Mike Bickle emphasizes the significance of understanding the 'Bridal Paradigm' in the context of the Kingdom of God, which invites believers into a deep, intimate relationship with Jesus as the Bridegroom. He explains that this perspective transcends gender and is about a position of privilege and closeness to God's heart, encouraging both men and women to embrace their identity as the Bride of Christ. Bickle shares personal experiences and biblical insights, particularly from the Song of Solomon, to illustrate the depth of God's desire for intimacy with His people. He highlights that true understanding of one's identity as the Bride comes from recognizing Jesus as a compassionate and loving Bridegroom, which transforms how believers see themselves and their relationship with God.

Thank you in the name of Jesus. And Lord, I ask you, even now, even now, to speak through your word in a fresh way. And we bless you for that, in Jesus' name, amen. Well, I was all fired up to do the book of Joel again. And Duane, who's giving a lot of leadership to the One Thing Ministries, one of our senior leaders at our missions base, he goes, I love it, but you better preach on the Bride of Christ anyway. I said, okay, okay. He goes, I love that you're going for Joel. We need Joel, but we need the Bride of Christ. He goes, do what you want to do, but I'm telling you, you need to preach on the Bride of Christ. So I know, I'm smart enough to know I better listen to him. So I just said, you know what, I'll just do what you told me to do. Here it is. So I, I think that's the direction. I'm just trusting Duane's direction from the Lord. How's that for team ministry? Matthew chapter 22. And, so I don't appear too humble, I really love this subject, so it was an easy request. I mean, I really love this subject. Okay, we're talking, I'm gonna give just a, a very short, abbreviated version of what I'm calling introduction to the bridal paradigm. And again, the word paradigm, I said this a couple times, is kind of a fancy word. It means a perspective. Most of you know that. A bridal perspective, a bridal paradigm, a bridal picture of the kingdom of God. That's what we mean by the bridal paradigm, a perspective of the kingdom of God through the lens of a bride. Now, I'm only gonna, again, just give you a little bit of encouragement in this direction, a little roadmap saying, go study this, go study this, go study this, and you will grow in this subject called the bride of Christ. And I give a, a lot more on the series that we just talked about a minute ago, introduction to the bridal paradigm, maybe four or five one-hour teachings with a set of notes. I'm a note fanatic. I love to give notes out because I like people to be able to have a one, two, three in front of them, but I want them to be able to use the notes and, and make them their own notes. Again, our copyright is the right to copy anything you get from here, in terms of the notes and all that, you can make them your own, you can put your name on them, you take them word for word, you can change them, do anything you want to do with them, because we just want you to run with it. Well, I'll tell you a little bit about my story as I'm talking about this subject called the bride of Christ, is that my father was a world champion boxer. You know, boxer, like he hit people. He, he hurt them on purpose. I mean, he, that was the goal. It sounds like a mean thing to do, but he liked it, and I was pretty excited. I, I watched him box on a number of occasions. Matter of fact, of all things, irony of ironies, it's in this auditorium, because I grew up in Kansas City, sitting right over there, I used to sit in the same seat, and my father used to box professionally right here in the middle of the ring, and I used to sit right up there, go dad, beat him up, hit him, hit him, and the one thing, because my father was a world champion, I could tell everybody, everybody, my dad can beat up your dad, and it was real, and it was real, and so I grew up in a boxing world, and I got, I was trained in boxing, was never any good at it, but I was trained in it, and so some years go by, and I meet the Lord when I'm 15, and so now I'm about 30, say, it's, it's July 1988, whatever I am, July 1988, I have a most unusual encounter with the Lord. I have about two or three very profound supernatural encounters over the years where the Lord, well actually two of them specifically, in May 1983, the Lord spoke by the audible voice of the Lord, and he said, do 24-hour prayer. In May 83, he spoke it audibly, do 24-hour a day prayer. We didn't do it for 16 years, but I knew it was going to happen. He told us 16 years before we began it, do 24-hour a day prayer. I, I was so blown away by that, I didn't know what to do. I, maybe I should, you know, because I didn't know how to do it. I go, what do you mean? Well, it was such a, a dynamic thing that took place, and then five years later, in July 1988, he said, in essence, I'm going to skip the experience and just tell you this, do it with the bridal paradigm. Do night and day prayer with the subject or the reality of Jesus as a bridegroom. And I, and the Lord called me in 1988 in a, by the audible voice of the Lord. I've had two of these experiences in 30 years of ministry, so it's not very many, but it was enough to set me on the right course. And I, I remember, I remember vividly the, the morning it happened. July 88, I said, Lord, the bride of Christ, Lord, I'm the son of a boxer. And the Lord specifically told me in that, in that encounter with him to, to, to focus my life on the Song of Solomon. Now, many of you have at least looked at the Song of Solomon. Song of Solomon, eight chapters, it's the great love song of the Bible. I had never read the Song of Solomon until this encounter. I'd never, ever read it thoroughly, straight through, ever. I only used the Song of Solomon in my youth pastor days to find, you know, funny verses to embarrass people in the youth group with. That's the only time I ever read the Song of Solomon was for less than noble reasons. Let the reader understand. So I'd never read the Song of Solomon, and the Lord tells me in this experience, basically, the Bride of Christ and Song of Solomon. I'm just speeding it up and summarizing it. And I read the Song of Solomon for the first time that day, knowing it was my life destiny to do 24-hour prayer with the Song of Solomon, which means, which is the, the main book in the Bible on the subject of the Bride of Christ. And I read this, eight chapters. It's a love song. I