Mike Bickle explores the profound themes of spiritual maturity in the Song of Solomon, particularly focusing on the bride's courageous prayer for both adversity and blessing. He emphasizes the transition from seeking personal inheritance in God to recognizing that we are God's inheritance, which deepens our relationship with Him. The sermon highlights the importance of obedience and love, even in times of spiritual dryness, as the bride learns to open her heart to Jesus despite the challenges she faces. Bickle encourages believers to embrace the 'fellowship of suffering' as a means to grow closer to Christ and to understand the depth of His love. Ultimately, the message calls for a mature love that seeks God for who He is, rather than merely for His blessings.

Song of Solomon chapter 5, verse 2 to 9 will be the focus of our study of this class tonight. We're on session 18 in a 24-part series on the Song of Solomon. We're working through it verse by verse, and as I've said before, that if it's your first time with us, each one of these sessions stands in its own right and I believe is sufficient and adequate to inspire and to encourage and train because it is the Word of God. And if you want the notes that we're looking at, they're available on the website. Anybody can have them, they're available right now. We're going to start first with a short review to the passage just before Song of Solomon chapter 5, verse 2 to 9, and that is chapter 4, verse 16, just a verse or two before, when the bride was crying out for the increase of God's presence in her life. We covered this briefly in the last class. She cried out. Now, this is the turning point of the whole book. Song of Solomon chapter 4, verse 16. She cries out in prayer, Awake, O north winds. She's talking about the winds of adversity, the north winds. She's not afraid of the difficulty. Allow the north winds to come. That's a courageous prayer. Come, O south winds. Now, that's the winds of blessing. That's an easy prayer. She said, Blow upon the garden of my heart. Why? That it spices, that the fragrance of God, the presence of God would be released through my life, that the Lord himself would take pleasure in the fragrance or the spice of the grace of God flowing in her life. That's her prayer. And then she goes on to be real specific. Let my beloved, let Jesus come into his garden and eat its pleasant fruits. Now, you'll notice in this passage, it moves in her mind from her life being her garden to her heart in life, becoming his garden. The first four chapters of this eight chapter love song, she's focused on her garden, her inheritance, her blessing, her experience in the presence of God, what's working for her, what feels right in the presence of God. And that's a legitimate way to begin our spiritual life. The first four chapters of the book are focused upon her inheritance in Jesus. But there's more to the kingdom of God than the fact that that we have an inheritance in him. He also has an inheritance in us. We want something from him. That's biblical forgiveness, the grace of God, eternal life, a lot of other things in this age of the age to come. But he wants something from us. We are his inheritance. He wants voluntary lovers that are equally yoked to him in love. So in this prayer of chapter four, verse 16, and this is one of the grand high prayers of the whole word of God, where she feels the courage of which we would normally by our natural mind have fear to pray this prayer, the courage, let the north winds come, oh God. In other words, Lord, if there's a test that you have that will make my life closer to you, release that test. Now we're not talking about inviting the devil to attack us. When the devil attacks us, we rebuke him in the name of Jesus and we tell him to go. But we're talking about a divinely orchestrated time of testing that is for the express purpose of our life maturing, that the fragrance of God grows in our garden, in our life, the garden of our heart, and that we live more as his inheritance in a more full way and not only focused on receiving our own inheritance. Now we always want to receive our inheritance. It's not like we graduate from one and go to the other. But in our early days in the Lord, all that we're focused on is our inheritance. Most believers have very little revelation of the fact they are the inheritance that the father has promised the son. Ephesians chapter one, verse 18, Paul prayed that the eyes of our heart would be opened, that we would see song of Solomon chapter four, verse 16, that we would see we are the inheritance of Jesus Christ. And when that happens, something dynamic takes place in our heart. When we begin to view our life as belonging to him as his inheritance, the inheritance that he has special delight in. Well, the confidence she has to pray this prayer comes from the truth revealed in song of Solomon chapter four. Throughout the entire chapter, we've looked at that at the last two classes. I would encourage you to review