Mike Bickle emphasizes the significance of a mature partnership with Jesus as depicted in the Song of Solomon, highlighting the balance between intimacy with God and active ministry. He outlines three stages of spiritual growth: starting with ministry without intimacy, moving to intimacy without ministry, and ultimately achieving a partnership where ministry flows from deep intimacy. Bickle encourages believers to recognize their identity as beloved of Christ, which empowers them to serve others with genuine compassion and commitment. He stresses that true love for Jesus is expressed not only in personal devotion but also in the active engagement of serving others, especially in challenging circumstances.

Father, we come before your presence now in the name of Jesus. And Lord, I ask you for the spirit of inspiration to come and touch our hearts. I ask you for a holy impartation of the love of God to flood our souls in the name of Jesus, amen. This session, we're looking at Song of Solomon, chapter seven, verse nine, to chapter eight, verse four, which is class number 22. We're on our way to 24 sessions in this course on the study of the Song of Solomon. We've been working through the book, verse by verse, line by line. And again, I'll say tonight that I'm not going to cover all the notes. I'm gonna leave a lot of the material on the notes just for your own study. And one reason, because the material in the Song of Solomon, most people are so unfamiliar with the language, and it takes a while, as I said in our last class, it takes a while to get familiar with the language so your heart can move in it. But I wanna say this to you as a satisfied customer of the Song of Solomon, that once your heart gets, once your mind gets familiar, step one, then your heart gets accustomed to it, you begin to confess these truths to the Lord and speak them in prayer and declare them in your life with God, in your communion with the Lord. They are very powerful concepts. Even the language itself is very powerful. Now, we'll be singing the Song of Solomon a million years from now and a billion years from now. So one thing you can be sure of, though the language may be unfamiliar to you right now, this is carefully thought through lyrics by Jesus himself. And they're powerful. Now, I haven't felt power on every phrase, but I have felt the presence of the Lord and the tenderness of the Lord in many phrases over the years that when I first started reading and praying through the Song of Solomon, I never would have imagined it. So again, in this class, as I did the last one, I'm sort of giving a commercial to study the notes and to go deep and to learn the language and to be patient with yourself and give yourself a chance for your heart to get around this subject. Well, class 22, the Bride's Mature Partnership with Jesus. Now, the premise of this idea of mature partnership with Jesus, I don't have in the notes, but the premise of it is the original vision that the bride had in chapter one, verse four, where she's, and throughout the entire journey, her personal journey through the Song of Solomon, eight chapters, the tension is clear throughout the entire eight chapters. It's the tension that she states in chapter one, verse four, draw me after you in intimacy and let us run together in ministry. And so there's a natural tension between going deep in intimacy and going outward in ministry in our partnership with the Lord. Now, there's three stages that, again, I don't have this on the notes, but it's just a real simple concept, but I just wanna bring it to mind because it will make this passage make more sense. It's that there's three basic stages that I watch people go through, I go through in my own life. Stage number one, a believer, they're born again, typically, now there are exceptions, they're real involved with ministry, but very, very casual and very unintentional about intimacy, that's how most believers start. They're born again, they're ready to go, and they're ready to bring the good news to someone else, which is awesome. And so the first challenge is to get them to slow down in ministry to make time for intimacy. And many believers never, ever get out of stage one. And there's various reasons why they're really grouped with ministry, and it's not entirely at all because they're committed to servanthood. Ministry's fun at first. Ministry is a place to get friends. Ministry, if you do it, you build a platform for your future ministry, it opens doors. And there is a legitimate compassion for the people in need, but over time, just the role of doing ministry for the foundational, a fundamental role reason of, because it's needed by the people and it's a blessing to Jesus, most people don't stay steady on that motive for year after year after year. Kind of ministry's a little fun, again, it gives them a chance to interact with people, it opens some doors. Then they get enlightened as to the value of intimacy. So they move from stage one, ministry without intimacy, to intimacy with very little ministry. I watch that all the time. People swing the other way. I'm gonna be in his presence, I'm gonna be in his presence, I'm gonna be in his presence. And of course, that was the tension that the bride was challenged with by Jesus in Psalm 112, he said, I love it that you're sitting at the table enjoying me, but I want you to go with me on the mountaintops, I want you to leave the