Mike Bickle emphasizes the profound nature of God's love as depicted in the Song of Solomon, particularly in chapter 8, verses 5-7. He describes the journey of the bride, who longs for a deep, intimate relationship with the Lord, culminating in a passionate love that mirrors God's own jealous love for her. Bickle shares a personal revelation from the Lord about the coming anointing of love in the church, urging believers to embrace this divine love that empowers them to love God wholeheartedly. He highlights the importance of leaning on the Holy Spirit and the transformative power of love in overcoming the challenges of life. Ultimately, Bickle calls for a deeper commitment to experiencing God's love, which is as strong and demanding as death itself.

We ask you for the spirit of wisdom and revelation upon this very important passage from your heart, the declaration of your heart, and we thank you for the spirit of wisdom and revelation to operate even now as we speak the word and hear it. In Jesus' name, amen. The Song of Solomon, chapter 8, verse 5 to 7, is the ultimate experience of the bride. It's an eight-chapter love song, and she begins her journey with the Lord, crying out, longing for the kisses of His word. She's longing for the Lord to kiss her heart with the word, and she ends up being anointed with jealous love, that she would love God in the way that God loves her, with all of her heart and all of her strength. In July 1988, the Lord spoke by the audible voice of the Lord, and He said, in essence, I'm not giving the word for word, that He was going to release the anointing of the Spirit in the body of Christ worldwide so that believers would walk, they would walk in the fullness of Song of Solomon, chapter 8, verse 6 and 7. And He spoke that audibly. I don't want to tell the story right now. I'll probably tell it in the class that we're going to be starting in Friday, starting on Friday. But the Lord wants to, He wants to capture our holy imagination as to where He wants to take us in the realm of love, of His love for us, our love for Him, and then, of course, the overflow of our love for one another. But this passage is focused on our love for Him. Song of Solomon, chapter 8, verse 6 and 7. The fact that we would love Him in the same supernatural fiery jealousy in which He loves us. He loves us zealously and jealously. And He, it's His desire to empower us to return that back to Him. And this is our ultimate inheritance in terms of our personal experience. And the question I have is, what does this look like? What does this look like in this age and in the age to come? We'll figure that out when we get there. But what does this look like in this age? And when the Lord gave me this passage back in July 88, I had never really considered this passage. I'd never really been a Song of Solomon guy. And the Lord spoke it and I was really excited about the Song of Solomon. I remember I called my wife up. It was about eight in the morning. And I said, Diane, I said, the Lord spoke audibly. This is two times this has happened now in 30 years. The first time was May 83 when He said, do 24-hour prayer in the spirit of the tabernacle of David. Didn't have a clue what that meant. Now it's five years later, it's 1988. In essence, He says, looking in retrospect, I'm adding insight looking backwards. In essence, He was saying, do this 24-7, but through the paradigm of the love of God as revealed in the Song of Solomon. I called her up and I was so excited. And then for the first time, I read Song of Solomon seriously. I'd read it before, you know, when I was like a junior high pastor just to make jokes and stuff, but I'd never really read it seriously. And I read it in eight chapters and I was depressed. I went home that night and she said, oh, this is the greatest day of your life. You heard the audible voice. I go, have you ever read Song of Solomon? She goes, it's awesome. I go, it's terrible. It's about flowers and perfume. I said, oh, I said, there's not a, there's no way I can't do this. It's not going to happen. I said, well, it is going to happen because the Lord, you know, he's state champion wrestler, you know, every wrestling match he wins. I said, he, I will do this, but I don't like this. Well, it took a few years that I found out this was really an awesome mandate, but the song begins and it's with the, with the stirring of desire in chapter one and it's eight chapters and the crescendo, the ultimate experience of the bride is chapter eight, verse six and seven. Of course, I did not know that back in July, 1988. This reality of the love of Jesus, his love for us and our love back to him. And then the overflow of that love to other people, believers and unbelievers alike is a foundational revelation from the Lord for, for this house, for this spiritual family. Paragraph B Song of Solomon was written first in terms of its, its meaning when Solomon wrote it to extol the beauty of married love. It's a natural love song, eight chapters. And it's well, and it's good that we understand God's message about the beauty of married love. That's how Solomon meant it to be understood. However, the Holy Spirit, whatever he inspires in the word, whatever he does, he glorifies Jesus. It's inconceivable that the Holy Spirit would write the Bible and not have Jesus in mind. He said it with full confidence. He goes, when the spirit comes, he will glorify me. I know him very well. Me and the Holy Spirit are really good friends. I know