Hey friends! In my excitement over this incredible portion of scripture, I forgot to record my talk. So I am providing the written commentary for you if you missed last week. Love you ALL!
An Invitation
Song of Songs 1:1-4
Here in the first chapter we are invited on a journey to experience Jesus and a relationship with Him that will forever change us. King Soloman wrote over 1005 pieces of poetry or “songs”, but this is the one he titled the Song of all Songs. It’s the ultimate depiction of the love Jesus has for us, His Bride.
Jeremiah 29:13,14 promises us this, “if from there you seek the Lord your God, you will find him if you seek him with all your heart and with all your soul. Like the Shulamite maiden in this allegorical story, we too are invited to seek Jesus with the promise that we will find Him. The Hebrew word for heart is levav. It is the seat of our emotions and makes up our mind, will and inner person. We can surrender our entire being to our Creator, and through seeking Him, in His Word with the Holy Spirit He can transform us and draw us deeper into His unconditional love. Let us open our hearts to allow this scripture that is God-breathed, useful for teaching, correcting and setting things right in our hearts, minds and emotions. (1 Timothy 3:16)
We begin this journey with a kiss. “Let Him Kiss me with the kisses of His mouth.” The Hebrew word Naw Shak is a verb that is rarely used with romantic implications. It means to touch lightly and is an expression of dearness between friends. It represents the acceptance of a person and is associated with giving blessings. The Hebrew word peh is a term used as the instrument of speech or speech itself. With God’s incredible Words he spoke the world into existence. He made something out of nothing by simply speaking. That is the power that His Word can have in the broken, dark and hurting places of our hearts.
Deuteronomy 8:3 says, He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna which neither you nor your ancestors had known. To teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every work that comes from the mouth of the Lord. He loves us so much that He can use our circumstances to cause us to realize our deep need for Him. Just like the Israelites who were taken out of captivity in Egypt, which had been their comfort zone. Even in their captivity, the Israelites had shelter, food, livestock, and were comfortable in their lifestyles, but God brought them out of their captivity and stripped them of their dependencies. He humbled them because He loved them and created the hunger within them to understand that their greatest need was Him, His Word. Even in our own circumstances such as our health being threatened, our unanswered prayers for prodigals, loss of relationships, loss of financial dependencies, God can create a hunger inside of us, and a realization that what we need most is the Word of God.
John 1:1 says “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning.” May our hearts and prayers echo that of the Shulamite. Let God touch our hearts, our mind, will and emotions with His Word and may our heart’s desire be this, “God, communicate your innermost wisdom and love to me.”
Spending time with Jesus, can transform our entire being. I loved how our commentary this week said, Ecclesiastes is a book about all the worldly desire, but Song of Songs is all about the One Thing we should seek after. What God has to offer us in the place of intimacy and time with Him far surpasses any earthly pursuit.
Verse two begins with “Pleasing is the fragrance of your perfumes; your name is like perfume poured out. The more it is poured out the more its fragrance spreads. I remember when my mother was in the final stages of life. I spent so many beautiful mornings by her bedside praying over her. I just wanted every last minute I could get with her. A friend had given me some anointing oil and the fragrance with Fig. Many mornings I would anoint my mom and pray over her as she slept. Her housekeeper, one of my dearest friends, who spoke very little English would come over and pray with me. It was such an incredible experience with Jesus as two of us gathered and cried out to Jesus for her healing and ease of pain. Jesus was most certainly among us as she was speaking to Him in her beautiful Spanish and I was speaking to Him in English. His presence was so thick in her room and around us. To this day, that fig oil triggers the most amazing emotions of delight and joy within me as I am taken back to the moments Jesus met with us in a place of pain and ministered His healing love to all of our hearts.
I love how God uses science sometimes as a metaphor of His truths. I read that fragrances can have positive effects on our mood, they can reduce stress, enhance our sleep and even effect our self-confidence and physical and cognitive performance. An odor has no personal significance until it becomes connected to something that has meaning. The fig oil began with an initial encounter and the nerve connections were intertwined with emotions I experienced. The capacities for both smell and emotion are rooted in the same network of brain structures. The olfactory center also interacts directly with the portion of our brain area and the formation of new memories. No other senses have this kind of deep access.
The Shulamite clearly had experienced the fragrance of her King. I promise you sisters, as you develop a love for spending time with Jesus in the secret place, you will come to experience the most joyful and incredible emotions you can have.
Now into the chambers of the King we continue. The Shulamite declares, “Take me away with you—let us hurry!” Soloman’s name mean Peace in Hebrew and here we discover that after just one hint, one taste of her King’s unconditional love invokes a desire to experience more of His peace and love. Have you ever experienced that with Jesus? If you have, just one hint can leave you desiring more connections and healing and time with Him. I pray that as you choose to sit with him daily, He will open up his Word and love to you like never experienced before and find a satisfaction in your Spirit that only Jesus can give.
In Exodus 13:21, when the Israelites were leaving Egypt and in the Wilderness, God gives them a pillar of cloud to guide them on their way at night. This cloud represented that His presence and protection was with them,. As we journey with Jesus and develop carved out time with Him in the secret place of our soul’s protection we will discover this same excitement the Bride proclaims.
Will you accept the Saviors invitation to experience the tender, loving, teaching re-aligning, Power of His Word breathed into the beautiful creation of your Heart?
Will you sit with Him and allow the fragrance of the knowledge of Jesus to pour over you?
Are you ready to RUN?
dwell 