The Blessed Obscurity

“For you died to this life, and your real life is hidden with Christ in God”- Colossians 3:3

Oh the blessedness of obscurity! When you can love your Lover in secret intimacy, not being disturbed by the glory of man, which has been to many their downfall. How blessed when you can serve God in quiet faithfulness, learning to put all your heart and upmost attention into the small details, as unto the Lord. How blessed you are to be obscure, a nobody in this world, having died to it, but being of attention and value to Heaven! Obscurity has been teaching me great delights about the heart of God, like how He would leave the 99 to go and save just one lost sheep. And how God is looking for our faith and quality of person in daily living, not just our quota of visible production for Him.  In obscurity, God is refining our quality of character, our faith, and making us those who can persevere in difficult times ahead.

It is easy to be close to God and passionate, when things go our way and serving Him is fast paced and thrilling.  But when we descend the mountaintop and are made to be faithful and tested in the valley of endurance, then our real person is exposed. Let us not be so caught up in the greater picture or anxiousness about the future that we miss the precious opportunities now or trample over lost sheep. In Acts, Philip left his whole church just to reach out to the one Ethiopian eunuch. In our production driven, fast passed society, this would seem so inefficient. But God has his eye on the lost sheep, and He would stop the world to rescue them. "What do you think? If any man has a hundred sheep, and one of them has gone astray, does he not leave the ninety-nine on the mountains and go and search for the one that is straying?” – Matthew 18:12

We cannot judge how to glorify God the most. It is easy to think that perhaps the great evangelists glorify God the most, because they make a great numbers of converts. Though I do believe God is greatly glorified by great evangelists evangelizing, the whole body of Christ is used in making disciples.  We can each glorify God "the most" by simply fulfilling our created potential in Christ, by God's grace. Everyone has a role, whether it is to be obscure, perhaps a faithful housewife and mother, or a faithful hardworking man, setting up chairs at church and investing in his kids at home. Some people will one day be the pastors or an honest and Godly politician, but must still be obscure for a season. This is then the blessed chance to be faithful in little things and to glorify God in daily living and obedience now. Obscurity is a great privilege. When we learn to delight in God and be content wherever He has us, this is great gain! “So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God”- 1 Corinthians 10:31.

Where God has us presently is the most exciting place we can be, because the Most High has ordained our steps and is with us.  Let us ask God to open our eyes to His great goodness and opportunities to live for Him here and now.  "The LORD has done great things for us, and we are filled with joy"- Psalm 126:3
Joseph, Moses, and even Jesus all had times of great obscurity in their lives. Jesus was poor and a carpenter. Joseph was falsely accused and abandoned to prison for over 10 years, forgotten by all. Moses lived on the backside of a desert for 40 years as a nobody, in humility from having fallen from so high a position in Pharaoh’s Court. But God was with them. The desert and obscure times are imperative for God to form Christ-likeness and endurance in us. He is forging us into leaders and servants who can be strong and faithful to lead others through difficulties later on, just like Moses and Joseph. Be a lover of God, and worship Him now with all your heart.

“O Lord, my heart is not lifted up;
my eyes are not raised too high;
I do not occupy myself with things
too great and too marvelous for me.
 But I have calmed and quieted my soul,
like a weaned child with its mother;
like a weaned child is my soul within me”- Psalm 131:1-2.

Song of Solomon part 2

Song of Songs, or Song of Solomon,  means the song of all songs. The love story between Christ and His bride is the ultimate love song. 

"This is Solomon’s song of songs, more wonderful than any other." 1:1

Young Woman-

^2" Kiss me and kiss me again,
    for your love is sweeter than wine.
³ How fragrant your cologne;
    your name is like its spreading fragrance.
    No wonder all the young women love you!
⁴ Take me with you; come, let’s run!
    The king has brought me into his bedroom." (NLT)

In Song of Solomon, Solomon names his lover, "Shulamite," which means, "little Solomon." She is endeared to and named after Him. We are also endeared to and named after our lover/husband. We are called "Christians," which means "little Christs." We are identified with and belonging to Christ, our Lord and husband. The good name of Jesus is as ointment to us: it anoints, perfumes, and blesses us as belonging to Him. We start to smell like Jesus, and become His fragrance that spreads.

I love how Solomon names his lover after him; she will begin to identify with him and carry his fragrance. His name anoints her. A wife takes the name of her husband and delights that his name is as perfume upon her.
All the virgins desire the King, because he is a good man with a good name. He is the kind of man the virgins love (KJV). The saints are also attracted to Jesus. Having been saved from the world and being sancitified, we are no longer attracted to the "bad boy"/satan. Jesus is the kind of King that saints love and want to marry.

