His Garden

Over and over I've asked God to remove the things that get in the way of our love. I've asked that He would give me the strength to escape the snare...even when I'm my own enemy. I've said, "I'll go with you to the Mt of Myrrh, to the hill of frankincense, even if it's rocky and steep...Because I live only to see Your face..."

I forget though, when amidst the north winds, that I've told Him I'll go. I forget all too often that He has said to me that even in my weakness, I am still lovely. I forget that His ways are not mine...and that it is HE who has to reveal Himself to ME. I cannot do anything lest it be for He who created me. For I am nothing without Him.

SOS 3 says, "In the night I dreamed that I sought the one whom I love. I looked for him but could not find him. So I decided to go out into the city streets and broad ways which are confusing to a girl, and seek him whom my soul loves. I sought him but I could not find him."

Too often I feel like this...but I forget that this passage says of Solomon's lover (the Shullamite) that she is still earnest, she's looking for Him, she still knows that she is a lover of God. She has said she'll go with him to the MT but instead she goes to the city...she wants to do it her way.

Although I have it all wrong, I am still a lover of God...I have said that I'll open my heart to Him in the middle of the winds, I'll say yes. I've said that even when He's breaking me, I will say yes. He has taken me at my word.

SOS 4:16 is a turning point in the Shullamite's life. She shifts her focus from her inheritance in Jesus, to His inheritance in her.

"You have called me a garden, she said. Oh, how I pray that the cold north wind (hard times) and the soft south winds would blow upon my garden, that it's spices may spread out in abundance for you in whom my soul delights. Let my beloved come into his garden and eat its choicest fruits."

She is saying that she wants to do whatever God wants her to do. She wants to be used by Him. She wants the things He has done in her life to flow out of her so that others may see and inquire, that she may tell them of what He has done.

Is my garden His? I keep asking myself this...

Lately, as I have longed for His presence, but it seems as if He has lifted it...I have felt the desperation of lovesickness. I did not realize that this is what was going on until someone told me so. Then I remembered that it is not I who reveals God to me, it is He...and I have been asking for a revelation, begging for His presence: What, O God, are you doing in my life? Why, O God, do you have us here? Nowhere? Why are we so stretched? Things that we are used to, we no longer have. Was it better before You, God? Before I fell in love? Before I knew how You can satisfy more than the wines of the world? I can live without the stuff, without friends even, but You I cannot live without. I need to feel You again!!! Can't You see?
There is a song that I've been listening to (the answer has been all around me, but I did not see). There is a line in the song that goes like this: "God is a lover - a jealous, jealous lover, and He's in love with me. Whoa to the enemy. Even if that enemy is me. He's hedged me in with thorns all around me..."

He will have me. He has taken my "yes" to Him very seriously.

In His absence, I am lovesick. God - I can do without all of those "things" if you would but come and quench this thirst, come and take me out of the desert place.

I live only to see Your face, God...so shine on me...

And He answers me... "I have come into my garden, my sister my bride. I have gathered my myrrh with my balsam and spice I have eaten my honeycomb. I have drunk the wine with my milk. Eat, O friends, feast on O revelers of the palace; you can never make my lover disloyal to me!!!" SOS 5:1

And so, even in my weakness, in the midst of my failure...I am lovely to Him. A garden enclosed and barred, a spring shut up, a fountain sealed.