comfort zone, and I want you to be involved with me as I'm discipling the nations. So the stage two is intimacy without ministry. But stage three is what the song is all about. It's ministry that flows out of intimacy. It's not one or the other, it's both and in their proper sequence and order. And when we do ministry that flows out of intimacy, that's called partnership with Jesus. We're not in it just because ministry's fun. We're not in it because if we work hard, we get a, it opens doors and we have a bigger ministry later. We're not just kind of biding our time in the days of difficulty so one day we can be rich and famous and have a big ministry. We're in it for an entirely different reason. We're in it for partnership with the Lord. It's as the bride says, I wanna be with you where you are. I wanna be doing what you're doing. And the bride sees the people not as opportunities to increase and enhance her ministry, open doors, but she sees them as the Lord's inheritance. She sees them as people that are genuinely in need and she has real compassion, but it's not only she has compassion for them, she actually sees them as belonging to the Lord and a part of his inheritance. And so it's a whole different motivation. And so as we're going in chapter six, seven and eight, the primary themes of Song of Solomon six, seven and eight, it's ministry, not on the front end without intimacy. A lot of people start there and again, some never graduate and it's not intimacy without ministry, but it's ministry that's flowing out of intimacy because they see the Lord's inheritance and the Lord's value in the people. And they have a genuine compassion based conviction about helping people in need just for their own good. So it's ministry for the Lord's good and it's the ministry for the people's good. Now that's the partnership with the Lord that is rare, that is costly and that's what Paul the Apostle, that's how he presented ministry so much in the New Testament. So we'll give a quick review of Song of Solomon chapter six, verse 11 to chapter seven, verse nine, which was our last class of which we just looked at very casually and I left you to the notes. But again, I really urge you to read the notes and to get familiar with the language. It's not enough to read the notes, but again, you're gonna speak the concepts to God and the language of your heart is gonna be formed and you're gonna feel the Lord's presence in the midst of this language and these truths. Well, a review from our last class, paragraph A, and if you don't have the notes, they're on the internet, you can get them to follow along and to study later. The bride, what she does, she commits herself to this partnership type of ministry. Again, it's not ministry without intimacy, we all know about that. It's not intimacy without ministry, that's how people overreact, first season. First season, that's okay, but that's not the Lord's highest but it's ministry that flows out of intimacy because they see the Lord's inheritance in the people and they see the great need of the people to grow and that's called servanthood. That really takes a servanthood, but it's partnership with the Lord in the midst of the servanthood. Then paragraph B, we didn't develop this in the last class. We didn't even mention it, but it's in the notes. It's that the final verse of the last session is that Jesus commissioned the bride in a threefold way. And this threefold commission represents a very common or a very practical tension in leadership today in the body of Christ. Now, you don't have to be in a church organization, a leadership in a church organization to be a leader in the church. You're a leader. Someone says, what's a leader? I said, a leader is somebody that people follow. And you're only a leader if somebody's following you. I mean, you get a title, you can even get a job description. That doesn't mean you're a leader. You're only a leader if you turn around and people are doing what you're doing. That's the definition of a leader. And many people are leaders and they don't have titles because they have people following them. And the number doesn't have to be large, but there are people that wanna imitate your faith. They wanna do what you do and they wanna do it the way you do it. And for the reasons you do it, that's called leadership. Anyway, she gives a threefold commission to the leaders and she wants these three realities to be held in tension. She calls the leaders to nurture people, to give herself to building up others in practical ways. And there's a large dimension of the body of Christ that's really into practically helping people. And then the second commission, she commissions the leaders to be involved in the activity of the Holy Spirit, to contend for the supernatural dimension, the power dimension of the Spirit. And there's camps in the body of Christ that are really into the prophetic. They're really into the power of the Spirit. We're one of those camps. But some of those camps aren't really into helping people. They're just really into power, just gathering together and having power meetings see if the Spirit will move in meetings. And so, one group says, well, we're really into getting out and helping people. We're not really into the prophetic stuff. The prophetic people, well, we're really mostly into being together in meetings and seeing if power happens and we don't really go out that much. We have lots