me that my husband didn’t really care about me.  In the dream where my husband forcefully dealt with the suitor and told him where to go, I was extremely relieved and felt like he had rescued me from a situation where I was feeling weak and not handling it well on my own.  What I believe the Lord was trying to show me is that, if I let Him, He wants to demonstrate His love and affections for me in such a way that it will shatter all the lies of my suitors and will leave no room for doubt about His feelings for me.  He wants to erase any misgivings I may have about His commitment to me and His passion for me.  He wants me to have experiential knowledge of His love for me so that I will never be tempted to find my satisfaction anywhere else.  And He is just waiting for me to ask Him to come to my aid - as my heavenely Husband, He will gladly deal with any suitors and show them that I belong to Him and Him alone!  He will jealously display His Husband’s fury on my behalf and scatter them before me.  All I need to do is look to Him and He will run to my rescue, displaying to me His passion to possess my heart entirely. 

So, for example, if I’m in the very face of temptation and I’m feeling the urge to go rent a movie (I’m not saying watching movies is wrong – only when I know that I need to spend time with the Lover of my soul & to watch a movie would mean choosing to be entertained over intimacy with my heavenly Bridegroom), I could in that moment, lift my voice and say, “Jesus, this movie is flirting with me and trying to steal my affections from You.  I know that it cannot satisfy me and that You are exceedingly superior, yet it’s alluring words are tempting me to be unfaithful to my commitment to love You wholeheartedly.  Jesus, would You come and demonstrate Your jealousy and passion for me right now!  Would You fight for me and speak to me Your words of love so that I will be able to violently resist this suitor and rediscover confidence in Your affections for me.  You are my Husband and I do not want to even listen to the flattery of this suitor.  You are my first and only love.  I am Yours and You are mine!”

For the last year, a small group of us have been studying the book of Song of Songs as part of our devotional lives, but also as a part of our worship team as we have been singing and praying the passages at our house of prayer.  Believe it or not, it’s taken us a year just to make it to the end of chapter 2!!  But we were never in any rush and have been quite content to linger on certain verses for several weeks, seeking to discover the depths of what they contain.  Recently, we’ve been looking at Song of Songs 2:15 which says,

“Catch for us the foxes, the little foxes that ruin the vineyards, our vineyards that are in bloom.”

Essentially, this verse is describing the cry of the young woman, who represents the bride of Christ, for her bridegroom (Jesus) to come and help her rid her life of the ”little” sins and compromises that are ruining the garden of her heart.  Last week, I found myself being convicted on a couple areas in my own life and the Lord began to speak to me about this topic and I thought I’d share a glimpse with you into my journey.

It all started after getting the IHOP Immersed CD and Misty’s Relentless CD, starting with David Brymer’s song “You Will Not Relent”…

You will not relent
Until my righteousness shines forth like the dawn
You will not relent
Until you have a bride pure and white
 
I wanna know the yearnings of your heart
I wanna feel you burn for me
I wanna know the yearnings of your heart
And feel your jealous jealousy

And then Misty’s “You Won’t Relent”…

You won’t relent until you have it all
My heart is yours
 
I’ll set you as a seal upon my heart
As a seal upon my arm
For there is love that is a strong as death
Jealousy demanding as the grave
Many waters cannot quench this love

Then today I was reading an exerpt from Dana Candler’s book “Entirety” that one of my team members sent to us, and it totally coincided with what I was experiencing…

“It is the point on love’s journey where sincerity must meet severity and be converted into entirety…Jesus wants all of us and not just a part. He is jealous that we would not remain in the place of immaturity, though our hearts are sincere, but move into the fullness of love, where our love is entire.”

In Song of Songs 2:15, the young Shulammite woman is sincere in her cry to her Bridegroom to “catch the little foxes”, yet she is not to the place where she is willing to completely let go of her sin and compromise and accept his earlier invitation (Song of Songs 2:10) to follow him on the mountains (in Song of Songs 2:17 she tells him to go without her).  I sometimes find myself in a similar situation where I am crying out for deliverance, yet at the same time, struggling to actually deal aggressively with the darkness in my heart, either because I am reluctant to let go of the pleasure of that sin or because I feel incapable of knowing how to rid my heart of it.  The other deception is that they aren’t really that big of a deal - it’s tempting to make excuses that they’re not hurting anyone or to look to the world’s standards which would justify our actions, instead of looking to his holiness as the standard.  There’s a verse that often convicts me in Hebrews 12:4…

“In your struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood.”

But as I listened to these two songs, I felt encouraged that even while I desire to be set free of these foxes, that His desire to set me free is even stronger.  He is jealous to have my entire heart and will not relent or hold back until he has fully consumed me.  He is the most persistent man and will not give up in his pursuit of my heart and his quest to form me into his perfect image.  He is committed to my growth and maturity and is dedicated to completing the work he has begun in me.
 
Yet, I was struggling to find this comforting when I was in the midst of feeling him put his finger on certain areas!  It felt like he was purposefully pushing my buttons in order to expose something within me that I really didn’t want to see.  I was annoyed, frustrated and angry – it was painful and difficult!  This was not how I imagined him answering my cry for rescuing!  I desperately wanted to focus my anger on someone or something and blame them for the cause of my pain, yet I was being forced to recognize that my circumstances where not the source – it was him!  Like it says in Hosea 6:1…

“Come, let us return to the LORD. He has torn us to pieces but he will heal us; he has injured us but he will bind up our wounds.”