was totally depressed. I said, Lord, this, this isn't gonna happen. I said, the night and day prayer thing, I can do that. I cannot do Song of Solomon. I said, you got the wrong, wrong idea. Lord, I'm a guy. Have you noticed that, Lord? This is for the women's ministry. This is not who I am. Flowers and perfume, and I go, no way. I said, I tell you what I'll do, Lord. Give me the book of Romans, the life of David, or the book of Revelation, and I'll be happy. Little did I know that this message of the Song of Solomon, which is the same message of the Bride of Christ, would radically, radically change my life. And little did I know, and I'm gonna say it strong, I believe it's impossible to do night and day prayer in the full way God calls us to do it without the revelation of Jesus as a bridegroom. And I have a dozen of verses I could give you on that. I'm not gonna take time right now. And then, and I've got them all in different teachings and handouts and syllabus and things like that. So, so it's out there if you're interested in, in, in, in, and, and the biblical basis for that. I want to say it again. There's a dozen verses that make it very clear the end time prayer movement will not work in fullness apart from the revelation of Jesus as a bridegroom. The intimacy that comes to our heart from that. Now guys, don't lose heart. The Bride of Christ subject, the subject of the Bride of Christ is for men. Matter of fact, the subject of the Bride of Christ in, in one sentence, if I had to summarize it in one sentence, it's an invitation, it's an invitation to intimacy with God's heart. It's an active intimacy. It's a intimacy where God speaks, our heart moves, our heart speaks back to God, God's heart moved. It's an invitation to active intimacy. That is what the subject of the Bride of Christ is in one sentence. It's an invitation to intimacy with God. So people come to me and they go, what's this bride message? And they're kind of imagining they have to like put on a dress and get flowers and worship or something and cry. Well, they're going to cry. That's a fact. Crying is, is foregone conclusion. They don't have to put on a dress and wear and have flowers. They don't have to do that. This invitation to intimacy with God is what we mean by the subject, the bridal paradigm. It's what we mean by, matter of fact, let's skip for Matthew 22, go to 1 Corinthians chapter 2, 1 Corinthians chapter 2. Okay. This, this verse, 1 Corinthians chapter 2, sums it up. What the bridal paradigm is, is clear, or the bridal message, it sums it up as clear as any passage I know in the Bible in terms of what does it mean, bottom line, bottom line. Although it doesn't use the word bride in it, it gives the idea of what the essence of what the Bride of Christ message is. 1 Corinthians chapter 2, verse 9 to 12, it says this, I has not, this is a great verse. You really got to, got to get this one. I think I got it on the over, on the PowerPoint. I think they have it for us if you didn't, don't have your Bible with you. It says, I has not seen, nor has the ear heard, nor has it ever entered into the heart of a person, of a man or a woman, the things which God has prepared for those who love Him. So what Paul says is, God has prepared things that are so outrageous in the, in the awesome sense, so outlandish in the realm of majesty and beauty, God has prepared things so dynamic, they have never entered into a man's thinking. A man in his greatest imagination could not imagine how awesome this is going to be. You take Walt Disney plus Steven Spielberg times a million and you still cannot come up with what is God planned for the people who love Him. It has never entered the heart of a man. No man has imagined in his wildest imagination, it is far more dynamic. It's never entered the heart of a man. Wow. The things God has planned. Verse 10, second, first Corinthians, first Corinthians chapter two, verse 10, we'll read the next verse. Look at this. But God has revealed these things to us by the Holy Spirit. Now look what it says about the Holy Spirit's ministry. The Spirit searches the deep things of God. Why? Verse 12. So that we, the Spirit would give them to us. That's the essence of it. The Holy Spirit is pictured as searching the deepest things of God the Father's heart, and the Spirit takes the deep things of God's heart and communicates them and allows the church to experience these deep things. That's what I call intimacy with God. Experiencing the deep things of God's heart. Now the book we talked about earlier that Dana Candler wrote called Deep Unto Deep, it comes from Psalm 42. That's where the phrase, you get a little bit of experience of the deep things of God, it will catapult you into hunger for more experience of the deep things of God. When you touch the deep things of God, you only become hungry for more of the deep things of God. It goes deep, and it catapults you to more deep things of God, and it pushes you forward to greater things in the depths of God. And that book is also built around this theme right here. The Spirit has searched out the deep things of God, and the Holy Spirit wants to give those deep things to you. Now the deepest thing of God's heart that I know of from the Scripture, the deepest thing that I know of, that's in the Word of God's heart, is that God is ravished. He is ravished with burning desire for you. Beloved, this is unthinkable in its glory. God is on fire on the inside with desire for you. I can't imagine anything deeper than that reality. So much so, He doesn't just want to forgive us, He wants to marry us, and He wants us to share the rule of His government forever and forever and forever. Beloved, nothing is deeper than that, that I know of. God looks at my broken and weak life, and He goes, Mike, I want you. Oh Lord, I'd love to do it. I would love to dance the dance with you. I would love to go with you, but there's one problem. I'm all messed up. Lord says, I died for you. I will forgive everything you've done. Well, that's good that you died for me. You forgave everything from yesterday, but I'm going to mess up again tomorrow. Lord says, good, I got that taken care of too. My Spirit will transform you, and I will forgive you 10,000 times, 10,000 if you will come to me with all of your heart. Oh, okay, I got it made. I got it made. You forgave me for yesterday, and you're going to take care of tomorrow. The Lord says, no, that's way more than that. I want to marry you. Huh? I want you, Mike, to be near my heart, and I want to give you the deep things