of conferences. It's what some of the power people do. But then the third commission is that Jesus says, make sure you maintain your intimacy. Now, some people say, I don't really care about the power thing that much or even the practical thing. I just wanna feel his presence. I wanna be near him. And they say intimacy, but the Lord doesn't want us to pick between the three. He wants to raise up a church in the end times that's very practical in reaching out to people that contends for the power of the Holy Spirit and is based in intimacy. And that's the threefold commission that we didn't cover in the last class, but it's in the notes. And that's where we left off in this new session of Song of Solomon, starting in chapter seven, verse nine. It begins with that premise of that threefold commissioning. And so what happens is that the first verse after the threefold commission, the bride speaks up and she says, the wine goes down smoothly for my beloved, moving gently the lips of sleepers. I am my beloved and his desire is for me. Now that's the first time you've ever heard that passage. It seems like really strange, but it is an awesome passage. Every single phrase is powerful and it will move you emotionally if you give it a little bit of time. I mean, it's not that that's the goal to be moved emotionally, but that is the product of touching the Holy Spirit in some dimensions of our relationship to the Holy Spirit. So what she's going to do, what she's saying here, Roman number three, Song of Solomon chapter seven, verse nine, the wine goes down smoothly for my beloved. Now what she's talking about is the wine of the spirit, which was referenced in the verse before. And she goes, it goes down smoothly. She's talking about living in agreement with the Holy Spirit. Now what happens often, and certainly we all understand this in our own lives. I do for sure. It's that the wine of the spirit doesn't always go down smoothly. Many times I joke over what the Holy Spirit is saying to me, or I resist him and I wrestle with him and I say no to him. That's the opposite of the wine going down smoothly. This talks about when the bride confesses this before the Lord and to the others as well, she is conveying her enthusiasm to agree with the Holy Spirit's leadership in her life. She's speaking a poetic language that she instantaneously obeys the spirit. There is not a wrestling. There's not a resisting. There's not a gagging and a choking over the mandates of the spirit and his claims over our life and the promptings that he gives us to bridle our tongue, to bridle our eyes, to bridle our time, to spend our money. At this point, of course, it's in chapter six. So she's deep into spiritual maturity. She's saying, I don't wrestle with the Holy Spirit. I just obey him. I quickly obey him. The wine goes down smoothly. Now, there's some of you that have been around for a few years here and we said this phrase a lot years ago and sometimes I'll be talking to some of you and in a difficult time, I can just think of conversations recently and one of my dear friends was talking about how things were difficult and she said to me, however, the wine goes down smoothly because I love him. It's for my beloved. It's because I'm in love with Jesus. I'm going to say yes to the leadership of the Holy Spirit in this area. Paragraph C, it's a decision to delight in the Holy Spirit's leadership in our life. And the reason we delight in it, as King David says, I delight to do your will, O God. And it doesn't always mean that we emotionally are just excited every time. Of course, there are times when our emotions are excited to do the will of God, but delighting to do the will of God has a decision dimension to it, not only an emotional overflow to it. Now, she says the wine goes down smoothly for my beloved. In paragraph D, she's saying Jesus is the one I love. The reason I quickly obey the Holy Spirit's leadership is because I love Jesus. It's because he is the one I love that I don't resist the Holy Spirit. Beloved, the more we live in agreement with the Holy Spirit and his leadership, the more he pours love in our heart for Jesus in a supernatural way. Now, we all, you know, conceptually, we want to be in love with Jesus, but it takes God to love God. It takes the power of the Holy Spirit to walk it out and to feel the weight of it. And so all of us have made a decision, and I want to love Jesus. And then we endeavor to love Jesus, and we find out that our flesh and just dark, our unrenewed thinking, and the devil attacks us, and people resist us, and loving Jesus is hard to actually do because it takes God to love God. It takes the power of God to actually walk this out. It takes a supernatural dimension of our life in the Spirit in order to actually walk out love for Jesus. And I want it to be more than a vision statement and a goal. I want to actually walk it out, but I can't except the Holy Spirit pours out love in my heart for Jesus. Well, if I want the Holy Spirit to pour out love in my heart, I have to be on good terms with the Holy Spirit. We can't live grieving the Spirit with what we do with our eyes, or our speech, or our time, and our money. I'm not even talking about scandalous sins right now. I'm talking about if we grieve the Spirit as a way of life with our eyes, our words, our time, and our money, and it's opposite of the wine goes down smoothly, we're choking on the wine of the