The enemy does all he can to draw us from entire consecration to Christ in which alone can the fullness of His love and power can be experienced.
We can still love him truly but not WHOLLY, we still revere his word but we don’t immediately yield in obedience to it.
God desires fellowship with us. God did not just save us, he desires us. I meet with girls all the time, I AM one in fact, who grasps the saving more than the desire. How often the first thing spoken of with God is obligation. I know I should be reading my bible more, I know I should be praying, I haven’t been doing quiet times etc. It’s the wrong foundation, even if we did spend hours pouring over the word, if it is out of obligation because God has saved us or we think it will make him happy, it is not what is spoken of by this bridegroom of ours. And the reality is, we follow our desires. Always. Girls who have a guy they like will spend hours with him. And cant bring themselves to spend one hour with the father. Because we misunderstand his desire for us, that it is deeper and more passionate and satisfying than the desire of any earthly love. We cannot imagine that God would enjoy us, that he would seek us, that he would woo us into the forest and beckon us to come with him.
I think about the labor for union with Christ. The alarm in believing the lie that our relationship to him “is pretty much the same” when we are not running after him, answering his call, we are moving further and further away. Knowing where we will find him, knowing his faithfulness, never means that he can be left outside calling us and we will be one with him. We’re being drawn closer or slipping away from him. Are default is to be sliding away from our love, because of all the other worldly loves we’re seduced and bombarded by. Hudson Taylor perfectly pinpoints the sin we tend to be drawn to,
The enemies may be small, but the mischief done great. A little spray of
blossom, so tiny as to be scarcely perceived, is easily spoiled, but thereby the fruitfulness of
a whole branch may be for ever destroyed. And how numerous the little foxes are! Little
compromises with the world; disobedience to the still small voice in little things; little indulgences of the flesh to the neglect of duty; little strokes of policy; doing evil in little things that good may come; and the beauty and the fruitfulness of the vine are sacrificed!
We can overestimate the value of communion with our Lord. Only in communion can we be changed into His image from one degree of glory to another. And as we are with him, and becoming more like him, fairer and more beautiful, we are sent out. Always. “Come with me,” he says. It is only as we go with him and join him in his work, that we change as the Beloved changed in Song of Solomon from His love to His bride.
He notes that Christ desires us to be gardens sealed, and springs locked, “where the fruit we bear brings blessing to many but the garden is for Himself alone.” He is our satisfaction and we are his. We are not machines, loved for the work we do. He delights in our communion with him in pursuing souls, delights in the fruit we bear that bring joy and Christ to other people, but most of all loves us as his Bride, one on one, our entire soul, just as it is, and then all we do is of Him and for Him.
When the bride in Song of Solomon has made a huge mistake in locking him out, she seeks him urgently, bringing others with her in her search. Even when she has tossed him aside, she knows that she is the object of his affection and claims him as her own. But she first says his claim on her, I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine. We are Christ’s before he is ours. This may seem to be semantics but it’s significant. Because I can rely on his claim for me far more than I can rely on my claim upon him. The work is his. The possession is his, and I gratefully and joyfully receive. My love is thin and easily directed elsewhere, his love is constant and strong, wide and deep. I proclaim his love, not my own. Not only for my relationship with Him but for every other person I encounter, may they not rely on me, may they not see my affection for them, may they not put their hope in me, but only and always Him who loves them more than I do and who is not broken, selfish, dark, and prideful as I am.
Home brings such awareness of my own sin. It’s astonishing. What is this selfishness, rearing in my soul? What is this pride, poisoning all my thoughts and making me more focused on myself than the people I am with? What is this need to prove myself?
But it’s good, very good. Simply because I cannot deny the utter sinfulness of my own heart and I have no choice but to try to surrender to God again and again, realizing that the love I have for people, while certainly from the lord, is much easier because it is not my own family.
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