him. Whenever he moves, he will be boasting and bragging about me. And he will cause you to love me. He will take what is mine. He will give it to you and you will fall more in love with me when it's the Holy Spirit doing it. And so I have no question whatsoever that every book of the Bible on the Holy Spirit's mind is to magnify Jesus and make people love him through that book of the Bible. Paragraph C Song of Solomon chapter eight, verse five to seven, it summarizes the journey of the bride through the eight chapters because it's the unfolding of one progression. She's growing from sincere, but immature to fully experiencing the Lord. And it ends in this passage where she has the same. She's asking the Lord Jesus. She's saying, put the seal of jealous love on my heart. I want love for you in the way that you have for me. Now this is the Lord's greatest purpose. The father's greatest purpose in terms of the people of God on the earth, in terms of what he's doing in us is he's raising up an eternal companion for Jesus. We are Jesus's inheritance. The father planned this and the father doesn't just want people that will obey Jesus. Everybody will obey Jesus. Everyone in hell, they will be in hell in obedience to his command to send them to the lake of fire. They are actually in hell. And then later the lake of fire, two different places. They are there in obedience to his word. He said, go and they have to go. Everybody will obey, but there's something that's bigger in God's heart than mandatory obedience. It's voluntary love. He will not demand the human heart to love him. He will not. He does not force us to respond to him in love. We have to obey him in this age we choose, but ultimately everybody obeys him again, every demon in hell, bowing their knee in obedience under judgment, they are obeying Jesus in that sense. But the Lord wants, he wants equally yoked lovers. He wants people that love Jesus by the power of God in the way that Jesus loves them. That is just an almost unthinkable statement to say this, but that's what's on. That's what the scripture says. It's the power of God's love in us. And the Lord is planned to release a significant impartation of love in the church in the generation. The Lord returns. There's a, a growing crescendo. There's a, an increased measure of grace and power in this room of love that God, the Holy spirit is going to release in the church before the second coming of Christ. Roman numeral two starts out in verse five. And the Holy spirit is asking the question, who is this coming up from the wilderness of this fallen world? And the Holy spirit describes the person or the ones that are coming up. They're those that lean and they are those that love, they have a relationship with the king. They love him. The king is their beloved because they're, they are in love with the king. They are lovers of God, but it's not only that they love God, they're leaning. They are fully dependent upon him. God has worked such in such a way that through the wilderness of this fallen world, the body of Christ will be brought to a place where she leans and she loves Jesus with all of her heart. Now, this passage obviously is to be taken in an individual way. And there's many people throughout church history. The Holy spirit was using this passage to woo them as individuals, but in its larger sense, it's the Holy spirit declaring prophetically over the people of God in their ultimate destiny. He's looking over the 2000 years of church history and he's declaring the inevitable victory of the church at the time of the second coming of Christ. And the Holy spirit saying a question, he's saying, who is this? She's coming up. There's victory. She's not falling down. She's ascending. There's victory. The note of victory. She's coming up and she's having victory over the wilderness of this fallen world through the time of testing of whether it's the testing of temptation, the testing of Satan wooing us to sin or the testing of persecution where Satan comes and attacks us to, to threaten our life or to take our life. And she comes up victorious in love. Paragraph B, the Holy spirit has made provision for us to come up in victory. And that's part of what I want to really press into your heart tonight. The Lord really means for this to happen in your life. This is not just kind of a, you know, a, uh, an ideal that nobody actually experiences. Each of us in an individual way are struggling in the wilderness of this fallen world where we have different temptations and struggles and difficulties. And the Lord is allowing these for us to, to go through these, to train us in faith, to train us in righteousness and to train us in meekness and to train us in love. Though the devil is the source of some of these troubles, the Lord is allowing us to go through them to exercise our faith and to grow in meekness, love and obedience. But it's his purpose that we will have victory in these things. Look at this revelation 15 verse two, there's a group of people around standing on the sea of glass at the end of the age, at the time when the beast is raging across the nations, an actual man, an actual man called the Antichrist is more than just the spirit of the Antichrist through church history. There will be a time where there will be a man raging with the power of Satan and there will be a vast company who come up victorious over this beast. Now some of them will be killed. They will lose their life, but they are victorious in