Spirit constantly on the mandates of the Holy Spirit in our life, then what we're gonna find, we're not gonna have supernatural help to actually love Jesus. Our life goal, we're gonna constantly be frustrated in it. I have written in the end of paragraph D, when obedience is difficult, we speak the Word of God. Of course, that's just the biblical way. We speak the Word of God to our own heart. We speak the Word of God before Jesus. We speak it to the devil when he comes to tell us lies. And one of the phrases I want to give you, this is a great one. I mean, this is one I've said over the years, is that when obedience is difficult, just stop and pause and speak to the Lord and say, Lord, the wine goes down smoothly because you're my beloved, because I love you, and I choose to obey you, Holy Spirit. Now, some of you may never ever quote that, but some of you, that will get into your love language with God as it has with several of us over the years. And I tell you, when I say that to the Lord, I'm not thinking of a magical phrase. That's not where I'm going. But because I get the whole word picture, I mean, a picture's worth a thousand words, there's a whole word picture that comes to my mind when I say, when I'm finding myself wrestling, it's with bitterness or just drawing back in selfishness and drawing back and not obeying what the Holy Spirit's saying. Say, Lord, Lord, the wine goes down smoothly because you are my beloved, because you're the one I love. Okay, let's go to page two. Roman numeral four. We're gonna look at Song of Solomon chapter seven, verse 10. We'll go to the next verse. The wine goes down smoothly because I am my beloved's and his desire is for me. Song of Solomon chapter seven, verse 10. The only way we can maintain a life of quick obedience to the Holy Spirit to where instead of wrestling with him and resisting him and putting him off is if, the only way we can do Song of Solomon 7-9 is if we can say with truth and reality, Song of Solomon 7-10. Verse 10 is the foundation to live in verse nine. Verse nine, again, Song of Solomon 7-9 is this instantaneous obedience to the Holy Spirit. The wine goes down smoothly, but we can only maintain that if in fact we can say with understanding and reality, I am my beloved's and his desire is for me. That is a massive statement that is a Christianity 101. This needs to be in your love language with God, in your prayer life with God. You wanna say this sentence thousands of times between now and when you meet the Lord face-to-face when your life is over in this age. You wanna have this on your spiritual resume, so to speak, or in your spiritual history with God. You want this love language. My question is, and it's just to make you make note of it, have you ever spoken this language, this phrase to the Lord ever once in your life? And my point isn't like, if you haven't, something's wrong with you, you say, well, if I did, I wouldn't be taking the Song of Solomon class. That's why I'm taking the class, so I can learn this kind of stuff. But my point is you wanna say this phrase over and over and over again in your worship, in your prayer, in your contending against temptation. You wanna declare this statement. Paragraph A, the bride's obedience in verse nine is rooted in this spiritual identity in verse 10. So don't skip verse 10 and go right to verse nine. I'm gonna do this wine-goes-down-smoothly reality. No, beloved, you'll only do that if you're rooted and grounded in the reality of verse 10. There's two different dimensions of spiritual identity in this one verse. Her first spiritual identity issue is that she sees herself as one that Jesus desires. His desire is toward me. That's the second part of the verse. But that's the foundation. That actually is the reality we get first before the first part of the verse. His desire is toward me. What a massive statement. What a massive reality that will radically change our lives. The second part of her identity is I am my Beloved's, which means I belong to him, which really is a statement of obedience. When you say I am my Beloved's, you're saying I am committing myself to his leadership and to his ownership. I am his. I am my Beloved's means I've given up my own right to live in another way and I will live with him in mind and with his heart in mind and his will in mind. Now notice that the reason that I am my Beloved's, the reason I belong to Jesus is because his desire is for me. There's actually a sequence and an order to it. I love him. He's mine, meaning I submit my life to his leadership because he first loved me. It's what the Bible says clearly in 1 John 4, 19. You will only love Jesus to the degree that you understand that he loves you. I wrote a book called Passion for Jesus. So people ask me, how do you get Passion for Jesus? The book is not titled perfectly accurate. The real title of the book should be Jesus's Passion for Me. That's what the book's really about. The way you get Passion for Jesus is you study his passion for you. The way that you get devoted to Jesus is study his devotion to you. The way you get dedicated to Jesus is you study his dedication to you. Whatever you want in your heart for God, study it in his heart for you. Let's go to paragraph B. Let's break this down a little bit more. Her first spiritual identity. She sees herself as one that he desires. Now this is the most prominent theme in the Song of Solomon. It's not the