those notes and those Bible passages, because we will never have the courage to pray for the north winds to blow unless we understand the affection that God has for us, unless we have confidence in his love, that he loves us and he takes our love for him serious, even in our weakness. And when we have confidence in this reality, then we want more of it to be manifest in our life. We want more of the experience of the love of God, and we want to give ourselves to him in love in a more mature, in a pure way. I want to challenge you to take song of Solomon 4.16 and make it a personal part of your of your prayer life, or a part of your personal prayer life. Well, paragraph B, as I mentioned, it's the turning point of the song. The first four chapters is focused on what she gets from the Lord. The next four chapters is focused on what the Lord gets from her. And both of them are are valid in our entire relationship with the Lord in time and eternity. Even in eternity, we will rejoice in the inheritance we receive from him. But even now, we can begin to understand and think and plan and carry our heart in light of the fact we are his inheritance. Song of Solomon chapter 5, verse 1, which is the next verse, chapter 4.16, nine times Jesus uses the pronoun my. In other words, she says, I want to be your garden. And in chapter 5, verse 1, he comes in and takes possession and he says, you're mine, you're mine, you're mine, you're mine. And her life from that point forward begins to be an expression of of Jesus's full inheritance. And she begins to live in a whole new level of consecration and devotion to him. Nine times Jesus uses the pronoun my. Now, with this prayer in place, as the song, as we sing the song, do whatever it takes. Beloved, that's a, that's a good prayer in the natural. That's a scary prayer just with a natural mind, because we're, we're praying to a zealous God who's in love with us and who wants us to be in love with him and to express it with all of our heart. The prayer, do whatever it takes. We sing other songs here at IHOP, you know, take away everything that gets in the way. That's the same thing as praying a Waco North winds. That's a cool song, a great poster, but it's a really intense prayer to say before a jealous God who takes you serious. I want to encourage you to really wrestle with this. So Lord, uh, I want to go there. I want to go there. Well, what happens in Roman numeral two is Jesus is okay. You want the North winds and she might've said, and the South winds Lord, I didn't say only the North winds. You want my fragrance to be released or the spice of God in your life in a greater way? Yes. You want me to remove everything that's getting in the way? Yes. Good. Then he stands before her with his, with another revelation of himself. He gives eight different revelations of himself in the song of Solomon. This is the sixth one, the sixth revelation. He stands before her as the Jesus of Gethsemane, and he calls her to the fellowship of suffering. Now the fellowship of suffering from Philippians, chapter three, verse 10, Paul, the apostle says that I might know him, the power of the resurrection and the fellowship of sufferings. Now the fellowship of suffering is just that it's fellowship. It's connection and experience of his heart by the Holy spirit. It's not suffering for the sake of suffering. And some groups get into suffering as an end in itself. Some people get into suffering because they want to earn God's favor. Other people get into suffering so they can display how hard their life is. There's all kinds of approaches that people have to suffering. But the one that Paul had was not some kind of morbid delight in suffering or, or wanting to show himself forth as a man of, of great, of a hard life and difficult for self pity and for, for vain glory. It wasn't that sort of thing. Paul wanted fellowship with the risen Christ. He's saying, Jesus, I want to experience dimensions of who you are in this place. I want to know what you as a perfect sinless man went through in the will of God in the realm of suffering. And I want to touch that a little bit. I mean, obviously we're not sinless, but if he did it without ever deserving it, I'm talking about just the suffering of standing against the kingdom of darkness. Even Paul wanted to identify this. He wanted to experience things in Jesus's heart that only standing in difficulty with faith and obedience only in that way, could we experience that dimension of communion with his heart? Now the church in the West, and I throw myself in there, we have very little understanding of the intimacy that comes when we as individuals and the Lord, we're connecting in this place and we see the value and the esteem and the nearness and the dearness that's in his heart towards us. When we're standing true because of love for him and for his kingdom. The Western church, we so disdain any discomfort that the idea of suffering, it just becomes a doctrine that we just resist. But there is a