of my heart that will move you, and I want you to know that when you give me the things of your heart, it will move me. You will speak, and my heart will move, says the Lord, and my eye will speak, and your heart will move. There will be an active intimacy between us forever and forever. Then I'd go something like, whoa, this is way more than forgiveness. I mean, you can be forgiven and, you know, kind of hired and, you know, to go do some factory work in the outer regions of the kingdom. You're still a part of the kingdom, but you're forgiven, and I'd be happy to have a resurrected body forgiven up in heaven just doing this, that, and the other if that's all there was to it. I would be very grateful. But the Lord says, no, it's more than forgiven, and it's more than forgiving you 10,000 times more and transforming you. I am going to bring you to a place the angels of God have never ever understood. I'm going to bring you near my heart, and when I speak, you will move. Your heart will be moved deeply. When you speak, my heart will be moved deeply, and we will join at the heart level in the deepest way beyond anything the angels have ever known. And it's like, oh my goodness, this is intense. The Lord says, well, it doesn't end there either. I'm going to share Revelation 320, Revelation 321, I'm going to share my throne with you. I'm going to share the government of my kingdom throughout all of eternity. Now, lest you are confused, he is forever God, the uncreated one, second person of the Trinity. Jesus is fully God, and when he became man, he's fully God, fully man. But he always and forever is fully God, the uncreated God. And in the incarnation, he became fully man. You and I are always the sinful, created ones over here that were forgiven and were brought into this relationship, always knowing that he is God and there's a big difference between us, but at the heart level, he joins himself to us. The reason I have to say that, most of you understand all that anyway, is that some people, they blur the lines and they start, they get this, I've heard it over the years and it's, it's a heresy. They blur the lines of we are so close to God, we kind of are God, kind of. And I go, no, no, we're not, ever, never are we kind of God, never. They go, you know what I mean. I go, I don't know what you mean, and I don't want to know what you mean because it's a heresy. We are never God. He is the uncreated God. We are the creatures. We are forgiven. And the glory of intimacy is, its power is that God wants us near him, even though we are the created ones that have been forgiven. He is ravished. Beloved, he is ravished with us. He is ravished with us in love and desire. He is going to give us the deep things of his heart, then he's going to share the rulership of his eternal kingdom with us, Jesus is. It's, it's, it's just absolutely, gloriously outrageous. It's outlandish in the most positive sense of the word. So, Paul writes here in 1 Corinthians chapter 2, verse 9 to 12. He says, God is going to cause you to know, or instead of the word know, use the word experience. You will experience the deepest things. Now, the Bride of Christ message is an invitation to active intimacy with God. So, when somebody says, are you into the Bride of Christ? I want you to see that, that, that, that phrase on the overhead, just, I mean, on the screen there. Just look at that. That's what the Bride of Christ message means in one sentence. You are called to a level and to an experience of intimacy that the angels had no invitation. It's like this. There's a great boundary line in heaven. This is how I, I describe it. A great ancient boundary line. The angels are over here, and God lets the angels come near, and then the Lord says, ah, stop. You cannot come any further. You must stay at a distance and worship me. And here's what the angels do. Here's how the angels talk to God. Holy, holy, holy to him who was and who is to come, Lord God Almighty. They address God in titles related to his grandeur and his glory, which is awesome. So do we. But Jesus said, when you talk to God, you say, our Father who art in heaven. The angels cannot say, our Father. The angels say, holy, holy, holy to him who was and is to come. We say that too. We get everything they have in terms of the declarations of worship and, and relationship, but we have more. The Lord says on this, related to this boundary line, that the angels are held back at. He says to us, come closer, come closer, come near me, and we come right into the very place of the experience of the heart of God angels will never have. So the message of the Bride of Christ is the privilege. I want to say it different. It's the unique privilege. It is the unique privilege of active intimacy with God's heart. Now, the Bride of Christ, the subject of the Bride of Christ is it transcends gender. It goes beyond gender, meaning it's not an issue of being male or female. It's describing a position of privilege. That's what it's doing. So when somebody says, Bride of Christ, how could a guy be the Bride of Christ? It's not talking about a gender-based concept. It's talking about a position of privilege near the heart of God. Now, the same is true with the sons of God. Women are called the sons of God. Men are called the Bride of Christ. Because the sons of God is a position of privilege. It's like the Bride of Christ. It transcends gender. It goes beyond the issue of gender. Men and women who are invited into the privilege of experiencing God's power and God's reign, we have access to God's authority. They are called the sons of God. Women are the sons of God. Men are the sons of God because we are heirs. Heirs, we inherit God's authority. We use it in this age a little bit. I mean, we can use it a lot more with lives of obedience and faith and those kinds of things, but we will use God's power in the age to come in a way we can't even imagine. We are sons of God. Men and women, we have inherited the position of this. I mean, we are in a position to inherit the authority of God. We get to use it. That's what it means by being sons of God. Now, women are not troubled with being called sons of God. They go, hey, we want the power of God. But men, they trip up over this issue of the Bride of Christ because they think of it as a feminine, it's something only for women, and they don't understand it's describing a position. The women could say the same thing. Sons of God is only for men. No, no, it's describing a position of power. Intimacy or the Bride of Christ is describing a