love. They would not draw back in fear. They would not shrink back even one degree and they're pronounced victorious. There'll be a vast company and many of them won't lose their life. But to this company of believers who are lovesick, they, that Jesus is their magnificent obsession, whether they live or whether their die is of secondary concern to them. The primary concern of their heart is that they live victorious in love. And that's what song of Solomon chapter eight verse five to seven is about revelation 19 verse seven and eight. This is before the second coming of Christ. There are a P there is a people in the earth that have been made ready. I mean, they're actually ready to meet the Lord. Do you, can you imagine what that means to be ready for Jesus to appear and there to be no division or there's nothing between us and him? We have been living in agreement with his heart previous to his appearance in a significant way. There will be a vast company of believers on the earth that are prepared in living in righteousness before the Lord returns without compromise in their life. Beloved, I want to be a person that lives in this victory that lives in this type of preparation. There's other verses, the Ephesians five 27, another, another very, very well-known one talks about the church will be glorious, be filled with glory when the Lord returns. And this passage here in song of Solomon chapter five, I'm in chapter eight, verse five to seven describes in a graphic way, what it means to live victorious in love in the heart. And the question I have is Lord, what does it look like really to live this way? Paragraph D the spirit's agenda in our life is that Jesus would become our beloved, not just in the song of Solomon chapter one sense. The, the bride is immature. She's very sincere. I want to love you with all of my heart is where her cry is. I want to want to love you. Some would even say, but in the early days, her, her love showed itself weak and frail to want to love God is different than actually walking it out. Now it's powerful to want to love God. The Lord looks at that. That's very powerful. It moves his heart that we want to love him, even though our obedience is still incomplete. And some people are a step behind that they're going Lord. And this is valid too. It really is. I challenge you with this. If you're struggling with an area, you're just saying, Lord, I don't, I just want to do that right now. I challenge you to pray this prayer, Lord, help me to want to want to help me to be willing. Even that prayer, the Lord will hear that prayer. I've used that prayer a few times over the years or something. I said, I just don't want to move forward. I know I have to, because I know your God, but make me willing. And the Lord breaks in. And even if you pray, Lord, make, I want, I want to want to, that's, you know, that's just a bit, uh, it's a beginning, but then the next step is I actually want to, but there's another dimension. We actually follow through in mature love. It's more than one, two. Well, the Holy spirit's agenda for our life is that we would lean on the one we love. We have a natural resistance just in our, in our unrenewed thinking. We have a natural resistance to loving God with all of our heart. I mean, to decide to love him. I think most of you in this room where you're really there, I really want to, but the actual follow through in the, in the, in the small print of life, there's just a, there's hindrances just in our emotions, in our, in our dark thinking and to lean on him, to really depend on the Holy spirit. And depending on the Holy spirit, I would say it in one phrase, depending on the Holy spirit would be called fellowshipping with the Holy spirit, developing a relationship with the Holy spirit and the word of God. We feed on the word and we actually talk to the Holy spirit on a regular basis. And the Holy spirit lives in our spirit. The Holy spirits in our inner man and Christianity only works our relationship with the Lord at its highest. As we dialogue with the Holy spirit, we will never walk with the spirit more than we talk with the spirit to the spirit and leaning on the Lord, making it so simple, leaning on the Lord means you're so desperate for breakthrough and you have no confidence in your own abilities that you actually talk to the Holy spirit and fill your mind with the word because you don't have any hope you can do it without interacting with the Holy spirit of the word of God. That's what it means to lean on him in a very simple, as a simplistic way, the man or the woman that's too busy to put the word in their heart and they're too busy or too preoccupied to talk to the Holy spirit. They are a person who's still leaning on their own strength because the decision I am going to obey you. It has to be more than our religious self-determination. You will never follow through in love or loving God by the decision, the resolve to do it. We need help. We have to be talking to the spirit on a regular basis and feeding our heart on the word of God. So my dependency is on the Lord. I measure it in those two ways and I don't mean hours and hours and hours. If you don't spend 10 hours a day in the word, then you know, you don't really depend on the Lord, but many people kind of just depend on just, well, I'm going to grit my teeth and try harder. I'm talking about a really, uh, I mean, uh, a lot of very sincere believers, even those have been in the Lord for many years and I measure my