only theme, but it's the most prominent. God's desire for me, even in my weakness. Beloved, we will never, ever exhaust that truth in this age. And then in the age to come, we'll remember forever with great gratitude. We'll remember how kind he was. We will only, in the age to come, long that we would have grasped more thoroughly and clearly how tender and kind he actually was. And how he actually felt towards us in our struggle and in our difficulty in this age. She has deep insight into Jesus's pleasure and enjoyment and passion for her. Beloved, did you know that God actually enjoys you? He actually likes you. He doesn't just love you, he actually likes you. He has desire for you. God the Father, God the Son, God the Spirit. This revelation will powerfully change your life. Now, when I understand more and more his desires for me, I live less and less in the pain and the confusion of living according to other people's opinions of me. It's true of all of us. If we begin to understand God's opinion of you, that he desires you, what other people think of you, it has less power. Now, you know, you've heard it all the time. I don't care what anybody says. That is nothing further than the truth. When a guy says, I don't care what anybody says, they're normally frustrated and angry and they care profoundly. That's why they're frustrated and angry. We deeply care what other people think. And we're not supposed to get to a place where we don't care. I hear it all the time, but mostly people say it when they're frustrated because they're on the verge of being rejected. And that's okay to say that, but the point is you don't wanna believe it. We do care what people say, but we don't want it to be the number one force in our emotional life. And by nature, it is. Just by the natural way of the human heart, we think more about how other people desire us or don't desire us. That's called rejection if they don't. But if we can tap into a greater reality, his desire is for me, that reality actually has more power over how other people's desire you or their opinion of you. Not that you will get 100% free, but we can get substantially free in a place of healthiness, of wholeness emotionally, but only because we're rooted and grounded in a more powerful revelation. His desire is for me. It gives us great emotional security. This revelation does. I wanna challenge you to speak the word. When you feel rejected, when you feel the anxiety, you're not even rejected, you're getting kind of all revved up to get rejected. You're preparing with anxiety. Well, what's wrong? What did they say? I don't know. I just know they're gonna say no. And that's very common in the human psyche, in the human way of thinking. But here's what we wanna do. When we find that we feel this lie that our future is in the hands of another person, them liking us or not liking us, and maybe even our future in a minimal way, just a little bit of our future is in the hands of somebody who's gonna open or shut a door because they like us or they don't like us, we can speak. It is written. His desire is for me. His desire is for me. And I don't have to live in slavery to how other people desire me or don't desire me. I'm just talking about the favor of man in just everyday life. And it's not like there's any one person that controls your whole future. But a lot of people, their opinion affects your future a little bit at least. And we get so anxious about that little bit of how they can affect our future. But beloved, we have a reality that's far more powerful than those people liking us or not. His desire is for me. But here's my question to you. Do you speak that word in your heart in a time of anxiety and fear? Or do you just ride the storm out of the anxiety of anticipating rejection or the actual rejection itself? Both of them are similar, but they're a bit different. There's distinctions to them. Or do you actually speak the word of God and take your stand on the rock of God's word? These are things we sing in our spontaneous singing when we make melody in our heart to the Lord and we sing with our spirit. We sing our prayer to the Lord. You wanna sing. This is a key phrase. Matter of fact, in the Song of Solomon, there are about 25 really, really good one-liners. I mean, I don't know what the number actually is. I've never counted them up. But every person will have their own life with the Holy Spirit where he will highlight one verse the other. But this one of his desires for me and the wine goes down smoothly, those are fantastic ones to say to the Lord. Paragraph C. We'll go look a little bit more in detail on the second part of her spiritual identity. She says, I am my beloved's. In other words, she sees herself as a lover of God. Her primary goal of life is to be a lover of God. I am his. I'm no longer my own. I belong to another. It's not okay if I sin or compromise in that way. I belong to another. I am my beloved's. It's a statement of commitment. It's a recognition of ownership over our life of another. It matters what we do with our eyes. You know, in this time in history when the whole internet perversion is increasing so dramatically and it's gonna go nowhere but far more multiplied, it does matter what you do with your eyes because you are your beloved's. You do belong to another one that you truly love. Well, if you love him, declare it in your soul. And when your soul's being pulled in the