position of active intimacy with God's heart. Now, some of the greatest men, some of the greatest men I mean, in the Bible, were those who had the deepest intimacy with God, the deepest intimacy with God. But the first, of course, the first one that comes to mind is King David. King David, this, the great warrior king of Israel. Now, picture King David. He won all of these battles. He was the man's man of the Old Testament. He was the warrior king. Whenever you said to a soldier, King David, they would, oh, I'm the warrior king. Good. He is the warrior king. But King David was the lovesick worshiper. He was the worshiping warrior. He was the lovesick worshiper. King David is the one, we borrowed this from David, his copyrights, the right to copy, so we just took it right from him. Psalm 27.4, which is our whole ministry is built on, this one thing we do, we gaze, we encounter the beauty of God. We got that verse. We receive that value from a warrior, from a fighter, from world champion boxer. We receive that verse from a warrior king. This one thing I do, I am lovesick for God. I love his beauty. My heart mounts before him, and that's what made him an anointed warrior. Now, men, in the generation the Lord returns, and I, as I've said a dozen times, I believe we're at the beginning of that generation. I believe we're some decades out, but I believe we're in it. The bride of Christ, the bride of Christ will be a warring bride. We will have an army, militant spirit. We will plunder the kingdom of darkness. We will change history through fasting and prayer and prophetic decrees, but we will do it with the heart of a bride before a beautiful God. It's only before the beholding of the beautiful God that we will sustain the, the, that which is necessary to be the warrior king. So, when I talk to guys, they go, man, we're really into the war. I go, good, my kind of guy. David's kind of guy. If you're really into the war, you better be into the bride, because you're gonna run out of fuel, and you will never ever end the race as a warrior without brital intimacy like King David. That's a fact. Now, the other two guys that come to mind in the Old Testament, I'm talking to guys now, and so girls, this is your one time if you're sitting next to someone that you know real well that's kind of like, oh, bride of Christ, just like give him the big jab. Listen. I'm tired of hearing it. Listen to that guy up there. Okay, this is your moment. Hit him. Okay, there you have it. If you got hit, that means she thinks you need to pay attention right now. Hit him again, just for good measure. Okay. Seems like there was a lot of that going on out there. Okay. So, the next guy, John the Apostle. Ooh, awesome. John the Apostle. You know what Jesus called John the Apostle? Jesus called John the Apostle the son of thunder. John the Apostle had a thunderous personality in the natural. In his natural personality, he was thunderous, and I'd love to go off and talk on him for a while because I've talked a lot about John the Apostle and his identity. I'm not going to this moment. John the Apostle, there's many stories. My point is there's many stories in the Bible about him. That's the point I'm trying to make by saying that. Many, many stories about John that you could go into, anyone could, but forget those right now. John was a thunderous man. He was a fiery son of thunder, and he was the one who laid his head on the Lord's breast. At the end of his life, he said he could have said anything. I mean, John the Apostle was one of the chief apostles. He led the great revivals. He wrote the book of Revelation. He wrote the gospel of John, plus some other things. And John, unbelievable place of privilege. And at the end of John's life, do you know how John described himself? Not as the great apostle who wrote the Bible. He said, I am the man that God loves who lays my head on his breast. The man of thunder, his identity was in the fact, I am the disciple God loves. I'm the one God loves. In my head, I lay it on his breast. I love to love him. And they could have said, aren't you the thunderous John the Apostle? Yes. That doesn't mean anything to me. He loves me. I love him. Therein is my greatness. Therein is my power. And therein is my great reward. John the Apostle is a man's man. And he was lovesick like David. John the Apostle is in the New Testament. A type is like the kind of man that David was in the old. Now we'll go to the very top of the top of the list. One more guy, John the Baptist. Jesus called him the greatest man ever born of a woman. In Matthew 11, he's called the greatest man that ever walked the earth. Besides Jesus himself, but Jesus is the one talking. He said, the greatest man to ever walk the earth, the greatest man ever born of a woman. Whoa. What does John have to say about himself? It's one of our key verses here as well in our ministry. And I encourage you to run with it and make it a key verse in your ministry. John 3 29. John said, in essence, I'm summarizing it. I am a friend of the bridegroom. I have heard the voice of the bridegroom. And that's what set my heart on fire. The thing, the key to John's life, he heard the voice of the Messiah as a bridegroom. Now, what do I mean by this thing called the bride of Christ? I mean, I'm saying again, it's a position. It's an invitation. It's an invitation to active intimacy with God's heart. So John the Baptist experienced the bridal paradigm. King David never used the word bride, but he described all of the characteristics of the bridal message of the New Testament. He gazed on God's beauty. He was lovesick worshiper. Those he felt embraced by God. He felt God's tenderness on his life. Okay, now I'm going to look at a couple of specific things about God's heart. I got about five or six points. I just want to give them to you. One, two, three, four. And we're not going to be able to develop them, but I just want you to have just at least a beginning of the beginning of an introduction to the bridal paradigm. Because beloved, this is what's going to make your prayer meetings fiery. This is what's going to make your heart fiery. This is what's going to change your future, is this encounter with this bridegroom God. First of all, when we talk about being the bride of Christ, you and I have a bridal identity before God. And I, I meet people all the time, they go, I am the bride of Christ. I want to understand that I am a cherished bride. God cherishes me and has invited me into deep intimacy with his heart. And I love that. However, I find often people