dependence on the Lord by the earnestness of which I talk to the Holy spirit because I have this little principle. We won't walk with the spirit more than we talk to the spirit. I find there a total correlation between those two things and I just say simple phrases to the Holy spirit. I talked to the Holy spirit who lives in my inner man. I like how, how one man said it. He said, uh, he said the, the Holy of Holies is as close as your belly button. I heard a preacher say that once he said, the Holy of Holies is as close as your belly button because the Holy spirit lives right here. I said, that's kind of a strange statement, but it's actually, it's true. That's just an odd way to say it. Well, we have a natural resistance to lean because to lean means we got to dial down and talk to another person in order to get strength from that person. And even the most devoted believers, they're just too busy to do that. They're too preoccupied, which means they're not really leaning. And we all understand the, the language of trusting the Lord leaning on him, but the actual mechanics of it mean we talk to another person and we take his words in our heart because we don't think we can by determination, we can't follow through successfully. We don't have the power to paragraph F being empowered in love, meaning being a lover of God because this bride is leaning on her beloved, meaning Jesus is not only savior and healer. Jesus is the lover of her soul. She loves him. And many people love the Lord in the general sense, but they're kind of active for him. And they, in the general sense of the kingdom, there's many that do that. It's what the Lord rebuked the, uh, the church at Ephesus for in revelation two, he said, you work hard for me, but you don't love me like you used to. So it's possible to work hard for the Lord. Revelation two verse four, to work hard for the Lord, but to not love him like we used to. And lovers will always outwork workers always, but it didn't say she's leaning. You know, who is this coming up from the wilderness leaning on her employer? You know, Jesus is kind of the master of the empire of the kingdom and he's employed us. It doesn't say leaning on the king. It's leaning on the ones that she's in love with. There's a love dimension. And as simple as that is, we have to be really intentional about stirring the fires of love and our relationship to him. Because the only way I have here in F the only way we can persevere in our obedience is if we have love fired up in our heart. At the end of the day, people will fall into sin or they will quit unless they're in love because the pressures are going to get stronger and stronger. The closer we get to the coming of the Lord, and we could be some decades out, but I tell you, and I believe we are actually not that anybody in heaven's asking my opinion, but I think we're some decades out, but as we're getting closer to the coming of the Lord, the pressure will Mount stronger and stronger in society for sin and for compromise. And people will not stay obedient just by resolve. Well, you know, I don't want to get caught and be put to shame. I don't want to get, you know, I want to be prepared for the end time revival. So I'm going to hang in there. Even that won't keep people steady with all the pressures they're going to come. They will either fall into temptation and in a heavy way and just camp there or they'll just quit their pursuit. The only possible way I believe this is if we're in love, that's the only way we will stay steady. Anybody can quit except for a person in love. You find a man in love, you find a woman in love. Nothing can stop a woman in love. Most powerful force in the natural realm is a woman in love. They'll do anything when love is pounding in the heart. And I'll say the same about men, but I just have this picture of this ferocious love of the body of Christ and the bride of Christ. I tell you, that is the only way we'll stop. And when we get tempted to quit, and we will be tempted to quit in just the rigors of pressing into God hard, we'll get tempted to quit. The big obstacle in our path will be the fact we really do love him. I'm sure some of you have experienced that. I have experienced like, oh, Lord, I don't want to do this or that, but I really love you. I mean, I really do. Oh, I'm going to keep doing it. Because my desire for things to be easier is actually smaller than my desire to experience him and to love him. I don't mean just a distant, I hope I love, meet you. I actually love him as many of you do in this room. I said, nah, I'm just going to, the big obstacle of drawing back is I actually really love you. That's a dilemma. If you're trying to quit, God's going to raise up a people across the nation, the nations of the earth. I mean, who will not quit. They will not quit in the hard work. There's hard work in the kingdom, hard work to see the gospel preached in all nations, not just to see it preached in all nations. I mean, that's hard, all of the energy it takes to get everywhere. But then they go, okay, we said yes. Now we have to raise them up. I don't mean just give them the 10 basic steps to Christian maturity. We have to create the environment. Talk about just the, just the natural infrastructures that are necessary for them to mature and sustain their maturity. It's a ton of effort. Start prayer meetings all over the earth and to keep them going. It's like, oh man, this is work. But the Lord's raising up a people across the earth