He was both the cause and the solution.  And yet I felt in the midst of it that I didn’t need to be ashamed, because he wasn’t exposing the little foxes in my heart out of anger with me or disappointment in me, it was because of his incredible, burning love for me that he was doing it.  It’s his kindness and severity mixed together perfectly in order to produce the desired result in my heart, that my “sincerity…be converted to entirety”.
 
In the moment, I felt a little overwhelmed and discouraged by what I was seeing in me, and I wanted to try and cover it up again and pretend it wasn’t there.  Yet I could feel his gentle and persistent encouragement to say, “Yes” to what he was doing and not turn him away.  I also felt that even if I said “No” like the Shulammite and told him to turn and go on without me, that he would not give up on me.  He is merciful and full of compassion for us in our weakness and struggle to rid our hearts of the little foxes and he will set us free, no matter how long it takes.  He is patient and relentless.  He is not discouraged by my weakness.  In fact, when he does turn and leave to leap upon the mountains without me, he’s not abandoning me or leaving me to be ruined by the little foxes - it’s actually all part of his plan to capture my heart, for in his absence, I see how much I need and desire him (see Song of Songs 3:1-4).
 
I hope you will find this encouraging and challenge you to pray this same prayer – ask the Lord to set you free of the areas of sin and compromise that still remain in your heart and take courage that He will not give up until He has made your “righteousness shine forth like the dawn”.

Return to Me
There is a key portion of scripture in Joel 2 in which the Lord says, “…return to me with all your heart, with fasting and weeping and mourning.” The prophet continues on to say, “Return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love, and he relents from sending calamity…Blow the trumpet in Zion, declare a holy fast, call a sacred assembly…” (vs. 12-17) There is far too much going on in this text to expound fully, but the basic message is that when there is sin in the land and coming judgment, the Lord calls His people to respond by fasting and praying in repentance and turning back to Him with their whole hearts. Only then is there hope that He may relent from His anger and perhaps release blessing instead.

Little Foxes
Yesterday I was listening to the webstream of the prayer room at IHOP where they are in the midst of a 40-day fast and Mike Bickle was leading the people there in a time of personal repentance and turning. It was very reminiscent of 2 Chronicles 7:14 which says, “…if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.” Mike encouraged each person to fix their thoughts on the Holy Spirit and submit to His leadership over their lives, asking Him to reveal any areas of sin that needed to be repented of and dealt with. He referenced Song of Songs 2:15, “Catch for us the foxes, the little foxes that ruin the vineyards…” which is the bride crying out to Jesus, asking Him to help her remove the little sins that sneak in and ruin the garden of her heart. It’s not necessarily the obvious sins of murder, adultery, or theft that God is going after, but He wants to rid our hearts of the “little foxes”, the inconspicuous sins that we pass off as not being that bad – things like complaining, gossip, or pride. Then, once Holy Spirit had highlighted these things in our hearts, we were challenged to determine to not do those things again and turn from our sins, recognizing that we may very possibly fall into them again, but still making a firm decision to resist to the best of our ability.

Resisting Sin
So, as I listened, I was meditating on the passage in Joel 2 and speaking to the Lord & asking Him to show me what I needed to repent of and turn from in my life. I began to write down the things that He was showing me, yet none of them were really new to me – He has tried to confront me on these issues before, but I realized that instead of resisting the devil (James 4:7-10), I had been resisting the leadership of the Holy Spirit, not wanting to submit to His correction. I have knowingly been facing the same temptations over and over again, but usually giving into them instead of really fighting them, making excuses that I was too weak to resist them. And then, I was suddenly reminded of a verse that my former pastor Steve Osmond had once preached about – Hebrews 12:4 which says, “In your struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood.” Basically saying that I was not yet resisting to the point of allowing myself to feel the pain of turning from sin and putting to death the desires of my flesh. I don’t know why we think that killing our flesh won’t be painful or a struggle! In Joel 2:13 it also says to “Rend your heart” which means “to tear violently” – that definitely sounds painful! Yet I have definitely not yet resisted temptation to that point of pain or really fighting and saying “NO!” I’ve been more like a passive dog that rolls over onto it’s back as soon as another dog attacks it, completely surrendering to its opponent without a fight.

Jesus our Example
Yet, earlier in Hebrews 12 it is giving us the example of Jesus as inspiration for us, “Let us fix our eyes on Jesus…who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame…Consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.” I need to fix my gaze on Jesus and how He truly resisted sin to the point of shedding His own blood for me so that I would not grow weary in my battle to do the same. His life and death are my example so that I will be able to “…throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles…” (vs. 1-3)

Turn To God, Turn From Sin, Turn Away His Anger
Then, this morning I was reading Daniel 9, a great example of someone who was embracing the weakness of fasting and prayer and confession on behalf of himself and his nation, and again I saw the pattern of turning. In verse 3 Daniel says that he turned to the Lord God, which was then followed by the recognition for their need to turn from their sins in verse 13, culminating with the desired result that God would turn away His anger and wrath (vs. 16) and instead restore them in His great mercy (vs. 18). For us to turn individually is just the beginning – we need to cry out for a widespread turning so that He will have mercy on our nation of Canada, bring a revival of souls coming into His kingdom and a restoration of righteousness and holiness in our land.