get, get the sequence out of order. And what, and this order is important. You can't understand your identity as a bride until, at least a little bit, a little bit, until a little bit, you understand him as a bridegroom. Let me say that again. Maybe you didn't catch that just yet. Until we see Jesus different, we can't see ourselves different. Until we see him as a bridegroom, we will never see ourselves in reality as a bride. So if Jesus is a mean coach and a powerful judge and a powerful king, and that's all he is, you may say I'm the bride of Christ or the bride of Christ, but it's not connecting. Until you see him as a passionate bridegroom, you will never see yourself differently as a cherished bride. So the message of the bride of Christ, the journey into the bridal paradigm, always begins with seeing Jesus differently. It begins with not getting rid of the other dimensions of Jesus, but adding to that which we have learned from the scripture. He is a king. He is a judge. He is a savior. He is a healer. He is many of these things, but he's more than a king. He is a bridegroom king. So when we have new interns, the thing that's on my heart is to train them line upon line to see Jesus different. Because here's the key. When you see Jesus different, you see yourself different. You can't just see yourself different one day mysteriously. Like, you know, there's a new thing going on the last 10 or 20 years in, you know, kind of pop psychology and out in the healing world. I'm thinking of the secular, but it's a little bit within the kingdom as well. People are in this deep quest to find out who they really are. I want to know who I am, and that's a great quest. That's a very important quest. Who am I? What is my destiny? What is my passion? How do I work? Why do I exist? What is the definition of my greatness? What is the definition of success? What is it that's really me? What is it that makes me feel alive when I get in contact? And people have been, from the beginning, on this journey in their life to find out who they are. Now some people get real weird about that, but there's a general cry in everybody's heart to know out who you are, to understand who you are. I mean, how you work, what your real passions are, what the real definition of your greatness is, how do you know if you're really succeeding or not, and where are you going, and those kinds of things. Very important subject. Here's the problem though. Secular psychology, even Christian psychology, some of it. I mean, Christians who teach this, it's not Christian psychology, it's secular psychology, but taught by Christians. And so you can follow the distinction there. Here's what they're doing. They're looking, my parents were good, bad, or ugly. One of those. So therefore, I am this. Well, the key to who you are, how you relate it to your parents, it does have something to do with that, but that's not the essence of who you are, is not if your parents were good, bad, or ugly. That's an old movie when I was 12 years old. It's my favorite one. Okay, so it's not about that. Because people, my parents are real good, therefore I'm real good. My parents are real bad, therefore I'm real bad. I go, ah, there's a little bit of truth to that. You can find some issues in your heart of bitterness, or you can find some wonderful things in your life that have been established by your parents, but the essence of who you are does not lie within the character or the understanding of your parents. Not even the experience. There's some truth to that, but the fullness of it, the essence of it is not there. Okay, I'm going to look inside. You know, hmm, I like attention. Okay, I like attention. I like creativity. Everybody likes creativity. I like pleasure. That's it. I'm a man who likes attention, creativity, and pleasure. That's the real me. That's who everybody is. Okay, I like to work with my hands. I like to sleep on the couch and watch TV. I like to, who am I? I don't know who I am. Anyway, my point is, they're looking inside into that deep, mysterious abyss of the moving ocean of their being, and who am I? And they're 80 years old, and they're just as lost at 80, trying to figure that out as they were when they were 10. The answer does not lie in sight, looking inside of you. And we could give 10 more places where people look. The answer to who you are lies in the heart of one man seated at the right hand of God the Father. The answer to who you are is only found in that man's face and in his eyes. When you discover who he is, then, only then, then, only then do you know who you are. The key is locked up in that man's heart. Jesus, I love you. You are a bridegroom. You are filled with fiery burning desire for me. All of a sudden, you do that for some period of time, months, weeks, or years, whatever. All of a sudden, you go, hey, wait a second. Wait, time out. If you're a fiery God who loves people, I must be loved. Oh my God, I know who I am. I'm the loved one. Oh, this is awesome. My point is, you can only find out who you are by finding out who he is. That is the key to the secret of your life. And the way that you work, whether you like working this way or that way, the key to how you work comes out of the revelation of who he is and who you are to him. So, when people tell me I want to know the bride of Christ, I am the bride of Christ. They go, you know what? Let's put that on pause for just one brief moment. I mean, I don't want to steal it from them, but let's put our attention on who he is. Because if you find out who he is, you will know what it means to be a bride yourself. So, who is he? Okay, we're going to look at five or six points. It's one, two, three, four. Okay, first of all, God, Jesus. Well, the Father as well. You say because they have the same personality. Jesus is the full expression of the Father's excellence and majesty. God is a God of compassion who is tender with our weaknesses. That's number one. When you study the subject of the bride of Christ, I wanted to just keep that up there for a while. God is a God of compassion who is tender with your weaknesses if you're repentant. If you are sincere with him, he is tender with you. That doesn't mean he doesn't insist on you repenting. It means that he is kind to you in the process in terms of his heart towards you. I'm not saying the circumstances will be rosy because he loves you, then your car will never break down, and nobody will ever get mad. I'm not talking about circumstances right now. I'm talking about God is so filled with compassion. He is