who won't quit because they're in love. Roman numeral three. Now here's the passage that the Lord highlighted in July 88, verse six and verse seven. Now this is Jesus who is speaking. He's actually inviting us to a deep relationship with himself. And in this age, we have, we have a significant determination on how far we go in the Lord and the Lord woos us. The Lord really exerts his power to woo us. I mean, he's wooing you right now. Some of you through my voice, he's wooing you tonight. The Lord is very intentional about wooing us. He gives people dreams and visions that woo them. He creates situations that wow, get their attention. He's wooing them, but he will not make us say yes. And so the body of Christ, we can go as far as we want to go in our love relationship with the Lord. He is not the one stopping the increase of the relationship. It's us drawing back. And here he's giving what I believe to be the, I mean, I see this as the ultimate invitation. I see this as the eight chapter love song. This is beyond what, how Jesus has revealed himself at chapter one, two, three, four, five, six, and seven. He is standing before her. This is the end of the song right here. The end of her journey. In verse eight to 14, it's her confession. It's her, it's her testimony in her confession. It's her testimony at the end, but her story, the journey ends with this dynamic crescendo here in verse five, six, and seven. And Jesus is inviting her set me. He's the one talking. Some Bible translations will, you know, they will pay a guy to put an outline in the, you know, like to outline the books of the Bible. They, and he gets a contract and a guy outlines the Bible. He put it in different Bibles at different outlines. And some Bibles have the bride is speaking and urging Jesus to love her. Like Jesus loved me, please love me. And that's not what's happening. Jesus really loves her powerfully. He, she, he, Jesus doesn't need need to be wooed by us to love us. I've read commentaries. It says, and the bride is talking to Jesus saying, Jesus put me, remember me, Jesus put me on your heart. And Jesus would say, no, you're, you're on my heart. Trust me. That's been a, that's a settled issue long, long, long time ago from eternity past. It's Jesus speaking to the bride here. And if your Bible says it different, just what I did in my, I just scratched it out. I put, I put wrong and I put a smiley face. We're not talking Jesus into loving us. That's not what's going on in the Bible. I put a smiley face. I had a good spirit about it, but I felt justified. I looked up to the Lord and said, Lord, I'm taking a stand on your team here. He says this set me, put me. And we do that by filling our heart with the word and fellowship with the spirit and obeying him and, and the various other ways of which we cooperate with the Holy spirit. Set me as the seal upon your heart. Set me as the seal upon your arm. Now the heart is the inward man and the arm is the work of our, is the work of ministry. Jesus saying, I want to touch your heart and I want to touch your ministry. I don't want just a ministry that stirs up things, just gets activity. I want a ministry that has the seal of love that it's flowing from love in me. And it's producing love in people's heart for God. I want my arm to have the seal on it, not just my own heart. I want my labors to produce love in other people's hearts by the work of the Holy spirit. Set me as a seal upon your heart. Set me as a seal upon your arm for love. He's talking about the love of God. God's love inside of us is as strong as death. God's jealousy burning in us by the Holy spirit is as cruel. And I put the word of there. It is as demanding as the grave is. So it's describing now the love of God. The love of God is described as strong as death and as demanding as the grave. And, and I take those to be a parallel statements. He's saying the same thing, two different ways. It's flames, whose flames, the flames of God's love burning on the heart and on our arm, our arms, speaking of our ministry, the seal of flame, it's a, it's a fiery seal. It's the flame of God. It's flames are a flame of fire, a most vehement flame. Other translations say the very flame of God in place of the word vehement, it says the flame of God. And either way you translate it, it's the fire of the Holy spirit burning in us. So what's this passage mean? Paragraph eight, Jesus is inviting the bride to relate to him and his jealous love for her. He's wooing her to a deeper dimension of relationship with him. One in which his love is manifest as fire that is comprehensive. It demands everything in her life. So let me ask you the question, how strong is death and how cruel or demanding is the grave? And again, I believe it's the same statement, the same point being made with two different statements. And I believe that the, the point being made here by the Holy spirit is that death claims everything in the natural realm of the natural process. Nothing in the natural escapes the death process. Nothing living death and the grave are comprehensive. Nothing escapes the grasp of physical death. Anything that's alive. The only thing that supersedes it is the power of the Holy spirit. Every human being dies. Every plant dies. Every animal dies dead. Nobody and nothing escapes the grasp of death. So the idea is that the power of death is comprehensive. Now using the word death, it has a negative connotation to it, but it's a brilliant, I don't have time to go