Living Grace

“You have captured my heart, my treasure, my bride. You hold it hostage with one glance of your eyes, with a single jewel of your necklace ” – Song of songs 4:9.

Christ came for you because you are his treasure. He came for you because you have infinite value to him.

He calls out the beauty and value in you.

God reached down into the dust he created and breathed into it his life. The very glory of God, the fullness of his goodness entered into creating, in the body of the first man.

You were created from the intimacy of God, from a perfect relationship. You were created as a reflection of perfect love and now in Christ you have been made a New Creation.

The journey of the heart is a discovery of who we already are in our new creation life. Christ has filled us with his fullness inside our spirit and we are now alive to Christ and dead to our old nature.

We were created beautiful by God. Now in Christ we have been restored to our perfect, innocent nature. As Paul says in Ephesians 4:21 “You are holy and righteous in Christ.”

You have captured God’s heart. You are his delight. Your eyes are alive with the glory of Christ placed in you.

You have made God a hostage of love for you. He pursues you, he runs after you and he embraces you into his perfect union with you.

You are his delight and he will never let you go.

“Come with me from Lebanon, my bride, come with me from Lebanon. Come down from Mount Amana, from the peaks of Senior and Hermon, where the loins have their dens and the leopards live among the hills.” Song Of songs 4:8

Every promise of God finds its completion In Christ. God chose me to be holy and blameless in Him before the foundation of the world and before I had done a single thing to earn it but rather through his glorious grace in which he makes me acceptable to himself. It was predestined that Christ would be the cause of my adoption not me.

God predestined me to relate to him by his righteousness and not my own. Before time God chose me. In time he justified me. After time he will glorify me. Neither my adoption, justification nor my glorification has anything to do with me. Only God can qualify me. The only thing I am called to do is have faith in Jesus and that faith is a gift given to me by God, I did not even have it. Faith is just my positive response to all God has provided for me by grace.

God called me to him because I was incapable of qualifying myself to respond by faith, it was all His ability to qualify me. Because he called me in Christ and He justified me In Christ, I will be glorified because I am In Christ. Likewise, those people who trust in their own self-efforts to be qualified will be lost for eternity.

I am now filled with the sunlight of God’s grace. God delights in me because he sees Christ in me, I am the apple of my fathers eye and the joy of his heart. As a chosen child of God I have all the riches and glory of heaven living now inside of me. The overflowing waterfall of all heavens grace flows and cascades over every part of my life.

“Before the dawn breezes blow and the night shadows flee, I will hurry to the mountain of myrrh and to the hill of frankincense.” Song of songs 4:6

Before the foundations of the world and before the beginning of time, God loved you.

Before planets were thrown into space, he decided to come for you. He came and journeyed with us into a world of dirt and flesh to capture our hearts. He came because we are the joy of his heart.

He came for us so that he could take us and adopt into his family. For adoption is the true heart of predestination.

For it is the love of God that takes the initiative. And there is nothing you need to do to get his love because God’s love for you is not based on anything that you have done, but on who you are.

God’s love is eternal. It does not have a beginning and it does not come to an end. It existed before time and was poured out in time and was sacrificed at a specific moment in time.

Calvary the hill of frankincense was the moment when God’s love kissed our dirt.

“Then scarcely had I left them when I found my love! I caught him and held him tightly.” Song of songs 3:4

We are all on a journey of love into the heart of God to discover who we already are.

This journey is alien to us, it is a complete contradiction to all the world teaches us.

“So I searched for him but did not find him. The watchmen stopped me as they made their rounds and I asked “Have you seen the one I love? ” Song of songs 3:3

We are all faced with a choice to either seize control of our own destiny or enter into a deeper realisation of the love of God .

This choice is no more evident than in the search for love. It is here in the realm of our emotions and feelings that we make fashion our own God’s in a heart response to discover true value and acceptance.

“So I said to myself, “I will get up and roam the city, searching in all its streets and squares. I will search for the one I love.” Song of songs 3:2

We live in the moment, we breathe each breath in the present , every heart beat is an affirmation of life.

The time is now.

“One night as I lay in bed, I yearned for my lover. I yearned for him but he did not come.” Song of songs 3:1

Life is a journey into the delight of God.

Everything we encounter begins with eyes to see and ears to hear.

“Before the dawn breezes blow and the night shadows flee, return to me, my love, like a gazelle or a young stag on the rugged mountains. ” Song of songs 2:17

You were born to enjoy the intimate presence of God. You were born to dance on the waves of grace. You were born to bask in the freedom of God’s unconditional love.

God’s cry from the very first is the same today, he says to us, “Where are you?”

“He browses amongst the Lillies.” Song Of songs 2:16

When God created you he placed inside of you a spiritual garden. A spiritual place that reflected a physical garden. He placed inside you his garden of pleasure. A place where he could enjoy and commune with you. A garden of intimate delight.

It is here deep inside you that he takes his most pleasure. For your heart is the place God chooses to dwell.