tender. He is gentle with you and your heart in terms of his heart relationship to you. Now, people say that's cool. We know that. This is foundation number one on the bride of Christ. Understanding Jesus as a God of compassion who is tender. Now, look at the three verses I have up there. Let's go through each one of them for a second. Luke 15, verse 20. Oh, that's the great one. Of course, that's about the Father's heart, but Jesus and the Father, they have the same personality. They have the same type of character and passion. Luke 15, verse 20 is the verse where Jesus is talking about the Father. You know how he describes the Father? As filled with compassion. He says, you know what my Father's like? I'm just going to summarize the story. He goes, you know what my Father's like? He goes, when the prodigal son, when that rebellious teenager ran away from the Father, but after he repented, he came back home, and when the prodigal came back home, he was kind of tiptoeing at the edge of the farm trying to sneak in the window of his old room, you know, to kind of maybe show up for breakfast tomorrow morning. Hi Dad, it's me. Hi. I know I stole a million dollars from the family, and I know I cussed out the family out on the street, but it's me. Anyway, he was trying to sneak in, you know, sneak in the window, and his Father sees him from a distance, it says in Luke 15. The Father's out on the porch, and he goes, wait, I know that walk. He's way out there. He goes, that's my boy, and the Father knew he had repented. That's the key. He'd repented. The Father jumps out of his chair. There's, there's no chair in Luke 15. I put the chair in there in my story. He jumps out of the chair. Some of you might write down, out of the chair? Where's that verse at about him and the chair? It's, I'm making that part up. Okay. God, I mean, the man jumps out of the chair. He runs off the porch. Now, in the ancient world, a father had authority and dignity in society. A rich father like this, he was a landowner and lots of servants, and you know, it was like a big economic empire. So it was undignified to do this, but he did not care. He runs, runs to this kid, runs, my son, and the kid's going, oh my gosh, what's going on here? I've never seen dad run before. And he puts his arms around his son, weeps, and kisses him. I love you. I love you. The kid's going, uh, dad, stop. Let me give you my story. Let me tell you how bad I am. And let me tell you, I am willing to work for minimum wage out in the back of the farm, mowing lawns in the summer. And the father says, stop, stop. I am going to kill your heart with kindness. You are my son, because I know you've really repented. And Jesus says, that is what my father is like. Beloved, the message of the bride of Christ begins with a God of tenderness. And the God in many of our minds is not a God of tenderness. It's the God of the strict coach. Now, some people are really into the God of tenderness, but here's where the deception is. They're into a God of tenderness who does not require repentance. And this God of tenderness requires repentance in order to receive the tenderness. It's a very, very important point. Because some people are so into God's love, and it's, it's lots of darkness is lying throughout their teaching. Because it's, we can live in darkness and compromise. We can dance with the devil all night and just have the God of love. Just look the other way. That is a lie. He is a God of tenderness, which most the body of Christ, in my opinion, has not had a revelation of. But the few that do see it, many of those groups, the other lie comes in on the other extreme. You know how the devil is. If he can't get you on, if he can't deceive you on this point, he pushes you the full other direction to get you to go into an exaggerated doctrine on the other side to get you into error. So this group, lots of groups like this, oh, we believe in God's mercy. Oh, he's so filled with tenderness. The devil says, oh no, if they have this revelation, I can't defeat them. I know what I'll tell them. I'll push them to the other extreme. I'll get them so into the love of God that they don't believe that God requires holiness so that they stay in fellowship with darkness and with demons the whole time without knowing it's demons they're fellowshipping with. Beloved, you get into the love of God. Don't let the devil push you off on the other direction to an extreme the other way. He is tender to those who cry out with all of their heart. Big difference. So that's number one. He's a God of tenderness. Now I'm gonna skip the other verses I had up there. They're great ones, but I'm running out of time, so I'm gonna go to the next one. And again, on the, we have so many teachings myself and Alan Hood, Dwayne, Shelley, just different ones in the missions base. We have a lots of teachings on the heart of God. Everywhere, you know, Dana's book is filled with this. The book that I had, I wrote a year ago called, I always forget the name of it. After God's Own Heart. I remember Passion for Jesus, but After God's Own Heart, that's it. Well, somebody else named it for me. That's why I never remember it. And After God's Own Heart, in that book, we have in the bookstore, I go line up online through these ideas of these. I probably give a chapter or two to each one of these subjects I'm gonna give you right now. And so anyway, just do with that if that interests you. Okay, second thing. First, he's a God of tenderness. Oh, that's massive, massive. Most people are not raised in a Christian environment where the God of tenderness, but the God of tenderness who requires repentance. Massive. Now, after that, let's go to the second thing. He's more than a God of tenderness. He's a God with a happy heart. He has overflowing gladness in his personality. Look at this. He's a God with a happy heart. He has overflowing gladness. And I, and again, in the book on After God's Own Heart, I have two or three chapters on the gladness of God's heart. It's a critical, a critical revelation of God. Now, what do I mean by he's a God of, of, with a happy heart? Most Christians I know of, when they relate to God, they think God is mostly mad or mostly sad when he relates to them. In other words, God says, come unto me, all my people. I'm really mad at you, but come anyway. And they're supposed to, like, come, like, ducking all the time, like, give us one more chance. Oh, this is gonna be tough. Come unto me, all ye that weary, but I'm really mad, but come anyway. And the net result is, now it's not, no