fellowship of suffering that Paul walked in. There is an intimacy with God's heart that comes through by staying true in obedience and in faith in a point of difficulty, in a place of difficulty. She says, I sleep. Song of Solomon chapter 5 verse 2, but my heart is awake. It's the voice of my beloved. Here he comes again, you know, several times he comes like in chapter 2 verse 8, behold the voice of my beloved. Here he comes and he's about to speak something to her. Because when the voice of the beloved, John the Apostle, I mean, John the Baptist said the voice of the bridegroom because her beloved is the bridegroom God. John chapter 3 verse 29, she goes, I hear his voice and he's, he's coming and he's knocking, but he's also talking to me. He's asking me something. He's knocking on the door of my heart and he's asking me something. Here's what he's saying. Open up for me, open for me. I want to, I want to, I want you and I to experience a new dimension together, but I won't force you to open your heart to me in this. Beloved, the Holy spirit and in different measures speaks to us on behalf of Jesus. It's the cry of Jesus by the spirit, Mike, open your heart to me in this. Don't resist me. Don't just tolerate the season open to me and talk to me and let me meet you in this time of difficulty. And I want to bring you forward to a new dimension. So that's what the voice of the bridegroom says. He says, open to me. And then he speaks to her with four different names. He calls her my sister, my love, my dove, and my perfect one. And all four of those names are significant. And these are the names the Lord speaks to us when he's wooing us to arise in love and open our heart to him, to go forward in the grace of God, even though it will involve difficulty and challenges and the need for perseverance. And then he reveals himself as the Jesus of Gethsemane. He says, for my head is covered with the dew of the night, my locks or my hair covered with the drops of the night. Now there's only one way that your hair is covered and wet with the nighttime dew. That's by being out in the low and the long and dark lonely night. It's the Jesus of Gethsemane, the Jesus who was in the garden before the Lord in that night before he's revealing himself as the Jesus of Gethsemane. Now she responds in obedience. Some commentators, and I understand why, but I think it's, it's a, a misunderstanding what's going on. They interpret this passage as she compromises, but she's not compromising. She responds in full obedience. And I believe it's important to understand that because you'll miss the entire flow of this passage. If she is compromising, then this passage has an entirely different interpretation. If she's obedient, then we can relate to Jesus in this passage in a whole different way than if she's compromising. She responds in obedience, verse three, four, and five. Then she experiences the, the ultimate, I call it the ultimate two-fold test, which is the, the, the, the release of the North winds in her life. The first test, Jesus withdraws his presence from her. Now he withdraws his presence from her for a brief season while she's in obedience. She has done nothing wrong. He withholds his presence from her to see if she will be true in love without the benefit and the pleasure of feeling good in his side. Will she do it for him or is she only seeking him so she can feel good in his presence? Is Jesus a means to an end or is he the goal? Is chapter five, verse seven, strike her and wound her and take her veil away her covering. And she loses her function, her place, and her anointing in the body of Christ in ministry. Now the reason this is so big, because at the very beginning of the book, she only had two great prayers. She, in chapter one, verse four, she wanted to experience his presence, draw me after you. And she said, and she wanted to be effective in ministry. Let us run together. And that's a reference to ministry. She had her life vision consisted of two main things. I want to feel your presence, experience your presence, and I want to partner with you in bringing the power and the goodness of God to others. And that's a great life vision to experience God and then to bring that experience to other people by the power of the Holy Spirit in partnership with Jesus. What Jesus is going to do is the two things that she cares most about, he is going to cause them to be temporarily withheld from her. And his question to her is this, are you serving me so you can feel good in my presence? How many of you love to feel the presence of God? I love it. There's nothing we love more than feeling loved by God and have feeling the power to love him back. That is the most dynamic, that's the most dynamic reality the human spirit can experience. Feeling God's love, feeling loved and feeling loved back. There's nothing more delightful than that. And she goes on and on about that in chapter two, verse three and four, his banner over me is love. I'm at the banqueting table, sustain