into it, but it's a brilliant, uh, phrase and, and, and a view of God's comprehensive. His love, his love is so demanding. Nothing will escape its grasp. If we yield to it, nothing will you live. Jesus is saying, put me on your heart as a fiery seal that is as demanding as the grave is. And I will demand everything in your life come under the sway of this fire of love. Everything will, there will be nothing, nothing outside of my grasp. If you keep yielding to this, this is the ultimate, the ultimate place of maturity in the, in the spirit. And I believe the Holy spirit is going to actually release this in this age. I mean the Lord, not, I don't want to base my theology on an audible voice of the Lord experience. We want to base our theology on the word of God, but the church will be victorious over the beast. The church will be prepared as a bride before the second coming of the Lord. And the church will be filled with glory. Ephesians 5, 27, and many other places as well. Paragraph B, we must intentionally and earnestly, and I want to stress those words intentionally and earnestly seek Jesus to relate to us, not just as savior and healer, but as the God of jealous love. He's not saying set me as the healer and the deliverer on your heart is saying, set me as the God of fire that demands everything. Set me as the jealous God on your heart. And I will prove myself to be true to my nature. I will consume everything in your life. Most believers never get to this place in their walk with God in this age on the side somewhere they, they camp out in song of Solomon one or two. Typically I'm saying, Lord, I want to go here. I want to be among the people who go here. I don't mean just the people here, just, I mean, a company across millions and millions who are actually going there. They are taking Jesus up on the invitation to interact with him at this level. We want God to give us the highest things that he will give the human spirit in this age. And this describes it. They're saying, I will give you a relationship with me of which I will. I will bring everything in your inner man under my sway. If you want me to, I'll go to that distance. I will bring everything in your inner man. You're thinking under my sway. Do you want to go to that distance? Do you want to go to that extreme with me? And he says, if you do, then set me, not just set the God of healing, the God of deliverance, the God of forgiveness, set me as the jealous lover on your heart, and I will work my work in you. And I will draw you near me closer than you ever met a thought possible. I believe this is the highest thing that God can give the human spirit of this age, this kind of experience with him. Exodus 34, God calls himself the God. He says for the Lord, whose name is jealous. I mean, his name is forgiveness. His name is mercy. His name is healer. Jehovah Rapha. He is the God who heals us. I want to interact deeply with the God whose name is jealous. This is the end of the journey. It doesn't go higher than this. We get lost in that dimension with the Holy spirit and Jesus. We've gone the full measure. Paragraph C look at this verse Mark 1230. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart. Number one, all your soul, all your mind, all your strength. Here's the point. God doesn't ask anything from us that he doesn't do first towards us. He loves us with all of his strength. Can you imagine the God of Genesis one loving you with all of his strength? You know, in the known universe, there are a hundred million galaxies. And then, you know, that's what science knows. A hundred million read that in a, in a report, a scientific report. I went, they said the Milky way galaxy ours is one of the smaller galaxies that are known a hundred million. Can you imagine the Milky way is one of the little ones and there's a hundred million more galaxies. And that God loves you with all of his might. He loves you with all of his mind. How big is God's mind? God loves you with all of his mind. He's not asking you for anything in the relationship that he has not done first and most matter of fact, it's our experience of him that empowers us to reciprocate the response. It says we encounter the God who loves who loves us with all of his mind that we begin to love him with all of our mind. It's only in response. Imagine this, this is just, this is this mind boggling that God of Genesis one loves me with his strength and his mind, all of his emotions, all of his heart, all of it. He holds nothing back and the passion he has for us. This is so holy. Other than this is such in another realm. It's like, Lord, he says, I am inviting you to know me in this dimension. That's what the God of, of a song of Solomon chapter eight, verse five, six, and seven. He's saying, I want you to set me. I want you to encounter me with this face, not just healer and forgiver. It's the God of jealousy, the God who loves with all of his strength, the God of fire, the God that is so comprehensive and so, so demanding in his love. I'm talking about the most positive sense. He says, I will bring everything in your life under the sway of my influence. That even death does not exceed the comprehensive nature of what I will conquer inside of you. But I don't care. I talked to the guy who says I'm addicted to pornography. The other guy says I'm addicted to drugs. I'm addicted to alcohol. I'm addicted to anger. I'm addicted, addicted, addicted, addicted. And I understand. And I say, you know what? I, I, I