one ever just says it that way, but it's this over, it's this overarching idea that he's mad. One group says, no, no, that's not true. He's not really mad. He's sad. He's not mad at us. He's grieving. So every time God relates to us, he's kind of, you know, Mike, I'm not really mad at you, but I'm just disappointed a millionth time. It's you again. And so, hi, Mike, how was your time with God? Well, he wasn't mad, but he's so disappointed with me. He can't hardly bear it, but because he's God, he's gonna hang in there. And he's just so disappointed. He's sad all the time. I worship you, God. I love you. And God says, we've heard that one before. He's just disappointed all the time. He just kind of like, here we go, rolls his eyes, you know, there it's old Bickle again, telling me how much he loves me. And now let me say this, when you read all the passages, God is mostly glad. Not only, I didn't say only glad. That's, that's where the deception is. The deception is, is to take that to an extreme, like the other thing that I said a few minutes ago about God's tenderness. He doesn't, we don't have to repent. He does have anger. That's very, very clear. But he's not mostly angry when he relates to the redeemed. Not mostly. Not mostly. He does get angry. He undoubtedly, I have had times when I have angered him and grieved him, but mostly he relates to us with gladness. And again, I can't take time to go through 20 scriptures on that right now. I just wanted to give you the idea. Now, let's fast forward a billion years from now, and God relating to you, a billion years from now. When we go fast forward, I could come up to you and say, hey, Duane, how's it coming? How's it going on up there? You know, he'll probably be a couple levels up. Hey, you said you were going to invite me up. You never have. Anyway, how's it going up there? Fine. It's going great up here, Mike. Sure wish you could be up here with me. Okay. Uh, hey, what's it like with God? Oh, he's so happy. He's so glad. Really cool. Duane, if you calculated the last million years, plus the hundred you were on the earth, uh, what percentage of time has God been mad, sad, and glad at you? The percentage of time in the last million and 100 years? 99.999999999% of the time he's been glad. My point is, God's overall relationship with us in time and eternity is established on gladness, not on anger and not on disappointment. We take, God has grief. He is grieved when we defiantly say no to him, and he gets angry when we persist in rebellion. He is grieved when we compromise, when we repent, and we don't repent, we stay with it, that grief turns to anger. He can be angry at the redeemed, but it's not his normal, it's not his normal disposition, his attitude and related to, to his people. But here's what's happening. We get the holiness preachers. I is one. I'm a holiness preacher. I love holiness preachers, but the holiness preachers over the last couple hundred years or whatever, mostly use God's anger and God's sadness, his grief to motivate people to holiness, and they haven't used the love of God. So we end up with this, this cranky holiness, this type holiness, because it's motivated by a God who's angry or a God that's disappointed. Now, I believe we use God's anger in motivating people, and we use God's grief of motivating people. It's biblical to do that, but it's not mostly what we do with the redeemed. We do use that, but it's not mostly what we use. We use the gladness of God's heart. Beloved, when you feel God's gladness over your life, and you're worshiping him, you run to him instead of from him when you stumble. Now, one of the great principles, and all of the teachers here, we say it over and over and over, and I hope that you do as well. There's a, this principle, there's a dynamic difference between rebellion and immaturity. Rebellion and immaturity. Rebellion says, I am not obeying you. Matter of fact, this very moment, I'm planning on ways to sin tomorrow night. That's rebellion. Immaturity says, I love you, I love you, I love you, and I, oh God, help me, and we get there, and all of a sudden, dupe, they did it. Ah, you said, I hate it, God, I hate it, I love you, I love you. That's immaturity. Oh God, my heart, I can't live this way. If you forgive me one more time, I'll never do it again. One more time, that's it. I know that, because that's, I used to use that one. Okay. I remember, I remember when I was 17, 18 years old, and we were all reading missionary biographies, and kind of go to the missions field, and die as martyrs. You know, we had a whole gang of fiery young people. Yeah, you know. And so, I had this exaggerated notion of my maturity, because I was very dedicated. I was, what I mean by dedicated, sincere. But my maturity level was really low, and I didn't know the difference between sincerity and maturity. I thought if I was sincere, I must be mature. If my sincerity is genuine, my maturity would hold up, and that's not true. You are sincere, and that delights God's heart, many years before you're mature. Many years. So, I didn't know that. So, I remember the fateful, I had this actual conversation. The truth be known, I had it about a thousand times. But anyway, let's talk about one time. I said, oh God, I'm 18 years old. Oh, I did this yesterday. Oh, I can't believe it. God, can you believe I did that? See, and I thought God was shocked, because I was. You know, the Lord, I didn't hear anything, but he could have said something like, are you kidding me? There's so much more where that came from. Now, it was a statement of my pride, of course. That is pride. It is pride when you're shocked that you're weak. That's pride. I didn't know it was pride. I thought it was just depression. I was so depressed. Oh, I can't believe it. And I said the fateful, stupid words, can you believe it? I've asked the Lord, strike that one from the record, please. I got the picture. Don't let me hear that one again. Don't worry, Mike, it's forgiven. You're the one that keeps bringing it up, Mike, not me. I've already forgiven you of that stupid statement. Oh, God. I was scandalized. I was shocked that I did it, because I didn't know there was a difference between immaturity and sincerity. Now, I have walked, like many of you, with sincerity, but we're immature. We're immature. And what happens is a holiness preacher comes around and tells us our immaturity is rebellion, because God is angry at rebellion, but God actually enjoys his people while they're maturing. So we have the idea, when we get real mature, then God will