me, refresh me. I'm lovesick. I mean, she's having the time of her life feeling the presence of God. That's a great thing. And then she wants to be anointed in ministry and she is anointed in ministry, particularly in the last four chapters of the book or chapter, uh, uh, more actually chapter seven and eight, the last two chapters of the book. So the two things she wants most to feel and experience his presence and to be useful, to be foot, to have an anointed, meaningful function in the body. Both of them are temporarily withheld from her. And the Lord says to her, are you in this relationship with me for me or only for you? As long as you feel my presence and your ministry goes good and circumstances work, right? You'll worship me. Is that right? What if you don't feel me and circumstances don't go well? Are you still mine? That's the central issue because as Jesus, a means to an end. Yes. He is the way we get what we want. Yes. I want eternal life. There's no other way I can get it. He gives it to me. He is a means to that end. I love it, but he's more than a means to an end. There's another dimension of our relationship where he is the end. He is the reason. And if our hearts are in love with him, if the first commandment is in first place in our life and it's overflowing in the second commandment, as we love other people, when love is burning and a life in our heart, beloved, we've won. We have already succeeded in what our life is about. Whether we feel it or whether our ministry is well known and established or successful in the eyes of man, we are already successful if our heart is burning in love. Well, so Jesus, see the voice that he spoke to her, he goes, it's the voice of my beloved in verse two. Here's his message. His message is one sentence open for me. That's the message. Open your heart to me, not just to my blessings, open to the Jesus of Gethsemane. He's not saying just the Jesus of forgiveness and the Jesus of healing, the Jesus of provision that Jesus is easy to open to, but how about the Jesus that will do the will of God, regardless what it costs us, no strings attached. That's a whole different face of Jesus. Now I'm just going to say it honestly, this is a very easy message to preach. And I look at this and I go, my goodness, I'm talking about my own life. I'm looking at this going, Lord, I got to like up this thing, you know, to another level in my life here. I'm getting convicted. I mean, I want to say yes to Jesus in this regard. I want to open to the Jesus of Gethsemane. The Jesus whose hair is drenched with the dew of the night, the Jesus of the dark and lonely night, not just the Jesus who provides all things and makes my life happier. He does that plenty of time, but there are times where he will withhold some things to draw forth the true cry of our heart, to bring it to a, a red hot, a burning flame, so to speak. Well, this is the very thing that Jesus spoke to John the apostle. And he said, go tell this to the Laodiceans revelation chapter three, verse 20. He says, go tell them this. I mean, Jesus is, is nearly quoting song of song of Solomon chapter five, verse two. It's the same language. It's the same, uh, invitation and it ends up is the same promise. Revelation three, verse 20 stands at the door and he knocks. He goes, if you will hear my voice and you will open the door of your heart, I will come into you and my timing and in my way. And we will, uh, I will die with you, meaning we will have deep communion with one another. Now this is what is happening to the Shulamite bride. Jesus is saying to her, open your heart because he's not, she said, I heard the voice of my beloved. Here's what he said. Open up for me. And Jesus is saying the same thing in revelation three 20, open up to me and I will come to you and I will dine with you. We will have intimate fellowship at the table. I will be near you, but I want you to open my heart. Your heart to me is the Jesus of Gethsemane. And of course, that intimacy that she would have was just delayed a short season, but it was delayed because Jesus wanted to bring to a head the real issues in her heart. You know, so many times, and it's not, I don't mean it's a hypocrisy and it's a meaningless, but it's so easy to say, take everything away. Lord that gets in the way. It's so easy to say, I only want you. And the Holy spirit is wooing us saying, I, if that becomes more true than it is now your life, you will experience such depths of God's heart. Beloved. There's a dimension of God. We cannot experience except we go through the doorway of song of Solomon five. A lot of folks are content to stop at song of Solomon two at the banqueting table is banner over me as love singing worship songs about love, which I want to do forever. And just feeling refreshed and loved and, and just kind of going about their business. Just, it's all about them and how they feel and how things are going. But beloved, there's a whole lot more on God's heart than song of Solomon chapter