darkness, whether, again, it's our words, our eyes, the way we spend our time or our money, it matters because there's one that we love and we belong to him. So when you say, I am my beloved's, all that moves his heart when you say that. Even though you might say, I am my beloved's, but then you do something in the next hour that is opposite of the fact that you are under his leadership, that you belong to him. But then we repent and we line our heart back up with again. We get in line with our confession. Beloved, we overcome by the blood of the lamb and the word of our testimony. We overcome by the confession of the word of the truth of what's in our heart and what's in God's heart. That's how Jesus overcame the devil in Matthew 4. He spoke it as written. He overcame by the word of his testimony or the confession of the word in his heart. And the confession of our lips isn't limited to getting more money or bigger cars or houses. Beloved, we can use the word of faith and the word of confession to enhance our life in God, in love and our fellowship in the Holy Spirit. We can use the prayer of faith, not only for circumstances to change, but for our heart in God to go to a whole nother level. And we can do it by the declaration of the word of faith. She has a revelation here that she is under the ownership and the leadership of another. That's a remarkable revelation that we get little by little over the years. I mean, as the years go on, I understand more and more that I am the inheritance of another. There's another one in whom I am his inheritance. It's not just about I have an inheritance. There's one that has an inheritance in me. I belong to him. And when we declare that, I belong to you, I am my beloved's, and then you could say, because your desire is for me. That's the foundation of the whole thing. And then when you say, I belong to you because you desire me, I belong to you because you desire me, then you will say far more consistently, the wine goes down smoothly for my beloved. We will find ourselves, instead of resisting the spirit, flowing in the spirit in our inner life. Not just in a ministry time. We wanna flow in the spirit in our inner man, in our life in God and our fellowship with the Holy Spirit. Top of page three, paragraph D. And again, if you want the notes, you can get them on the website. They're available. As you can see, we're not gonna get that far in the chapter eight, verses one to four, but it's all there on the notes. And again, with Song of Solomon, there's so much, if you're new with it, there's so many terms that are new. You gotta get familiar with them before you're gonna really connect at the heart level. But beloved, let's do this. Let's go deep with these truths. And let's use the language of the Bible. This is the language of the Holy Spirit, Song of Solomon. Song of Solomon is as much inspired by the Holy Spirit as the Gospel of John and the Book of Romans. I mean, it's Bible 101. I mean, it's foundational Bible. It's not kind of an exotic book over there. It's anointed by the Holy Spirit, and it's made to unlock the human heart in love. Paragraph D. Here's how we're defined most. Your life and my life, I am defined most, not by my ministry, how good it's going or how bad it's going. And I go through seasons over the last 30 years of ministry. I've had seasons where just everything had a momentum and other seasons where everything, it seemed to be breaking. Does anybody relate to that? I'm not like, what's the deal here? But beloved, my life is not defined by how good my circumstances are going, whether it's a ministry or business or relationships. It's not even defined by how successful I am in my spiritual disciplines and even in all the issues I'm struggling with in my life through the years. My life is defined by something even bigger than that. My life is defined because He desires me and I am committed to Him. He is mine. He desires me and I am committed to Him. And this is the confession that we make before the Lord. I'm a lover of God. That's who I am. That's what I do. Oh, I love the song that Misty sings. I'm in love with God and He's in love with me. Oh, you know, I love the song. I get about three of them all merged together. Anyway, that's the one, you got it. Roman numeral five from the last class. I just have to say it again, even though we're far behind on time here. Our greatest glory is the fact we can move God's heart. Beloved, that's the greatest thing about your life is you can think and act and move God's heart, the eternal God. This is, it's remarkable. There's nothing more dynamic any human being has than their ability to move God. What a remarkable reality. You can be in a prison and move God. You think thoughts that agree with Him and then you back it up with actions and it moves Him and He rewrites it in His book and He remembers it forever. The movements of our heart are so important to Him, He writes them in His book. It's what it says there in Psalm 56, eight. They're written in His book. Do you know the way that you move Him? Do you? Well, let's go on to Roman numeral seven. Skip a little bit since we're really out of time. I wanna leave you with this point, very important point. Roman numeral seven, Song of Solomon, chapter seven, verse 12. The bride is crying out to Jesus, come my beloved, verse 11. Come my beloved, that's intercessory. She's saying, Jesus, come together with me and release your