Catching the Little Foxes

My dove in the clefts of the rock, in the hiding places on the mountainside, show me your face, let me hear your voice; for your voice is sweet, and your face is lovely (Song 2:14)

It was Moses who asked the Lord, “Now show me your glory.” He was placed in the clefts of the rock, so that he could bear to see the goodness of the Lord as He passed by (Ex. 33). The fearsome goodness of God was so intense, that Moses had to be covered, and then he could only look at the Lord’s back, because to see His face would have been more than any man could bear.

As we grow in our hearts’ desire, this becomes a consistent cry, “show me your glory.” We want to see His face. We want to hear His voice. We want our senses to be filled with Him as He draws near. However, in this verse, we see that these longings are reciprocated by the Lord. It is the Lover here speaking, saying to the bride “show Me your face, let Me hear your voice. …”

As much as we long to draw near to the Lord, it is the beauty of the bride that draws Him to us. He is saying, “Come to Me.” Pull aside. Allow Me to enjoy you. He is thrilled to see our face and to hear our voice.

It is our sweetness, our loveliness, which allures and attracts the Lord to us. Considering our fallen state, it is difficult to wrap our minds around this. The favor He has shown toward us seems too overwhelming to be real. Can He really be so pleased with us in this way?

Moses asked, “If you are pleased with me, teach me your ways so I may know you and continue to find favor with you.” We want to experience the consistent, abiding presence of God. Continually. Not just a momentary visit. We want to experience Emmanuel, God with us, and move into an everyday awareness of His love and favor toward us.

It is for this reason, that He next beckons us:

Catch for us the foxes, the little foxes that ruin the vineyards, our vineyards that are in bloom (verse 15)

The little sins. The small things. The compromises that slip in and spoil our vineyard – which spoil the place of intimacy where we bear fruit – these are the things we must root out. We cannot let the wine be ruined. We cannot be negligent with this vineyard. It must be kept sealed away, with no cracks in the wall for the little foxes to enter.

Sometimes catching these foxes means rooting away outward habit patterns. Sometimes it means dealing with mundane distractions – taking the time to tend the vineyard, not being overly preoccupied with the cares of the world. And sometimes, it is as simple as rooting out the insecurities and issues of the heart that block intimacy. We sometimes neglect this garden because we shy away from the intensity of His love for us. While intellectually, we can comprehend that God loves us unconditionally, we feel awkward to gaze upon it for too long. We turn to busyness, details and entertainment.

Our calling is higher than that of Moses. Through Christ’s blood, we can now gaze upon His goodness with unveiled faces. If we can grow bold enough to approach the throne of grace and taste the goodness of this terribly intense love, then the insecurities and fears in every other area of our life fall away like shadows. If we become bold enough to be vulnerable to the Bridegroom’s advances, we have courage to tackle anything.

We must grow confident in the Lover’s desire for us. We must understand how breathtakingly beautiful we are to Him. He wants us completely, and our beauty is reserved for Him and Him alone. This love is exclusive, and reserved for no other idol.

My Lover is mine and I am His; He browses among the lilies. Until the day breaks and the shadows flee, turn, my Lover, and be like a gazelle or like a young stag on the rugged hills (verses 16-17)

As He browses among the lilies, He is feasting on us. He grazes like a wild gazelle or a stag. His wild, unpredictability enters our field and he takes from us our most prized possession – our hearts. In the night, when we are alone and our vineyard is sealed away from any other cares or distractions, we invite Him to draw near and have His way with us.

From Vision to Activation

(This week's message is part of a concurrent series on the Song of Solomon. For more on the Canticles, please visit our archives)

Until love is awakened, our spirits slumber. Although we begin to envision a lifestyle of reckless abandon for God – that is all we have at first – a vision. A thing is dreamt about before it is realized. Conceptualized, before it comes into being. Each new level of experiential divine intimacy is preceded at first by a process of pondering and envisioning. At this point in our study, the Beloved has still not moved from a place of vision to activation in this relationship – from conceptualization to actually taking hold of its fullness:

My lover spoke and said to me, “Arise, my darling, my beautiful one, and come with me. See! The winter is past; the rains are over and gone. Flowers appear on the earth; the season of singing has come, the cooing of doves is heard in our land. The fig tree forms its early fruit; the blossoming vines spread their fragrance. Arise, come, my darling; my beautiful one, come with me.” (Song 2:10-13)

There is a very real call to arise and take hold of our destiny. That destiny consists of habitation with the Lord. But notice that the Beloved is reiterating an earlier conversation with the Lord here:

My lover spoke and said …

This is not the Lord speaking, present tense. She is remembering the vision – this is a rehearsal of things formerly told to her. Perhaps a remembrance of past prophecies given. She is still familiarizing herself with the call to “arise.” To awaken. She is still in a place of pondering the vision. We must understand that throughout life, we are called to hold onto certain words and visions for a necessary time of pondering and processing. When the angels, shepherds and wise men came to Jesus’ birth, there were great signs in the heavens accompanied by profound prophecies. But Mary did not understand it all at first. Scripture tells us that “Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart” (Lk. 2:19).