two, that though I don't want to ever minimize it. I love song of Solomon too. I'm going to live there forever, but I want to embrace the Jesus of chapter five. And I want to go on to chapter six and seven and eight as well. And the fruitful ministry of song of Solomon seven and eight top of page two paragraph F Jesus empowers her to open to him by calling her four names. And beloved, these are four names. The Holy spirit will speak to you. Now you don't have to use these exact language. It might be the truth. It's four truths that these four names are pointing to, but even as a confession of the word in a time of difficulty, we can declare these Lord. It is written. I am your sister, your love, your dove, your perfect one. And, and again, it's important to understand the meaning of these four names in order. It's the truth that we're talking about, not just the language. When, when he says you are my sister, he is identifying with her human, with her humanity. He is saying to her, I was a man tempted in all things. I'm a sympathetic high priest and I understand your plight. I really do. He says open to me when he says my sister, he could be saying open to me and know that I do understand your plight is a human being. That's a huge statement right there. And you know, in my personal confession to the Lord, I switch it over and say, I am your brother. You know, I just go ahead and update it. But the real point of it is, is that you do understand my plight and I open my heart to you knowing you will be tender to me because you are sympathetic. You know me as a fellow human being, you know how difficult my plight is. What a great motivational prophetic name to give her as he's wooing her to this new openness. He says, my love, he will motivate, he motivates us by his tender love, affection-based obedience, grace, motivation. I have a few phrases, a paragraph on that. You can read the notes on your own. But when Jesus woos us to open to him in love, he said, I mean, open to him to go deeper in this realm of the difficulties of the north winds. Beloved, we need to be confessing all the way through it. I am the one you love. I am a fellow human being. I am your brother. I am your sister. You understand me. I know you understand me. You have not forgotten me. And I am the one you love. It goes on to the third confession that is very important as we're going through difficulties and as our heart is getting more emboldened to go forward with the Lord, my dove. Now the dove speaks of the single-mindedness of loyalty. It speaks of no compromise, but it also speaks of the person that has singleness of mind because they're connecting with the dove, the Holy Spirit. Beloved, we cannot live this way without an ongoing fellowship with the Holy Spirit. We have to be connecting to the Spirit. We have to be spiritual people, not just moral people. It's not enough to make right choices. That's important to make right choices. We make right choices because we're encountering the supernatural realm. We're encountering a person who is supernatural, who lives in us. There's a dove dimension to going forward into this new walk with the Lord of not being afraid of the north winds. Yes, we want the singleness of mind of the dove, but we want the supernatural dimension. We want to be spiritual people who need the supernatural dimension in our walk with God. It's not enough just to be, you know, Christians who obey the creeds. I love the creeds. We obey the creeds, but we need to interact with the Spirit in the journey. And then this number four very significant one, he calls her my perfect one. Now this is one of the key reasons, although there's about five or six reasons why I am, I feel very confident that she is obeying the Lord in this passage, in contrast to some commentaries that say she's disobeying the Lord in this passage. He calls her my perfect one before the test, which is going to come in verse six and seven. He says, you're my perfect one. And then after the test in chapter six, verse nine, he goes, you are my perfect one on both sides of the test. He speaks the same words to her. And perfect means mature. She has refused all compromise. Roman numeral three. Now this is the verse, it's verse three that people say, no, this has to be, it's only because of verse three that some commentators interpret this as her compromising. She says, I have taken off my robe. How can I put it on again? I have washed my feet. How can I defile them? And they would read it. And I understand it that she's, she's complaining of the inconvenience of getting out of bed, but the whole passage is in the deep language of responsive love. The entire passage is in the, is in the language of responsive love, because to settle the issue, she says, my beloved Jesus put his hand on the latch of the door of my heart, my heart left for him. She's not resisting arm. Her heart is wowed and wooed by him and by his voice. And she says in verse five to settle it once for all I arose, I got up, I