finally enjoy us. Well, how mature is real mature? When does God actually enjoy us? I ask people this. I love to you know, young people this. When does God start enjoying you? In heaven. Okay. When you get a resurrected body, you can't sit no more. Okay, that's true. He does enjoy you there. That means between now and then, for 50 years or 100 years, he's gritting his teeth, enduring you the whole time, right? Well, that sounds yucky. Okay, let's say he enjoys us on the earth. Oh, okay, good. We've backed it down a little bit. He actually likes us on the earth. Okay, good. The critical question is, when does he like us on the earth? At the last five minutes on our deathbed, when we have no other bad motives? Is that for a minute and a half, he loves us on the earth and enjoy, I mean, enjoys us? He loves us the whole time, but enjoys us. No. When we're mature. Well, how mature is mature? Where's the cutoff line? I mean, are you a mature level five, or do you have to be a level six? When does God actually start smiling when you show up to worship him? Uh, five? Where did you get that? I don't know. I just made it up. I'm talking to some young guy. I go, you know what? God enjoys you now in your sincerity with your immaturity because he's a God of gladness. Beloved, you can never see him as a God of gladness till he's a God of tenderness and compassion. You will never see point two, the God of gladness, until you see point one, the God of tenderness, because an angry God can't be glad with immaturity. So there's a progression. So then the next one, let's go to the next one. I forgot what it is on my notes here. I know I got five or six points. Just put the next one up there. Okay. Okay. Oh yeah. That's my favorite one. Okay. God of, that is, that's my favorite one. Okay. The God of fiery affections. The God of gladness is a God with burning desire. When we say the bridegroom God, we mean he is tender with compassion. He's glad most of the time, not all the time when he relates to us. And he has fiery desires. He loves us. He has burning desire. He loves us. His heart is consumed with desire for us. I would love to spend just days on that. And in a bunch of our different things, we have chapters and on and on and tape series. Lots of us do on that subject right there. The God of burning desire. This ravishes our heart when we understand that. But here's what I find out. People come and maybe to our Bible school or something, we talk about the God of burning desire. But if you don't start with a God of kindness, I mean a God of compassion and a God of gladness, they will never believe he has burning desire. How can a God have passion for you when he's mad at you all the time? We're building it line upon line. And we're working our way through it. Then the next thing. Next. I have just, the reason I'm doing it this way, why I'm being so spacious this morning, is because I have a whole bunch of principles. I just gave them a few of my camera, which was okay. To sound booth next. Bickel has spaced out again. Ah, there it is. God of enthusiastic goodness. God has enthusiasm. He has goodness. See, God isn't just good in the general sense as God is good as a distance. What happened? I missed it. Mandy, I'm coming back there in a minute. I don't know what she put up there, but she's in trouble. Yeah. Big talk here. All bark, no bite. Okay. God of enthusiastic goodness. God is our number one cheerleader in life. When God looks at my life and your life, he, through his passion, he finds his evaluation of us. He does not write us off. He has plans for our success. He has plans for our prosperity. He has plans for exaltation in eternity forever and ever. He has so much enthusiasm. You know, all these other folks might look at your life and they say, you're a loser. I don't have confidence in you. You blew it so many times. I will never trust you again. God is good. His mercy endures forever. He comes and the scripture says it over and over. The Lord is good. He has a plan for you. He has great ideas for you and his mercy endures forever. His mercy will endure your weakness. God's mercy will be standing when your weakness is finally conquered. It's called maturity. We come before God. My weakness will conquer you. God says no such chance. My mercy will endure. My mercy will stand as champion. When the whole race is over and I've conquered your weakness, my mercy endures forever. Beloved, he is the champion. So and so and all these people, maybe they wrote you off. I'll never trust you again. I'll never believe in you again. You did it a hundred times. God says, I'll trust you. I got plans for you. I am your ultimate cheerleader. Beloved, this is the message of the bride of Christ. Well, I have about 10 of these points. I'm just going to stop with this because we got a bunch more. I'm going to end just because of time. We go on and on and on, but you're not going to get it right here. You get, you get it over getting opening the Bible and studying it over months and years. That's how you get it. But I've just pointed to the subject of Jesus, the bridegroom God, and therefore you and I is the cherished bride. Let's stand and have Misty. Now Misty's on these crutches because she just had a surgery on her leg a little while back and that's why she's going to, she was thinking they were going to be gone right about now, but it's about a week or so from now she'll be off of them. So Misty, I appreciate you bearing with this because she got a surgery on the back of her leg and okay test. Okay, now that wasn't a divine sign. That was just a sound system. We're just changing things around. That must have been God. I heard him whistle. Did you hear that? No, no. We're just switching some things around and getting the monitors worked out. That's all. I'm going to invite down to the front here. Oh, we got a few minutes for ministry time. Those of you that are saying this, this idea of the bridegroom God is, it's new to me, but I want it. I believe it. It seems right, or maybe you've been on it for a few months, but I'm not solid yet. I believe it, but I'm not sure. It doesn't connect yet, but I want more and we want to pray for you. And so I want to invite anyone. In fact, I'm gonna have you all sit down if you would, because everybody up there cannot, everyone up there cannot come down here. If you would like prayer for that, I'd like you to stand. Let's do it that way. If you'd like prayer, you're saying, I want to be released into this bridegroom reality. Okay, well, you can't all stand. I got to have a.