It is important that we do not cut short the pondering process. The season of meditation on what has been spoken, and envisioning things to come. As with Joseph, the word of the Lord first had to test him for a season, until those things which had been spoken over him came to pass. There is an element of God’s timing at work here. Do not awaken love until it so desires. Understand that, at this stage of the passage, the night season is still technically underway. There is a proclamation that “winter is past” and that the season of spring – the time of love – is at hand. But this is a prophetic statement. It is like Jesus saying “the child only sleeps,” when everyone else around can clearly see that she is dead.

The blossoming, the singing, the presence of the doves (habitation with God’s Spirit), all have their obvious connotations as a time of awakening and spiritual renewal. But inevitably, we have a part to play in bringing this spring season into being. God has already called the spring into being, but we have to arise to take hold of it. We cannot just ponder the vision forever. At some point, we have to appropriate and step out into the truth that has been spoken.

:: active resurrection ::

Awakening from the daydream into a manifestation of the Kingdom of Heaven on earth, is the very substance of resurrection power. The shadowy vision should always be trumped by the true substance of that vision, when it appears. Christ’s followers could hardly grasp what He meant in saying that He would be killed and rise from the dead. But when it happened, they were utterly amazed. We see through a glass darkly, but when He appears in our midst, He will blow away the befuddled, childish concepts to which we once clinged.

We must step forward from the vision to the reality. We must see our destiny on the horizon, and begin to position ourselves for it. That is how we literally bring the future into the present. But you cannot make resurrection power happen. It is God that pulls you up from the dead. God who awakens you. This is a fine dance between His sovereignty and our free-will responsiveness. Draw near to Him, and He will draw near to you. There is a season of waiting and pondering on what He will do, but eventually, we have to step out into the realm of faith and doing ourselves. In this sense, we allow Him to do through us.

There is a clear call to position ourselves for resurrection power. To prepare ourselves for the King. The bridal call is to get ready for the Bridegroom.

:: supernatural preparation ::

How do we prepare ourselves for the King? Notice here in verse 13 that the trees are bearing early fruit. Fig trees speak of natural Israel. You may remember that Jesus cursed a fig tree at the time he cleansed the temple of the money changers and offended the Pharisees. In that passage, the fig tree was already in leaf, but it was still too early in the season for figs. It gave the appearance of bearing fruit, but it was not ready.

Even as natural Israel was not ready for her King, so the tree was not prepared for Jesus. Although it was early in the season, and by all natural expectancies should not have been ready for fruit – nevertheless, God calls us beyond our natural limitations. We do not just have permission to move beyond our natural limits – we have a responsibility to do so. When Jesus cursed the tree, He told His disciples:

Have faith in God. … I tell you the truth, if anyone says to this mountain, “Go throw yourself into the sea,” and does not doubt in his heart but believes that what he says will happen, it will be done for him (Lk. 11:22-23)

Jesus was speaking very literally here.

Natural limits are no excuse for the people of God. We have settled for a very low standard – a very weak level of faith – and built up a set of excusing doctrines for it. Even as Jesus has prophetically called your spring season into being, so must you actively learn to call it into being. We have been waiting on Jesus to move our mountains, but He has been waiting on us to do it with the Spirit and the Word. Does this sound too much like a “Word of Faith” teaching? So be it. That’s what it is. We like to get comfortable with our mountains and our winters and our night seasons. But God wants us to bound over them, cast them into the sea, and make them a place of new wine and holy revelry. Level the path and make straight the way for the Lord – not for our own selfishness, but for His glory.

The church is too comfortable with its dead, natural limitations. With waiting on God to move, but never exercising the divine authority that has already been given to us. Like Moses at the Red Sea, we are begging God to act, but He asks, “Why are you crying out to me? Stretch out your own rod, your own authority.” The Kingdom of Heaven dwells within us. It is springtime, abiding time, revival time, whenever we choose to turn our gaze in that direction and declare that it is so.

It is one thing to pray for revival. It is another thing to make revival happen. It is time to make the prophetic decree that revival has already come. The church is not dead, “she is only asleep.”

There is now a call to wake up. To take hold of the destiny and the lifestyle of intimacy with God’s presence that we have always dreamed about. Waking up means putting our vision into motion. Everything is still and predicated at the tomb. There is nothing to write home about. For too long, we have enshrined that place, with a false glorification of self-death. The lifeless place of “nothing happening to the glory of God.” Dead stillness has the appearance of holiness. But the point of the Christian walk is not for me to “decrease,” but for Him to “increase.” His increase is the ultimate agenda, and my decrease is only a natural byproduct. Much of what we have claimed to be “death to self” has actually been bowing the knee to a religious spirit and actually has strengthened the fleshly nature. True death to self should result in resurrection power, life and fullness.