obeyed you. And I opened my heart for my beloved. I did open. He said, open for me in verse two. And she said in verse five, verse five is the clear statement of her obedience. I arose and I opened my heart exactly what you asked me. And my hands were dripped with myrrh and on the handles of the lock, et cetera, et cetera. Paragraph eight, the bride instantly arises in obedience in verse five, her heart yearns for him in verse four, she arose to go and meet him in verse five. And then again, I just love to confirm this point is that in chapter six, we'll look at this and a couple of classes from now is really awesome. Chapter six, verse four and five. It's the, it's the passage where he says, you are as beautiful as tears. You are as lovely, lovely as Jerusalem. You are as awesome as a victorious army. He says, turn your eyes of devotion away from me for your look. You're of love has overwhelmed my heart. You've overcome me in love. He speaks in the ultimate language of love to her because she obeyed him in the midst of this difficult test, getting ahead of myself. That's a couple of classes for now, but I love chapter six, verse four and five, because that's where this whole thing is going. He doesn't discipline her. He says, you've overwhelmed me with your gaze of devotion. You are beautiful. You're lovely. You are the victorious army. You have warred against all the forces of darkness and you stayed true to me when you felt nothing. This is the inheritance he's looking for. We are clothed with the robe of righteousness. Isaiah 61, verse 10, our righteousness, our robes are like filthy rags. Isaiah 64, verse six. She says what she's saying is I have taken off my robes. I have put on your robes. I have washed my feet like Jesus did to Peter. He says, I've washed your feet. I will never live in compromise and defilement again. I'm done with that way. That's what she's saying. She's making a statement of resolve that she will never go back. Zachariah chapter three. I have it in the notes, just the reference verse one to five. Zachariah chapter three, Joshua, the high priest, he walks this out. He has his dirty garments. He lays them aside and he puts on the new garments. He walks out this dynamic of song of Solomon chapter five, verse three. He takes off the dirty robes and puts on the new ones. She is making a statement. I will never ever go back to living in compromise. It will never happen again. My feet are washed. They're cleansed. I'm never going back to that path again where I go to the right and I go to the left. I'm walking in the robes of your righteousness. I'm girded with the garments of salvation. Paragraph C, top of page three. Now, the hand of God, my beloved Jesus, she says in chapter five, verse four, he put his hand upon the door of my heart. My heart leapt. Jesus is putting his hand upon her heart, releasing the grace of God upon her. In Acts chapter 11, verse 21, the grace of God and the hand of God are identified together that when the hand of God is being extended, it's the manifestation of grace is what Acts chapter 11, verse 21 and 22 tells us. The Lord puts his hand on the door of our heart. He helps, he helps us to unlock our heart. Our heart is naturally locked and restrained and resistant to going forward in this way, but he puts his hand upon the door of our heart and he will touch us and we can say, oh God, I'm willing to be made willing. Help me, help me. I want to, I want to go all the way. I want to go to the mountain of myrrh. I want to go the full distance. Help me put your hand upon my heart. Like you did the Shulamite in chapter five, verse four, touch the lock of my heart by your hand and help me. And then she arose in verse five and fully obeyed him. Verse four is the cry for help or the experience of divine help. Her heart is yearning, but in verse five, she obeys him. Roman numeral four. Let's look at the first test as we've already mentioned it. It's in verse six. I opened for my beloved, but my beloved turned away. He was gone. This is an entirely new experience for her. I mean, throughout the song of Solomon, when she sought the Lord, I mean, she's under the apple tree, his banner over me is love. She's at the table eating apples and having the best time and his presence is all over her and the manifest presence. She goes, wait, I opened verse six. I did what you told me. I did open verse five. I arose in verse six. I opened. I did what you asked me to do in verse two. That's what she could say. She's not disobedient at all. There's, there's no trace of disobedience and compromise in this passage, but I was shocked. My beloved turned away. He's gone, meaning his manifest presence is lifted. My heart left when he spoke because just a verse earlier in verse four, her heart yearned. Her heart now leaps. She's remembering. She goes, wait, I said, yes. I even remember my heart jumped when you said, open up for me. I said in verse two, I said, yes. And in verse four, my heart left. I loved it. I said, yes, I