Deep unto Deep - Week #3

Chapter Three: Awakened to Love

I love the opening prayer of this chapter. Here is part of it:

Oh, Jesus…
All of my “beauties” falling, falling to the ground,
The goodness, the righteousness,
The good intentions and ‘right’ motives,
Dropping layer by layer…
…I am not what I thought I was…
Taking away what will not stand
That He might crown me with His true beauty
And clothe me in His robes…

As I have given more time to really waiting and listening to God, I’ve become more aware of how much my heart is asleep and my understanding dull. The spiritual awakenings I have had in my life journey with God aren’t enough for now. As the author says, “We are in need of constant furthering of His reviving of our hearts. We need Him to awaken us over and over again. When He does this, our supposed contented hearts are…escorted to the place of divine dissatisfaction.”

This divine dissatisfaction is a great gift from God and causes us to pursue Him. I’m grateful that the Spirit of God doesn’t allow me to settle into a place of false rest. I want the true rest of God which is found in meeting Him over and over again in His Word and experiencing the “kiss” of His Word on my spirit. In other words, when the Word under the power of the Spirit touches my spirit, longing is awakened in me for more of God.

God the Awakener
“When we cry out for His awakening, we are responding to the divine invitation He has already issued to our own hearts. We are not bidding God to come to us, as if we had just thought of the idea. Rather, we are entering into and participating in the ever-standing calling of God over our lives…”

This underscores what the Holy Spirit has been making more real to me lately as I have meditated on His Word in Psalms 52 and 53, and that is that not one person in all of human history has sought for God apart from God’s grace at work. In the first 3 verses of Psalm 53, the psalmist uses all-inclusive words six times!...words like “not one” and “no one” and “all”.

In his book Christ in the Psalms, Patrick Reardon says of this portion, “We humans are so thoroughly infected by the results of sin that, unless God intervenes…, our inevitable lot is despair…We Christians are not Buddhists or Jains. Ours is not a self-help religion. We do not have it within us to find God…(nor) even to begin looking for God…(nor) even to want to look for God…”

It has been wonderful to get a deeper glimpse into my helplessness apart from His grace and into the sinfulness of sin; i.e., the severe and irreparable damage sin has done. As I see this a bit more, the cross is more glorious and captivating in my heart.

God must awaken me. As seen in the Song of Songs, it is He who awakens love in the right time, and He does it many times in a person’s life because we grow in our understanding of the infinite person of God. What I was awakened to before about Him was wonderful, but there is always more to discover about His divine and amazing personality that will expand my capacity for still more.

But He knows the timing. I cannot force things to happen in God, but I can say “yes” to His invitation into intimate knowing of Him; and in His infinite wisdom and love, He will awaken different stages of love for Him when He sees the time is right.

Awakened to the Highest Pleasure
Song of Songs 1:2 says, “Your love is better than wine.” Psalm 63:3 says, “…thy steadfast love is better than life.”

The love of the Father and of Jesus is the highest pleasure the human heart can experience. Nothing now nor in eternity will bring pleasure like His love! Even a small taste of this can ruin us for lesser pleasures. “When we enter into the experience of this superior pleasure, our drive for the lesser pleasures is overcome.” Through spiritual intimacy with God in Christ, we get a tiny peek into what God has prepared for us (I Cor. 2:9).

I have a very long way to go in maturing in the love of God, but the little I’ve tasted of His love and affections has empowered me to do things that I never would have had the courage to do in the flesh. As the Scriptures teach us, love is more powerful than death!

Responding to the Awakening of God
“God refuses to open up the mysteries of His heart to the unwanting soul…The way He allures and motivates us to this kind of wholehearted pursuit (of Him) is through the revelation of His enjoyment over us. (Psa. 45:10-11) The King greatly desires my beauty. This is the motivational method in which we move toward Him in love.”

I will only be willing to “forget (my) own people and (my) father’s house” as I come into the revelation that the King desires my beauty. The “father’s house” represents all the natural affinities and human definitions of who we are (both positive and negative). These have such a hold on me that only the affirming voice of God deep in my spirit can loosen their hold on me.

In the movie Fiddler on the Roof, this truth is dramatically shown in the scene where the second daughter of the Jewish father leaves her family to join her fiancé in Siberia. Her father can’t understand why she would leave the warmth and comfort of family and home to go to that barren and cold place. Of course, it was her lovesick heart for her fiancé that caused her to leave the lesser loves for the superior love. Only the superior love of God will empower us to “leave” the lesser loves and put them in their proper order.

But to hear that affirming and identifying Voice requires that I seek Him with all my heart (Jer. 29:13,14). When the heart is awakened, there must be a corresponding response of diligent seeking of Him (Prov. 2:1-5). We can’t expect that with a casual glance His way once in awhile we will be able to find the pleasure of knowing and being known by Him in love.

Awakened in the Wilderness
And here is where the struggle begins, because the Lord leads the awakened heart to the wilderness, the place of encounter with Him. The very word “wilderness” implies loneliness and silence and absence of the comforts of the “city.”

“The wilderness is the place where all of our secondary loves are revealed and where we are stripped of false affections and other masters besides Him…Our souls do not know how to be before God in the stillness of intimacy. We have allowed many voices and many opinions of man to dominate our lives, leaving us with a great deal of inward disorder.”

The “wilderness” exposes the inward disorder because all the things that distracted us in the “city” are not there any more. We discover that what we thought we possessed in God we don’t posses at all, and this can be very painful and disorienting.

But it is the necessary path to entering into the divine affections of God, so I want to encourage you that if you are in such a “wilderness” now, stay with Jesus in the love of God. It will be worth it! Keep saying “yes” to God; look and listen for His words of love in the Word and say “yes” to them even though your flesh will want to protest. Know that you are on a journey into His heart and in His time, He will awaken love.

Chapter Four (Face to Face With Love) is next week’s chapter. Rich blessings on you this week!