We will know resurrection life by its fruit. It is living, moving and active. Its movements are like Elijah’s – unpredictable and beyond human comprehension (1 Kings 18:12). It swims against the stream. It is marked by the spontaneity of desire.

We have set up camp at the tomb, but Jesus is now removing our grave clothes. He is waking us up, not just to visions of hope, but to the substance of things hoped for. He is saying “Arise, my darling … come with me.”

God of Wildness

(This week's message is part of a concurrent series on the Song of Solomon. For more on the Canticles, please visit our archives)

Daughters of Jerusalem, I charge you by the gazelles and by the does of the field: Do not arouse or awaken love until it so desires (Song 2:7)

The intrinsic element of desire must necessarily be at the core of our being to pursue God in the manner He prescribes. Love cannot be formulated. There is an element of deep, reckless longing that must burn beneath the exterior forms of our worship. It cannot be forced or calculated. In Deuteronomy 12:4, the Lord tells us of the pagans, “You must not worship the Lord your God in their way.” In this, He was not just talking about the form or methodology of their worship services, or what types of altars, incenses or instruments they used. Moreover, the Lord was saying he does not want slavish service in which we follow patterns and shadows of worship, with no inner life or spontaneity.

God Himself wants to lead our worship, because He can – he is a living God. The prophets of baal cut themselves and cry aloud, trying to find the formula for him to appear, but the spirit of Elijah makes a mockery of them. Elijah literally asks, “Is baal out relieving himself? Where is baal?” Our God, however, is real, present and responsive. Ever-present Emmanuel. You can’t see baal; he’s out to lunch. Our God is motivated not by empty sacrifice and formula, but by burning desire. This is why we do not pray for Him to bless our ideas. Since He is a living God, he can initiate His own. We are blessed when we get onboard with His plans.

Real. Responsive. Alive. Close at hand. Moreover, completely untamed and uncontrolled. He is a good lion, but not a tame lion.

Listen! My Lover! Look! Here He comes, leaping across the mountains, bounding over the hills. My lover is like a gazelle or a young stag. Look! There He stands behind our wall, gazing through the windows, peering through the lattice (verse 9).

Gazelles and does of the field speak of a wildness. These are not livestock that move at the command or will of man. Love originates in the will and spontaneity of God. The arousal of love is not a predicated, legislated thing. It must be invoked by a deep “desire.” One cannot will himself to love. A relationship cannot be a forced thing. It takes you off guard. It is a thing of poetry. A glance of the eye that catches you by surprise. It is the spark of the breath of life that animates a man.

:: listen, look ::

Notice here, that first the senses are turned to God. Listen. … Look. … Desire comes first by peering at the object of our affection. When we see Him, we will be like Him. On the same token, when we see Him, we will fall in love with Him. It is inevitable. This is why prayer is important. Its purpose is to fix your eyes on Jesus. As we pull aside to gaze at Him, we become entangled with His beauty – enamored to the point of infatuation.

What surprises us the most, perhaps, when we look at Him, is that He has been staring intently at us all along. Waiting for a chance to step into our awareness.

We put up walls and barricades from this kind of intimacy, but the Lord is a faithful peeping tom, always gazing at us through our blinders and veils and lattices. We insulate ourselves from His fire, from this intimacy – asking Moses to go and speak to Him for us, instead. We would rather have a nice, normal church service. A picket fence Christianity. Live life as usual. Keep Him at arm’s length. We don’t like the uncontrollable wildness of His whims. We like to pretend that He belongs in our boxes.

But He is a wild stag. A life in the Spirit is far more wild and unpredictable than a worldly life. And a religious life is the driest of all. If you are bored with your walk with the Lord, something is wrong. Even as the Lord leaps across the mountains in this passage, we see those in His army doing the same in Joel 2:

With a noise like that of chariots they leap over the mountaintops, like a crackling fire consuming stubble, like a mighty army drawn up for battle (Joel 2:5).

And also …

In that day the mountains will drip new wine. … (Joel 3:18).

The wine and wildness that emanate from the presence of God release us to operate in the Spirit of Might (see Isa. 11). This is a tangible anointing of boldness and power. We take on the same wild nature of His own authority and dominion. This is a place of resurrection power, in which God Himself rises up within us with strength and ability that is far beyond ourselves. This is a far cry from the emasculated religion of Jezebel’s priests.

You have exalted my horn (my strength, authority) like that of a wild ox; fine oils have been poured upon me (Ps. 92:10).

He strengthens us not just like an ox, but a wild one. Is this clean, predictable Christianity? The stall is clean when there is no ox, but if you want the strength of the ox, things will get messy. Understand that this is not blind zeal of which I speak, but zeal coupled with wisdom. That is the potent formula for spiritual dynamite.

This wildness is not a lack of self-control. However, it is a wholehearted giving over of one’s self to the control of God. This power and authority, this mighty breaker anointing, only comes through an awakening of divine intimacy in the inmost parts.