have, I have pain and sympathy for you. I'm not casual about it, but there is a power stronger than your addictions. It's more powerful than your addictions. There is a, there is a power. There is a force. I mean, it's God himself that loves with all of his mind. That is the power that will touch our minds. Paragraph D Jesus is the jealous God. He always wants more and he will always give more. He wants more and he gives more. It's just, and then he wants more and he gives more. Now we can only walk in the light. We can only walk with the Lord to the light. We have, I could only obey him according to the light that I have. Now I have a lot more light than I did 10 years ago or 20 years ago, but not near as much light as I'll have 10 and 20 and 30 years at a million years from now, we can only walk in the light we have. That's just how it works. I can't obey him more than, than, than the light in my heart. But when I obey him and you obey him and we, and we get a breakthrough in that area, we've been struggling with, and now we're obeying him according to the light. And so in that sense, we're obeying him with all of our heart, with all the light that we have. You know what he does? He gives us more light. We break into that area. We go there, Lord. Then he shows us more darkness and beckons us in to more obedience. And so we break into that and that darkness is expelled. Oh Lord, this is awesome. I never knew it could be this close. And he takes the magnifying glass that was at 10. He turns it up to power a hundred and things we never saw before. Now we see they turn up to a thousand and 10,000. He keeps giving us more light. We cry, Lord, I want more of you. And the God of jealousy cries, I want more of you. More Lord. He goes more Mike. Lord, I want more of you. Yes. Good. I want more of you. And not as a taskmaster, because I love you with all of my heart. I love you with all of my mind. And when you love me, it frees you. It brings you to the fullness of who you are. It glorifies my father. It honors all that I am. When we love him, it doesn't just do good for us. It does great things for us. It brings us into our destiny and our dignity, but it glorifies God. It's fantastic. So he's not as a taskmaster saying, give me more. You'd never give me enough. No. He's saying, no, the more that you give me, the larger your capacity to enjoy God and to experience him just gets bigger and bigger. Paragraph F in the ancient world, they put a, a seal of wax around a document. You know, a King would have a document. He'd put it in like a little scroll and he had put an encasement of wax around it. Now we'd put it in like in a metal container, but they had a wax. Then the King would put his signatory, he'd take his ring and he had put it into the wax and that signet ring on that encasement. Anybody that saw the King's signet ring on that sealed document, the entire army of the King was backing up the contents of that document. And so when, you know, the military would bring the document to another King, it would maybe be a peace treaty to where the nations would be at peace or maybe be a financial deal, like a huge financial deal. You know, you give us a million horses, we'll give you a million of this, you know, it was really important that the contents of that document were true because of the communication system of that way. I mean, in that day, the other King had to know the document was absolutely guaranteed and accurate because it had the King's seal on it. And anybody who violated that document, if a group of soldiers violated that document, broke the seal, it would be at the pain of death. Their lives would be killed. So when they brought that document and had the King's seal, the entire military force of that King was behind whatever that document said. He'd back it up. God's saying, the seal I'm putting on your heart is not a wax seal. It's a seal of fire. It's my seal. It's not a wax seal. I'm sealing you with fire, but it has my signature in it. And all the power of my kingdom will back this thing up. I will give you power at the heart level, and I will give you power at the arm, the ministry, the working together with the Lord, in order for the fire of love to be experienced by you at every level. Everything I call you to, I will give you the power to experience love in it. Paragraph G, the seal of fire has two dimensions. It's important to know this. There's the fire burns all that gets in the way. There is a negative dimension to the fire of the Lord because we're fallen people. We have darkness in our emotions, in our mind. So the fire of the Lord requires things that are costly to us in our natural emotions and thinking. We're like, ah, I want to do it different. And there is cost. It is truly fire. It's not just figurative. It actually hurts. That's why Joel called it that Joel 2 verse 12, the tearing of the heart. There's times the heart is to be torn. Obedience is costly to our unrenewed mind and emotions, but also the fire has a different dimension. There's an impartation of glory. There's a supernatural impartation that exhilarates our spirit. It's the both end. It's the cross and the resurrection. It's both end. It takes God to love God. It takes his power in us. And he's promising that it will have the fire. The fire does have a, it will have a sting more than a sting. It is painful when fire touches us, but it ends up tenderizing us and imparting supernatural dimension of God's grace into our spirit. Paragraph