Let’s
turn to the last page of the story and get a peek at our
groom: “Who is this coming out
of the wilderness like pillars of smoke, perfumed with myrrh and
frankincense, with all the merchant’s fragrant
powders?” (Song of Solomon
3:6)
Jesus, our Bridegroom
King, left Heaven’s paradise and came to fallen earth to redeem a
Bride. He is coming out of the wilderness with this smoky glory
surrounding Him. He is perfumed with myrrh, signifying His
suffering. The swirling frankincense represents His intercession for
her. This is our Jesus, the smoky, fiery, perfumed, majestic One who
died for His Bride.
This perfumed, fragrant
Bridegroom God ascended to Heaven in pillars of fire and smoke. The
angels were thrilled as they heard Him say, “Father, I did it! I
paid the price for Her.” The Father said to
the Son, “Sit here, on My right hand. Now I must
send My Holy Spirit. He will also go through the wilderness to
fallen humanity and He will find and train Your
Bride.”
Holy Spirit is looking
for voluntary lovers that say, “Yes, I will go with You! Yes, I want
to know the Bridegroom King!” Even though you haven’t seen Him
face-to-face, the Holy Spirit will be One who will reveal the
Bridegroom to you. He is the One who brings the revelation of
salvation, of conviction and repentance. He is the teacher and
guide. He illuminates the Word of God, taking the logos and making
it heart-gripping rhema. He wants to awaken your destiny and
birthright. This awesome Holy Spirit is the One who awakens and sets
our hearts on fire for our glorious Bridegroom King.
Holy
Spirit Sent by Father God to Find the
Bride Let’s look at another love story
involving a search for the bride. In Genesis 24, Abraham commissions
his servant to find a bride for his son. As I draw a parallel
between these two stories, Abraham will represent Father God and the
oldest servant of the house represents Holy Spirit.
The
servant leaves the father and goes through the wilderness with ten
camels loaded with a large dowry. He arrives at a well and puts out
a fleece, “Have the right maiden give me a drink and offer to water
my camels, too.”
Here comes beautiful
Rebekah, dressed as a servant, doing her chores just like she does
everyday. He asked her for a drink. Immediately something quickened
in her heart and she said, “Yes sir. Can I also water your camels,
too?” That was an extravagant offer. They had just come out of the
desert and were very thirsty. One camel can drink about 30 gallons,
so she was offering to draw about 300 gallons of
water!!
Hidden in this simple
request for a drink was a prophetic invitation for her. When she
made her offer, Rebekah didn’t know there was a son. All she saw
were thirsty camels. So often, Holy Spirit comes and asks for just a
drink of water, and so often, we reject His prophetic invitation
because we don’t know what’s concealed.
Holy
Spirit Offers Gifts, but Intimacy with Him Is Most
Important Rebekah truly had a servant’s heart.
After she watered the camels she asked the servant if he and his
entourage would like to come to her house. How would you like your
teenage daughter to invite a crew like that to your home? The
servant presented her with gifts. She ran home and showed her
brother Laban. The gold bracelets and nose ring got his attention
and Laban ran to extend his own personal invitation to the servant.
When we see the gifts of
Holy Spirit, we want them, don’t we? What are the gifts the servant
brought? He came to the bride’s house with a lot of jewelry. Holy
Spirit brings gifts of healing and gifts of deliverance. We need the
gifts of Holy Spirit in the Bride’s house. But, sometimes we get so
focused on the gifts, we forget that He is a Person with a
personality and that we need intimacy with Him even more than we
need His gifts.
Laban wanted to eat, but
the servant said, “No. My mission is urgent. First, I must tell you
a story.” Something came alive in Rebekah as the servant told of
Isaac’s miracle birth. She probably said, “Okay, there’s more here
than just camels! There’s a son who will awaken my
heart!”
We Have
to Walk through the Wilderness to Get to the
Bridegroom After the story, they ate and
fellowshipped all night. The servant was asked to stay another ten
days before he took Rebekah, but he said, “No. I have a mission. I
have to get the bride to the son.” So often we want to stay in the
Bride’s house. We want to stay where all the gifts are and have a
party. We lack revelation of the importance of our journey. We see
Holy Spirit like He is only there for our benefit, “I need a healing
and a little refreshing.” We don’t understand the magnitude of this
incredible love story and the journey to the Bridegroom King who
longs for His Bride.
The servant asked
Rebekah if she was willing to leave immediately. She would have to
travel hundreds of miles to get through this wilderness of varied
terrain--valleys, mountains, streams and pools. Immediately she
said, “Yes, I am willing to leave my family to follow you now.” She
didn’t know how to get to Isaac. She had to totally trust her
relationship with the servant to lead her there. If you think that
the only time you can have a real touch of Holy Spirit is by going
to a conference, your heart will faint in the wilderness. Holy
Spirit is not just phenomena—fire, wind, oil--He is a person. Yes,
He will come with those attributes, but you must develop intimacy
and trust with Holy Spirit to prepare you for your journey through
the wilderness.
Rebekah was willing to
leave her comfort zone. She was willing to go into times of
isolation. She didn’t understand the terrain; she was totally
dependent on the servant. Others didn’t understand how the Lord was
leading her. But all of this was part of the wilderness and in this
journey, the servant was saying, “Are you willing to follow
Me?"
