Living Grace

“Kiss and kiss me again, for your love is sweeter than wine.” Song of songs 1:1

Love is expressed with a kiss, it is conveyed with passion and it is offered in sacrifice.

Psalm 85:11 tells us “righteousness and peace have kissed.”

The kiss of the bridegroom is sweeter than wine. It is the intoxication of your heart, the banquet of grace that your heart desires. For your lover comes to intoxicate your heart with his love.

For you are the delight of God’s heart and with his kiss your heart is opened up to the passion of heaven. With his kiss righteousness and peace have been placed inside your heart.

It is here in the garden of our heart that we learn in time to trust his kiss. We begin to believe his love and trust his commitment to us. To rely on his words of grace spoken over our lives.

His kiss to us creates a burning passion that only his embrace will suffice. For we were created to know, feel, experience and revel in his love.

Your heart was created to respond to the love of Christ.

“Open to me my treasure, my darling, my dove, my perfect one. My head is drenched with dew, my hair with the dampness of the night.” Song of songs 5:2

Within our hearts there is a treasure of truth. A treasure stored inside the garden of our belief system that cries out with passion and desire to be embraced. It yearns to be watered with the dew of heaven and it longs to be drenched with the victory of the cross.

The Holy Spirit calls out in our hearts that without Christ something is missing, that without Christ we are incomplete but in Christ all our desires have been met.

For above all else the Christian life is a love affair of the heart.

From the beginning of time God’s connection with mankind has been a heart connection. Every drop of dew that watered the garden of Eden each morning was a droplet of the grace of God poured out through the Holy Spirit. It was a physical demonstration of an inward reality.

The perfect son of God has in the New Covenant planted and rooted his abundant life into the good soil of your heart. You have become a field of harvest for all the ripe fruit of heaven. Your heart now lives in the eternal season of God’s favour.

You are nurtured, nourished and protected by the power of the Holy Spirit alive in you. Your heart is never disconnected from God and the spiritual rebirth of your heart produces the lavish fruit you need to sustain the rest of your life.

God has got hold of you and he will not let you go.

“I slept but my lover was awake, when I heard my lover knocking and calling.” Song of songs 5:2

The voice that calls to you in the deep place of your heart is the voice of God.

It is often a whisper, a still small voice, a delicate invitation to come and enjoy the fruits of the garden

But there is a tendency within all of us to push away that whisper and let the cares and hurts of life take root. Brokenness, heartache, disappointment, fear and worry cause our hearts to hide, shut down and eventually go to sleep.

The Apostle Paul saw this and in his letter to Christians living in Rome he wrote “Knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep, for now our salvation is nearer than when we first believed.” Romans 13:11.

God is knocking and calling at our hearts to live in the fullness of his finished work to acknowledge every good thing that has been planted into the good soil of our hearts.

He comes as a lover to arouse us to enjoy the fullness of his love. He calls us into a passionate relationship consumed with his glory and grace.

He has awaken our hearts to his desire and takes us by the hand into his delight.

He wants to whisper his words of love and awaken your heart to hear his voice.

“Oh, lover and beloved, eat and drink. Yes, drink deeply of your love.” Song of songs 5:1

To lose heart is to lose everything.

One of the most amazing invitations of Jesus is “if anyone is thirsty , let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me , as the scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him.” John 7 37:38. It is from the deep thirst of our hearts that our desire and passion is met. The promise of Christ to us is that once we meet him we will never thirst again.

The lie that Satan has placed and taken root in our hearts is that God in Christ is holding out on us, that we have only been given a measure and that his grace is dependant upon our thirst.

The truth is we have been given the fullness of Christ, that our hearts have been immersed into the death and resurrection of Jesus and his Holy Spirit flows within us like a mighty river.

Here in Song of songs the bride invites the bridegroom to come and drink deeply of the love within her heart. The love within her is the love given and placed by her lover. The love they share is the intimate love of each other, birthed and planted in the garden of the heart.

God is constantly calling us to drink more deeply of the love that he has poured into us. To recover the intimacy, beauty and wonder of a life filled with God. To drink deeply of his new life already within us.

New Covenant life is found in enjoying the wonder of adventure in intimate delight with a lover who has immersed us into his river of grace.

You don’t have to thirst anymore you can now drink deeply.

“I have entered my garden, my treasure, my bride. I gather myrrh with my spices and eat honeycomb with my honey. I drink wine with my milk.” Song of songs 5:1

The truth of the new covenant is to set us free to love God and others with our whole heart.

The garden of our heart has been enriched with the new covenant soil of Christ and the finished work of the cross. Within every believer there has been planted the power of the resurrection and the faith of Christ. We can now abide in Christ because he abides in us.We now have the faith to respond to the grace of God because he has given us His faith.

Here in the Song of songs is the promise of the new covenant whispered to us from the lover of our heart.

Firstly, it is myrrh that speaks of the death of Christ as the invitation to grace. It was myrrh that was presented to the baby in the manger which pointed to a future day of deliverance and grace. The bridegroom comes to gather myrrh from the garden of your heart. For your heart has been immersed into the death and resurrection of Christ. The fruit of your heart is now new life in Christ.

Secondly within your heart is the harvest of milk and honey. The communion of Christ, new manna and new wine are now flowing inside your heart. Your heart is the Promised Land of God, it is flourishing with the abundant produce of God’s provision, alive with the promises of God given to you to heal, restore, guide, keep, protect and fill you with all good things in Christ.

For in your New Covenant life the delight of God has been birthed into your heart, the desire of God is now the motivation of your heart, you have been set free to love and you have been planted into the promises of God.

“Come into your garden, my love; taste it’s finest fruits.” Song of songs 4:16

Deep within every human being there is a hidden Kingdom, a realm of abundant treasure, a garden of enriched, fertile soil. Where life can be generated, seeds can be cultivated, saplings can be nourished and beauty can be nurtured.

This hidden garden is called the heart. It is a place of mystery where hope is formed, seeds grow and mature and beliefs take hold and flourish. It is a garden birthed to feed you, to build you up and establish your body, soul and spirit into a overflowing expression of creation.

It is a unique place it cannot be defined with the mind for it goes beyond the intellect and logical thought. It is a garden of intimate desire, passionate longing and endless delight.

And just as your physical heart is the core of your body so it is with your heart for within it is the core of your spirit and soul and what you believe in your heart has the power to bring you life or plunge you into death.

Life is a love affair with your heart.

And this is the place where the Holy Spirit works, the place where he draws us to him, the place where he whispers to us to “come”, the place where he produces his fruit.

His invitation to us is to come into the garden with him and taste it’s finest fruits. To eat of the abundance of heaven and let the riches of the grace of God be cultivated in our hearts.

The whisper of the Holy Spirit is to come and be one with the passion and glory of heaven inside your innermost being, inside the depth of the core of your life.

If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you.” – John 15:7

There is a lie of Satan that has echoed from the very first lie, that God does not want us.