H water always puts out fire unless it's God's fire. You know, if you've got a fire, you get enough water, you'll put that fire out. I don't care if a whole city's on fire. If it pours and rains for 40 days and 40 nights, that one F fire is going out. There's only one kind of fire that can't be put out by water. And that's supernatural fire. And that's what the Lord is saying. The Lord is still speaking in verse seven. He says, many waters can't put this fire out. Can't quench it. There's all kinds of temptations. There's all types of exercising of pride in our thinking and in lust and pride and all kinds of things. There's persecutions, there's difficulties, there's the weariness and the difficulties of assignments and things don't work right, divine assignments. And it makes us want to be tempted to draw back and to put our hands down and just give up and give in. But what the Lord say, you yield to this fire. Many waters will come against you, but they can't put this fire out if you will yield to it. You have to yield to it. It's not just a doctrine that we say we applaud. It's something we, we yield to in an interactive way by filling our heart with the word of God, fellowship with the spirit, committing ourselves to obedience and other things like that. Just the normal things of the kingdom. There's no great secrets to how to do this. And then he goes on to say, the Lord goes on to say, the King goes on to say, nor can any floods drowned out this fire. I am confident that the church right before the Lord returns as sin has escalates at all time highs of history. The church, the love of God in the church will not be drowned. The love of God will be exploding. Then it goes on to say, if any man would give for love all the wealth of his house, it would be utterly despised. And what this is talking about, he ends this with a kind of a obscure proverb of sorts. And the idea is this, the analogy I've used over the years is it's just a made up story. I've told the story a few times and, you know, people come up crying and wanting to know the end. I go, no, it was just a made up story. Just, just, so I'm just telling, I emphasize that now that, you know, it's, it's the young couple. They find out their little five-year-old, their little five-year-old daughter has a, a certain type of disease and the go to the doctor and the doctor says, it's going to cost you $10 million. They sell your, your $5 million house and give up all your $5 million bank account. It's going to cost everything to save her life. They get the 10 million, they pay it. The daughter gets healed. I mean, it gets delivered and now they're out living in a little kind of out of the way place. And someone comes up to them from the old neighborhood and says, man, that was unbelievable how much you gave for your daughter. You're the most amazing parents. And these parents would say they would utterly despise the congratulations that they did something noble because they did it for love. Do you give up the wealth of your house? You do it for love. You don't want congratulations for it. They would say, Oh no, we're not awesome parents. We love her. We love her. It's the same thing. Paul, the apostle said in Ephesians, I mean, Philippians he said, I've suffered the loss of all things. Paul, the apostle had so many open doors. He had such a, a, uh, a profile in the nation. I mean, he had, he had a resume that was amazing. The doors, I mean, the work he did to get to the place where he was at the, the, the honor, the economics, the prestige that he would have, the impact he would have in the nation of Israel. He gave it all up for the ecstasy of Christ. He says, I've suffered the loss of all these things. I count it rubbish. He goes, don't tell me how noble I am in my obedience. We might, you know, someone might have gone to Paul says, you're so unbelievable. He says, no, no, I've seen the truth. God became a man. He walked on the earth was crushed by the wrath of God. He was raised to the right hand of the father and he wants me, he wants me to share it all with him forever. He goes, I gave up some money and honor. And you think that's a, I gave up something heavy in light of that. He goes, absolutely not. He goes, it's rubbish. Don't tell me I did something noble. Only people who don't understand love are preoccupied with what they're giving up. But there's a working of love that a person will give up all the wealth of their house, all their, their acquired prestige and honor and whatever. They will give it all up when they're in love and it means nothing to them. That's the power of this love. There's no self-congratulations. There's no seeking a reward in return because when somebody does something for love, the love itself is the reward. A person who's rich when they go shopping. I mean the really rich, you can tell how the really rich are. They don't look at price tags. So think I'll take a hundred of those. I'll take 20 of those. I'll buy that store. I'm talking about the, the billion billionaires. They don't look at price tags. People that are rich in love. Don't look at price tags. They'll go into dungeons. They'll lose their life. The end time martyrs. It won't be when they get to, you know, before the Lord, you gave up your life. They go, oh you gotta be kidding. I was a, a sinner and a rebel and he pursued me and he made me a king and a priest forever and I'm his bride. I didn't give up anything. Trust me, I gave up nothing. Amen. Let's stand. Song of Solomon.