INTIMATIONS OF LOVE

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Love was on my mind even before I opened my eyes this morning.

It was the Spirits gentle wooing, and intimations of deep intimacy that I was first aware of, even before my eyes were open, this morning.

And He came to reveal that we are His Bride.

In 1998, when I didn’t know Him much, and hadn't the faintest notion that a God can even want a Bride, He had told me, “Go Prepare Me a Bride!”

It would have been a scandalous thought, had it not been from God. But as it was a thought that had proceeded from Him, it came to me as pure and holy words.

And today, I understand what He wants—so much better.

When I came first came to Him (or rather it was Him who first came to me), He had already betrothed me to Himself.

When the angel appeared to Mary, she was already betrothed to Joseph.

In the custom of Jesus’ people, a betrothal is as good as a marriage. When one is betrothed, one is already a bride, though it may be some time later before the bridegroom comes for his bride.

When Esther was taken to the king’s court to be his bride, it took one year of preparation before she was brought into his presence even though from day one, she was already his.

“Before a girl's turn came to go in to King Xerxes, she had to complete twelve months of beauty treatments prescribed for the women, six months with oil of myrrh and six with perfumes and cosmetics.” [Esther 2:12]

And so, as I look back at how God has been preparing me to have this deep communion with Him, I find that it was also a two-phase preparation. First a cleansing that involved the bitterness of confronting the past—taking a bold review of the past:

"Come now, let us reason together,"
says the LORD.
"Though your sins are like scarlet,
they shall be as white as snow;
though they are red as crimson,
they shall be like wool. [Isaiah 1:18]

God is a Holy God, and no sin can stand in His sight. This is why He provided for His own Blood to be a covering over us, so that He does not see our sin, but His own sacrifice. We are bought back from the enemy to whom Adam, our first father in the flesh, had surrendered us through deception by the evil one. But God, our rightful owner, had redeemed us, and had paid the redemption price—His own Blood—to purchase us back to Himself. Why? No matter what, we are His beloved.

But do we choose Him? We have this free choice or free will to do as we please.

If we do choose Him, the betrothal legally begins, because He had already chosen us from the beginning of His creation.

Paul, the writer of Romans, calls this “the justification.” This is a legal term. And the betrothal is legal. God makes an agreement with us. He justifies us with His own Blood, make us legally His, clean and pure before Him. We are “born again.” It is our spiritual birthday. Our spirit is once again reunited with the Spirit of God. The betrothal begins. And, the preparation of His Bride begins.

And as for the cleansing: From what are we cleansed?

From the world system we had been born into: when we were first born, in our natural state, into a world system that does not know God or follow His ways.

I had to be cleansed, and even scrubbed and scrapped sometimes, from cobwebs that clinged to me. God even mentions these cobwebs:

"Surely the arm of the LORD is not too short to save,
nor his ear too dull to hear.
But your iniquities have separated
you from your God;
your sins have hidden his face from you,
so that he will not hear.

For your hands are stained with blood,
your fingers with guilt.
Your lips have spoken lies,
and your tongue mutters wicked things.

No one calls for justice;
no one pleads his case with integrity.
They rely on empty arguments and speak lies;
they conceive trouble and give birth to evil.

They hatch the eggs of vipers
and spin a spider's web.
Whoever eats their eggs will die,
and when one is broken, an adder is hatched.

Their cobwebs are useless for clothing;
they cannot cover themselves with what they make.
Their deeds are evil deeds,
and acts of violence are in their hands".
[Isaiah 59:1-6]

In the New Testaments, Paul also tell us that God sees the world as abhorrent in His sight:

"There is no one righteous, not even one;
there is no one who understands,
no one who seeks God.
All have turned away,
they have together become worthless;
there is no one who does good,
not even one.
Their throats are open graves;
their tongues practice deceit.
The poison of vipers is on their lips.
Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness.
Their feet are swift to shed blood;
ruin and misery mark their ways,
and the way of peace they do not know.
There is no fear of God before their eyes."
[Romans 3:10-18]

We may argue, that cannot be: It is too severe a pronouncement on our condition. We are not that bad!!!

Hey, the nearer we get to our Holy God, the more we see our worthlessness and devastation. The more we see, the more we come into agreement with Him regarding our fallen state. It is a sad, sad state indeed. Incurable. If we don’t agree with Him, it means we haven’t seen anything yet. And if we haven’t seen, it doesn’t mean we are right. God is always right. He has perfect vision. We see but darkly, as if though a broken mirror.

But when we see! Ah….

This is when true contrition or repentance really starts. And this is when the restoration truly begins. This is when the second phase of the betrothal begins—the cleansing by perfumes. Only when we see our real state can we know what we are forgiven of, and only then can we be truly contrite:

“For this is what the high and lofty One says--
he who lives forever, whose name is holy:
"I live in a high and holy place,
but also with him who is contrite and lowly in spirit,
to revive the spirit of the lowly
and to revive the heart of the contrite.

I will not accuse forever,
nor will I always be angry,
for then the spirit of man would grow faint before me--
the breath of man that I have created.

I was enraged by his sinful greed;
I punished him, and hid my face in anger,
yet he kept on in his willful ways.

I have seen his ways, but I will heal him;
I will guide him and restore comfort to him,
creating praise on the lips of the mourners in Israel.
Peace, peace, to those far and near,
says the LORD. "And I will heal them."
[Isaiah 57:15-19]

The prophet Isaiah, himself, had this vision of a Holy God and was changed forever. He had been prophesying earlier (remember, we are betrothed) and only in chapter 6 did he have an encounter with this Holy God that completely changed him:

“In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted, and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him were seraphs, each with six wings: With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying. And they were calling to one another:
"Holy, holy, holy is the LORD Almighty;
the whole earth is full of his glory."

At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke.

"Woe to me!" I cried. "I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the LORD Almighty."
[Isaiah 6:1-5]

God is in the process of preparing us, individually and corporately, to be His Bride.

He is the Lover of our souls. He will let us go through a period of preparation before the wedding supper of the Lamb:

“And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven of God, made ready as a bride adorned for her husband.” [Rev 21:2]

Let us get ready!!!

HAPPY VALENTINE’S DAY.

God is a Lover. He is my Lover and your Lover. Though we are yet “dark,” but in His sight, we are lovely!!!