responded to you and I sought you. I, I added a little bit more prayer and fasting. I couldn't find him. I called out more Lord, Lord, he gave me no answer. What's going on. Paragraph a, the Lord hides himself from his bride on two occasions in the song of Solomon to entirely different reasons. In this passage, he is hiding himself in a temporary way and a meaning where she cannot feel his presence in the way she's used to. She does it. The Lord does it while she is responding in full obedience. She is fully in a posture of responsive love. The other time the Lord's face turned away from her and she could not fill his presence was for a very different reason. Chapter chapter three, verse one or two, because she was compromising and disobeying the Lord. It was disciplined to wake her up. This is not discipline. Chapter, uh, paragraph B and Solomon, Solomon five, he calls her my perfect one. In verse two, he says that her heart opened to him. Her heart yearned for him here. Of course, in verse six, my heart opened again. It says that she arose and obeyed him in verse eight. She says, I'm lovesick. She's experiencing a very new thing. She's responding to the Lord, but the Lord's not responding to her in the way that she would expect him to a paragraph. D the Lord promised to never leave us or forsake us. He never leaves us in the sense his eyes are always attentive to us. Never. Is there a moment where his eyes are not attentive to us and never is there a moment when his presence, the Holy spirit is not living in us. His eyes are attentive to us. He's he's carefully watching and he lives inside of us. So it is true. He never, ever leaves us. However, that is a different reality in this age from the sensible, discernible feelings of his presence. And sometimes even for a, a fully responsive believer, he will draw back some of the manifest discernible senses of his presence in order. I have it here in paragraph D to bring her love to maturity, to cause her fervency and her humility to come to a whole another level. He says, come after me, come after me. She goes, I can't find you. He goes, come on, just keep coming, keep coming. And it brings her to a whole new level of purity in her love because we have to work the muscle 10,000 times because when we don't feel the Lord's presence, we here's the muscle that we have to work. It's just like, you know, we just like a, an exercise over and over. We say, why am I seeking you? If I don't feel you and the Holy spirit whispers, you're seeking him because you belong to him and you are his inheritance. Oh, oh, that's right. I keep forgetting that I'm his inheritance too. That's why I'm seeking you. Yes. Yes. I'm your inheritance. Yes. I'm coming after you. I love you. I'll obey you. Wait, I don't feel you. Why am I seeking you anyway? I don't feel you because you are his inheritance. He has some, Oh yeah. Oh yeah. That's right. Yeah. I'm your inheritance. I love you. I will obey you. I will do what's right. Why am I seeking you anyway? I don't feel you. How many of you have worked that muscle 10,000 times? I mean, just over and over and over again, it's the working of that muscle that establishes that reality in this greater and greater and greater. And it causes our love to be purified. This is part of the Gethsemane. This is part of the fellowship of suffering. Jesus, the father turned his face away from Jesus on the cross. When he said, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Jesus goes, I know that feeling. I was in the perfect will of God. I did nothing wrong. It was in his will. Now there's a different application, but he knows that feeling for sure. He goes, Oh, I'm sympathetic. My sister, I do understand what you're going through. And who knows all the dimensions of what he experienced in his 33 years in the flesh. Paragraph E, the Catholic contemplatives top of page four in the middle ages, they, they had a phrase. It's not a biblical phrase. I believe it's a biblical concept. Some of them had different, different definitions. You know, one guy defined it this way, one guy that way. So you want to be careful with this term because there's so many definitions. And so, but the idea they called it the dark night of the soul. And what they meant is this here's the part that's biblical. I don't mean the phrase is the idea that we can obey the Lord with full responsive love and still end up being tested by the Lord in the midst of fully responsive love and even be in a season where his presence is withheld. And we've done nothing wrong at all. That is biblical. I don't recommend we title it the dark night of the soul, because you'll end up getting identified with 20 different definitions. A lot of them didn't even agree with each other. They all had their own version of it. So don't go there, but it's such colorful language, the dark night of the soul, paragraph F Job went through that. Here's what the Lord says. I mean, how would you like to have the Lord say this about you? The second part of verse