Holy
Spirit Will Protect and Guide You Holy Spirit is
jealous to bring a pure, lovesick Bride to Jesus. He will protect
you. He knows the fears and weaknesses you have. He knows the times
your heart faints. He wants to do a radical work of healing,
cleansing and deliverance so that you will mature into who you were
created to be--the Bride. He takes away everything that hinders
love--callousness, brokenness, unforgiveness and pain.
Every time your heart
says, “Yes”, the Son’s heart leaps as He sees His Bride moving
closer to Him in love. Jesus wears many crowns, but the one crown
we, as the Bride, can give to Him is our voluntary love. As we give
Him our love, it crowns Him.
So What
does Your Wilderness Look Like? Our individual
wildernesses are unique--there are different types of mountains that
you have to cross. There are obstacles, persecution and
misunderstandings. Holy Spirit will ask you to go to the mountain of
myrrh, the time of the dark night of the soul. He led Jesus into the
wilderness for a time of great testing. When Jesus came out, He was
filled with authority and with heavenly power. He was able to do
whatever the Father told Him to do. Just like Jesus, we will also go
through suffering, but Holy Spirit will be there with us, too.
You will walk with Holy
Spirit over the hills of daily pressures. How do you get around all
these obstacles? There are important choices you must make. Are you
willing to climb higher? Holy Spirit might say, “I want you to cling to
me so that I can take you up.” There are also
low times of going through the valleys where your heart faints with
despair. “Holy Spirit, are you still with me? I can’t feel You.”
But, yes, He is always there. I tell you, He is skillful and knows
the terrain.
Wilderness
Landmarks to Remember The wilderness isn’t
all bad; in the wilderness, we develop wonderful landmarks inside of
us where we meet intimately with the Holy Spirit. As we continue
through the wilderness, on the way to meet our lovely Bridegroom
King we establish these “Places of Remembrance". During stressful
times and hurtful issues, the Lord invites you to meet Him and make
a holy covenant. Then, when you go through hard times in the future,
you can look back at this place and know that you have met with God.
I’m not talking about an
event or a conference as a landmark "Place of Remembrance". Some of
us don’t really know Holy Spirit as a Person. If we don’t know Him
in this way, then when we aren’t in seasons of renewal, or we don’t
attend meetings where the fire is released, then we feel alone and
abandoned. We need to cultivate this relationship at home! We each
are responsible for our own intimate relationship with Holy Spirit
so that as we go through the despair of the wilderness, we will
immediately yield and lean on our Beloved Guide.
I feel this is a
prophetic word for this hour. I feel that peoples’ hearts will
embrace Holy Spirit as a Person. He will begin to come to center
stage because He brings the Bridegroom King. Tell Him you want to
know Him personally. “Holy Spirit we want more of You. We ask
you to break our outdated mindsets. Where we have limited You with
different kinds of paradigms, or church cultures, we ask You to
forgive us. We want to know You Holy Spirit. We want to know the
Best Friend of the Bridegroom.”
Learn to
Trust Holy Spirit to Teach You I am sure that as
Rebekah was going through this wilderness with Holy Spirit, she was
saying, “I’m nervous about this high mountain in front of me, please
tell me more about Isaac. What does he look like?” The servant had
seen Isaac face-to-face, but Rebekah hadn’t. As they trudged along
through the heat, the servant told her, “I have known him since the
day he was born. He is wonderful, stunning, dazzling, full of light
and compassion. This bridegroom is a good, tenderhearted man and
when he sees the ones who are broken, despised and rejected, he
quickly goes to them. He is a tender shepherd.”
When Rebekah and the
servant had successfully negotiated through the desert and came up
out of the wilderness, she saw Isaac in the distance. She asked the
servant, “Who is he?” The servant replied, “He’s the bridegroom. He
is my master.” She got off her camel and ran to him! I would, too,
wouldn’t you? Isaac means laughter. He was her glorious, laughing
bridegroom.
Jesus is with His Father
in Heaven now. The great cloud of witnesses is there. Once again the
angels are looking and asking, “Who is this
coming out of the wilderness…? Look, she’s leaning on her Beloved.”
It is us! It is the victorious Bride coming up out of the
wilderness, led by Holy Spirit and looking like the Son! We are
going to come up and out leaning with a voluntary weakness, and a
loyal heart of love that doesn’t stray in seasons of prosperity or
seasons of testing.
Prayer: “Lord, we want to smell
like You with the perfumed powders. We want to die to ourselves and
go through the wilderness sufferings to the mountains of myrrh. Help
us to follow our guide, Holy Spirit, and to develop a trusting,
intimate relationship with Him on our journey. We want to be
presented to you as a spotless, blameless Bride and we want to bring
the harvest with us as we bow before you, our beautiful, loving,
Bridegroom King. Amen.”
These
products from our bookstore would be excellent with this
teaching:
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Master
Potter- Master Potter tells the story
of Beloved—wounded and left vulnerable by an abused childhood,
she is rescued by Master Potter. Whisked away to his rustic
home overlooking the quaint village of Comfort Cove, Beloved
begins her painful journey of healing. more
>> |
Holy
Spirit: Preparing the
Bride- The Holy
Spirit is on a heavenly assignment from the Father to go
through the wilderness of the earth and prepare a bride for
His glorious Son. Are you intimately familiar with this "best
friend" of the bridegroom? more >>
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Master
Potter & The Mountain of
Fire- The adventure continues with
dangers and assaults from Satan, but Beloved and her friends
are always under the eye of Master Potter. Aided by Holy
Spirit and the angelic hosts, they press on to the Mountain of
Fire. more >>
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