Getting Out of the World

One of the hardest things is to really break free of the world and of ourselves and truly live out of our love relationship with Jesus. I'm actually just now ending a cycle myself of this week which involved me backing off from my romance with Jesus because of busyness with work and school. Every day I find myself desiring the romance with him (it permeates my thoughts throughout the day), but so often I find myself not pursuing him. Why?? What is going on here?

I think there are a lot of reasons as to why we don't pursue him, even though we truly do desire him. Some are for laziness, other reasons are for sins, others for wounds to their hearts, but no matter what it is, it always results in distance between us and God. We need him. I was walking to class today and I was listening to this song by Santana from years ago which I listened to then and it always made me daydream of my romance with God. It's a Latin song and I would imagine me and Jesus dancing to it romantically, passionately. I felt this sense of pride in our relationship. Not bad pride, but the pride of "boasting that you know and understand God." I was happy and proud of our relationship which we've built over the years together. I love Jesus so much.

I've been studying Genesis 6 lately. There's a TON of talk on these verses with prophecy scholars lately. And I love hearing that stuff, but the heart issue is so important here as well. Where there are prophecies, they will cease and only love never fails (1 Corinthians 13:8). If you're not familiar with this story, here it is in a nutshell:

Some angels, allegedly 200, lusted after women and came here, married them, and had children which were half angels/half humans. They were giants and later would even fight the Israelites for the Promised Land (Numbers 13). This was right before the Flood also. So imagine God, our ageless Pursuer, our Romancer, and he's pursuing humanity to be his beloved. And right in the middle, what happens? He gets betrayed by his angels. They don't want God's beauty any more, they want women. It was probably similar to a girl having her best friend steal her boyfriend and leave her in the dust as they drive off in a Camero to go off and party without her. It broke God's heart. Genesis 6:6 says God's heart was "filled with pain." (NIV) His friends the angels stole his beloved and cheated on him with us. And then the Flood happens, redemption, and hundreds of years later Joshua leads the Israelites into the Promised Land and they wipe the children of the angels off the face of the earth. Revenge sucks for evil, right? It's an odd story especially if you do not have a bent towards the sci-fi (because that's what it sounds like, but it's completely Biblical). And as odd as it sounds, that's an image of the battle we all still fight spiritually in our hearts today. God, who is the most sexual being from which we image our own sexuality, calls it like it is. When he sees us not pursuing him and instead pursuing something else like purposely ignoring him to watch tv or listen to music when he wants to be with us or completely pushing him away so we can do what we want with what we want to do it with (whether it be passive or active), it's adultery to God. The city of the Antichrist in Revelation God sees as the Great Prostitute (see Revelation 17). When Israel turned away from God he said they were lusting for the lewdness of their youth in Egypt (Ezekiel 23). And who knows what is going on spiritually? We had a sermon on witchcraft a couple weeks ago at Frontline and we looked at Saul "wisely" (*sarcasm*) calling on a necromancer to raise Samuel from the dead so he could inquire as to how he can keep himself from dying in battle. And it really causes you to think. We are in the midst of a romance with Jesus, but when we go through dry spells and are lured away from the embrace of Jesus to other negative emotions of the heart and sinful positions (even if it's just ignoring Jesus) we cannot escape the reality that Satan and his angels are going to do what they can to seduce us from our Lover and they can and will do it if we give them the chance. Jesus doesn't just call our unfaithfulness in explicit terms, but also our faithfulness. Jesus desires us. He wants us to enjoy him. Imagine him longing for us, saying

Awake, north wind, and come, south wind! Blow on my garden that its fragrance may spread abroad. Let my lover come into his garden and taste its choice fruits. Song of Songs 4:16 (NIV)

Life can really be like The Matrix; in some ways. We are involved in a passionate love affair with the Son of God. "Kiss the Son, lest he be angry" (Psalm 2:12. NIV). Angry at what? Angry that we are kissing someone else other than him. He is a Jealous God, jealous for us and he desires us as his beloved. Our hope for life and salvation is in being thrown into his arms helplessly, letting him take us away in the torrent of his passion and love for us. As twisted as this soap opera with Jesus and then Satan and his angels can become, evil is nothing compared to our Beloved Jesus Christ. The children of the fallen angels were annihilated, as Satan will be as well. In the end, we will live happily ever after in Jesus' arms. What we want with God we will have. Jesus desires us fully for himself forever and ever so we may enjoy his love and his beauty in spiritual intimacy and worship of him for all time. Jesus wants us to want him. To enjoy his beauty as he unveils it to us. He wants us to come after him and pursue him, not the angels, not anything else in this world. He wants us to want him.

Just as he wrote of his beloved in Song of Songs 8:14,

Come away, my lover, and be like a gazelle or like a young stag on the spice laden mountains. (NIV)