LOVE TESTED

In this season of my life I have become so intimately aware of the Holy Spirit and how He leads me. I wake each morning with a heart overflowing with gratefulness for His presence. I feel like there is nothing else in the world that I need.

He has been wooing me, leading me, surprising me, and teaching me. The other night something happened and I became angry with my husband. I kept my frustration in and he ended up going to bed earlier than me. My frustration was out of feeling like he was being a hypocrite and the situation that had arouse he was displaying a double standard.

I’m in this sweet sweet spot with the Holy Spirit so when these feelings of anger entered I immediately ask Him to show me how to see this situation from His perspective. I do this with nearly every situation in my life now. I also ask very often for anything in my heart that isn’t pure to be revealed. I have learned how easily Satan can get us to see things from a wrong perspective and also how he likes to strike at your sweet spots. You know… the things that get you all riled up? I also know how easily it is to be tempted to fall into self pity, pride, and all the things that can soil a pure heart.

So these two things are huge for me to turn that light on and dispel any lie I might me believing or trick I’m falling for.

So back to my story… I was heading to bed feeling very frustrated and angry. Whether it was warranted is beyond the point. However my feelings were very real and raw. I walked into my bedroom where my husband was already sleeping with my bedside lamp still on. It was very late but my oldest daughter asked me to wait on her to come tell me goodnight before I fell asleep. She asked me if I would read a book for a bit until she was ready. So feeling all these feelings but needing to hear from heaven to rightly process them I reached on my bookshelf and grabbed a favorite book that I reach for when I want to feel a closeness to Jesus. I hadn’t read this particular one in a very long time. The book is a commentary on the Song of Solomon and I hear the Holy Spirits sweet voice nearly every single time I read it.

I opened to a “random” page not by coincidence and began reading.

I’m going to point out first that the Holy Spirit has spoken to me through books before I was reading God’s word for myself… since I was a little girl. He speaks to me in many ways now but still very often through books.

The chapter I randomly opened to was called A NIGHT VISIT.

I’ll summarize what I read. It starts off by explaining that the Beloved (Jesus), at night, is knocking on the Shulammite’s (my) door. “Open to me” He pleads, but the Shulammite hesitates. The Shulammite because of her sensitivity to His voice and in her relentless obedience knows He is calling her into new realms of intimacy. Because it is nighttime and it is an “inconvenient” time (remember I’m lost in anger toward my husband) the Shulammite begins feeling entitled in her role because of her commitment to her Beloved all day.

She misinterpretes His intention to bring her into deeper intimacy.

At this point I’m starting to understand where the Holy Spirit is taking me. My defenses begin to crumble but He keeps going.

The story begins to remind me about suffering well as Jesus did. “Every soul who desires the depths of God must be perfected through suffering. It is in the crucible of affliction that a soul discovers its true purpose. It is through suffering that the Father extricates the soul from the love of this world so that the souls capacity for loving Him might be enlarged.”

Part of my back story is that I have learned of this such suffering so I was understanding what was being said. But then it continued…

“She (me) has not FULLY comprehended the extent to which her desire for a shared life would intrude upon her own physical and emotional comforts. Faced with this new understanding, she hesitates.

He (Jesus) keeps persisting for her to open the door to her heart. “Actually it was the Shulammite who initiated the process that has led to this bedtime encounter. In a moment of spiritual courage, she invited the winds of adversity to blow in order to intensify the fragrance emitted from the garden of her heart, hoping to make herself even more alluring to her beloved.”

The Holy Spirit here is showing me how I was longing for His touch and perspective. I was willing to let Him be involved instead of letting my emotions rule the situation.

Knowing her heart and sincerity He persist even though she hesitated because that is what Jesus does. His desire is to shake her out of complacency; the complacency of letting her emotions run wild. He grabbed her attention because He persisted. He was allowing the Shulammite the opportunity to willingly open the door to her heart.

“Witnessing the tangible evidence of her beloved’s persistent love, the Shulammite’s feelings are aroused. Torn between a feeling of shame and rekindled desire, she rises to open the door. The proud will never know God. Only the humble are willing to deny their physical passions and desires in order to obey God in all things large and small. For the Shulammite to experience greater intimacy with her beloved, she must mortify every self-indulgence: self-absorption, self-applause, and those ever so subtle demands that HER OPINIONS AND FEELINGS BE KNOWN AND UNDERSTOOD BY OTHERS.”

She (I) was forgetting and violating humility’s prime directive: to regard others as more important than oneself.

When He speaks to me every single thing else in the world diminishes. I become so overwhelmed with love that anything that threatens to get between He and I hasn’t a chance.

All the feelings of anger and self righteousness I was feeling completely disappeared. There wasn’t a trace. The joy that filled my heart sent me walking on clouds.

He is so faithful.

My daughter walked in to tell me goodnight and it literally felt like I had wakened from a dream. I told her all about what had just happened. It was me in that story.

I woke up the next morning and told the entire story to my husband. He listened and was sensitive to how he made me feel the day before. I could have cared less about the day before OR the issue for it had been taken away.

Imagine what this whole scenario would have looked like if I bought into my pride. I would have still been filled with anger and resentment when I woke and my husband would have been operating in defense mode. It would have not been pretty.

I’m drowning in gratefulness. Deeper intimacy and revelation is all I long for. When you seek Him… He is faithful. When you long to grow and mature in Him… He will show you how. It’s the opposite of how the world operates, but it’s heaven on earth.