eight, not the first part, the Lord said to Satan, here's the part you don't want him to say, Hey Satan, have you considered my servant job? You don't want that part. If you could help it, you know, in the natural, but here's what the Lord said about job. There is no man like him on the earth. What a sentence from God. Here's what God said. He's blameless. God said he fears God. He turns away from evil. God said this about job. How would you like God to say that about you? Wow. I mean, it's that other part. Have you considered him? Satan, but look at the end of the book of job. Look at the end of the book of job. Job was fully obedient before this trial. He was responding in love. He was blameless from God's point of view. Chapter 42, verse five. At the end of the whole story, when it's all come and gone, Job said, I heard of you father using new Testament language by the hearing of the year. Now my eyes have seen you. Now I know you face to face. I only knew of you. Now I know you because I walked through something and held on to you through it. And he, and he had difficulties through the time, but now he says, I know you, I know you. And the Lord doubled all the blessing in his life. That's what would be a old Testament version of the dark night. So another one, King David, King David's worshiping God, the favor of God's on him. You know, he's in his early twenties. He's in Saul's court. I mean, he's loving God walking in wisdom and honor and integrity. And then Saul chases him with 3000 men for seven years to kill him. And David can't feel the presence of God several times. He writes the Psalms complaining and he gets into spare and he makes a bunch of wrong decisions. He's in this place of testing and all he was doing before was faithfully walking in obedience and integrity and worshiping God. And he finds himself in this season, Joseph in the same Joseph there, he's done nothing wrong. That's recorded in scripture. He finds himself in a pit. He obeys God. He gets out of the pit. He keeps obeying God. He turns away Potiphar's wife as she makes these, uh, attempts of adultery. He goes to another pit. He's done nothing but obeying he's in two pits, but he's on his way to a throne. How do you get in the pit? The Lord's training him, raising him up. And the stories go on and on and on the second test. We know this one too. This one isn't the Lord turning his face. This is the church, particularly the leadership in the church mistreats her in chapter five or seven persecutes, rejects her. She loses her place of function. Now remember in the first part of the book, the two things, what are the two things she wanted? I want to experience your presence and I want to place a function that, that has your blessing on it. Well, the watchman, the leaders strike her, they wound her and they take her covering her way, her veil. She can't function. She isn't welcome. She has papers written against her people, whispering against her. And she goes, I, I can't feel pleasure in the midst of the people. I can't feel pleasure in my prayer closet. I can't feel pleasure anywhere. Roman numeral six, just come to the end of this. We see her humility. We see her response. She goes to the immature daughters of Jerusalem. And she says this, if you they're far less experienced in God than she is. And she says, Hey, it goes to the new believers class. If you guys can help me, I'm serious. I want to help her, her humility. See when people get mistreated, they just, they go into isolation. They get bitter. They don't want anything to do with Christians. And they don't know that God's trying to bring them forth with spice and guard with spice in the garden of their heart, because that's what they asked for. They go anything Lord of the Lord's okay. And then they get mistreated in the body and the presence of God's withheld. And they go, forget it. I'm not with you, God. I'm just forget the body and forget you. And I'm just going to go, you know, do this other grace of God thing where I can get drunk and do anything I want to do and just call it grace and just, you know, take my chances at the judgment seat. I know thousands of Christians that live that way that are in their forties and fifties that were walking with God fresh in their twenties with, I mean, fiery going for revival and the way they're living now. It's just, it's just unthinkable because they called out for anything and everything. And the Lord says, okay. And they got offended at the Lord in the process and the church. She says, go tell him. If you find him telling this, I'm not offended. I'm lovesick beloved. She is not drawing back and disobedience at all. She goes, tell him I love him for who he is. I am not in it for feeling good. And I'm not in it for things working, right? I'm in it for him. I want his presence to touch my heart. I am his garden. I want his spice in my life. Tell him I'm lovesick. If I don't see him again, tell him I'm in it till the end for love. Let's just end with that. Let's stand.