The Shulamite wants Solomon to draw her, and yet she is also willing to follow him. She is taken into the palace in verse 4.  When we get saved, we accept to trust in Jesus. We want to join him and say, "take me with you" (NLT)  and "I will run after you" (KJV). Then God takes us in as part of His family. We enter His chambers (KJV), the Kingdom and family of God. Out of all the others, Solomon chose the Shulamite to be his bride and come to live in his chambers. Jesus has also chosen us out of the world to be His bride.

Song of Solomon part 1

Introduction:

 In Jerusalem, about this same time two years ago, I first read Song of Solomon as unto God, while sitting by myself on the top of a hill overlooking the old city. It was the first time I started reading the book as a love story between the King and me. It was difficult at first, because I had trouble understanding how such intimacy could possibly be between God and I. At times the reading felt too awkward to be referring to God, and then I would switch to thinking of an earthly man. I read Song of Solomon  again, a year later at the same time (2011 fall season), through a Bible Study with Jenny Christiansen. Through her inspired teaching and explaining, it was then that the words of this book personally came alive to me and started revealing Jesus' heart for each of us to enter into mature love and oneness with Him (as well as an incredible guide for a future marriage relationship!).

After each Friday morning Song of Solomon study, I couldn't help but quickly get alone with the love of my life and meditate on what He had just spoken to me. "My beloved spake, Rise up, my fair one, and come away"- 2:10. I was overwhelmed with awe at God's love for me. How is it possible that we could ravish God's heart with one look of our eyes?  These truths so moved me, that I started to write a poem for God in worshipful response to each new passage we read in study. I am now reading Song of Solomon again (same time of year!), and again I am strangely overwhelmed with desire to write in response to what I read. Maybe not everything will make it on this blog, but as Song of Solomon's sister Psalm says, "My heart overflows with a pleasing theme; I address my verses to the king;  my tongue is like the pen of a ready scribe"- Psalm 45:1. It seems that even the writer of Psalm 45 was deeply moved to write about the King's marriage. And since I believe Jesus is coming soon for His bride, Song of Solomon is ever more dear to my heart.

"Make haste, my beloved, and be thou like a roe or to a young hart upon the mountains of spices"- 8:14.

"Real love is always fated. It has been arranged before time. It is the most meticulously prepared of coincidences. And fate, of course, is simply a secular term for the will of God, and coincidence for His grace."- The Mystery of Marriage.

"To show forth your lovingkindness in the morning, and your faithfulness every night"- Psalm 92:2

I miss the worship at this church, so awesome! :)

 "And David danced before the LORD with all his might"- 2 Samuel 6:14

"And thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might."- Deut. 5:5

Having Discernment for Deceptive Times!

"Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth."- John 17:17

I went to this church in Israel. Great teaching for End Times.
King of Kings Community Jerusalem, Israel

Can God Trust You with His Silence?

"When He heard that he was sick, He stayed two more days in the place where He was" —John 11:6

"Has God trusted you with His silence— a silence that has great meaning? God’s silences are actually His answers. Just think of those days of absolute silence in the home at Bethany! Is there anything comparable to those days in your life? Can God trust you like that, or are you still asking Him for a visible answer? God will give you the very blessings you ask if you refuse to go any further without them, but His silence is the sign that He is bringing you into an even more wonderful understanding of Himself. Are you mourning before God because you have not had an audible response? When you cannot hear God, you will find that He has trusted you in the most intimate way possible— with absolute silence, not a silence of despair, but one of pleasure, because He saw that you could withstand an even bigger revelation. If God has given you a silence, then praise Him— He is bringing you into the mainstream of His purposes. The actual evidence of the answer in time is simply a matter of God’s sovereignty. Time is nothing to God. For a while you may have said, “I asked God to give me bread, but He gave me a stone instead” (see Matthew 7:9). He did not give you a stone, and today you find that He gave you the “bread of life” (John 6:35).
A wonderful thing about God’s silence is that His stillness is contagious— it gets into you, causing you to become perfectly confident so that you can honestly say, “I know that God has heard me.” His silence is the very proof that He has. As long as you have the idea that God will always bless you in answer to prayer, He will do it, but He will never give you the grace of His silence. If Jesus Christ is bringing you into the understanding that prayer is for the glorifying of His Father, then He will give you the first sign of His intimacy— silence."

-My Upmost For His Highest, October 11

"For love’s strength standeth in love’s sacrifice, And he who suffers most has most to give.” - Streams in the Desert