power as I get involved in ministry. She goes, let's go down to the field, let's lodge in the villages, get up early to the vineyards. Those are different descriptions of ministry. She goes, I'm gonna labor with you, now come with me, let's do it together, let's be involved in the lives of the people in the kingdom of God and serving Him. This was such a radical verse that the Lord spoke to me years ago. In Song of Solomon, chapter seven, verse 12. I can remember it, I was just pausing. I remember where I was, where I was sitting when the Lord spoke this to me. And He said, it's this phrase, there I will give you my love. Where is there? It's in the midst of the rigors of servanthood. She's in the field, in the villages, in the vineyards. She's working, she's crying out in intercession, Lord, come with me, release your presence, and I'm gonna be there working together with you. Because remember, stage one is people do ministry without intimacy, stage two, they do intimacy without ministry. Stage three, it's ministry that flows out of intimacy, and it's for a whole lot of other reasons than people might initially be doing it. And it's there she gives Jesus her love in the highest way. Paragraph eight, the bride here is experiencing undistracted intimacy with Jesus while involved in ministry. There, where's there? In the selfless labor, the risks of faith, the attack of the devil, the setbacks, the disappointments, there we give Him our love. We don't disconnect our heart while we're laboring in ministry and building up the kingdom. We stay engaged with Jesus, and it's in the rigors of serving and setbacks and people being against you and things not working right, and the money doesn't come through in the way we think it should have, or the prophecy ends up unfolding very differently than we dreamed that it would. It's all opposite of what we thought. Oh, that's what that prophetic word means. And it's there that we give Him our love. She embraces both being drawn in ministry, I mean, in intimacy and running in ministry. She yearns with all of her heart to go deep in God, and yet she wants to partner with Him, and it's in this place she learns to do both. She learns to love Jesus while serving people for Jesus' sake. Now, it's an easy thing to say. Most people really have a hard time getting into this realm of grace, because remember, Song of Solomon chapter seven, verse 12, comes after verse nine and verse 10, the verses we've just been looking at. We're not gonna just skip Song of Solomon one, two, three, four, five, and suddenly we're overflowing in undistracted love in the rigors of ministry. This is, I mean, chapter seven is the height of her maturity in the Spirit, but this is where the Holy Spirit wants to take us. We don't wanna lose our ministry in the rigors, I mean, lose our intimacy in the rigors of ministry. Top of page five. Now, you know, I know and you know, it's much easier to love Jesus at the banqueting table back in chapter two. His banner over me is love, sustain me, refresh me, I'm lovesick. Well, of course you're lovesick in chapter two. You're doing nothing but listening to love songs, getting wooed and wowed by Jesus. He hasn't taken you out of the cave yet. I mean, being lovesick for Jesus in chapter two is good, but beloved, it's not deep. Lot of people are lovesick for Jesus in chapter two, but it's being loved two times in the book of Song of Solomon she says she's lovesick. Chapter two, she's isolated, insulated, love songs, Starbucks coffee, I mean, she's all by herself, it's awesome. She's just like crying and journaling and nobody bugs her. And she's in intro to IHOP and nobody knows her cell phone in Kansas City. Oh, this is what life is about. Well, it is in this season, but being lovesick in chapter two, insulated and isolated, even though that's not even the Lord's exact agenda. That's way different than being lovesick in chapter five, when the watchman strike her and wound her, the presence of God is lifted. She's still lovesick in chapter five and chapter five comes a long way before chapter seven here. So give yourself a little bit of time, but this is where we're going. It's easy to love Jesus at the banqueting table, but we get out from the controlled environment of the banqueting table and we start the risks of faith and the devil strikes and people are mad and all kinds of things happen. And the bride says in chapter seven, verse 12, there I will give you my love. The immature maiden, which she's very sincere, so her immaturity is, I'm not saying that negatively, she can love Jesus in private, but she can't sustain it if there's anything negative going on in her life or in the difficulty of true servitude. I mean, serving when the people aren't saying thank you, serving when the presence of God is not being released and the money is not coming in and nobody's appreciating it, but you're doing it for God and in God. Say, I love you there because, that's chapter seven, verse 12, because of chapter seven, verse 10, because I am yours and your desire is for me. That's why I can love you there is because of that reality. You can't do verse 12 without verse 10, it doesn't work. Requires maturity to get there and that's what we're all aiming, to live there. Now, the bride is walking in what I'm calling apostolic Christianity of Philippians 3.10. Philippians 3.10, we see these three dimensions that I mentioned earlier from back in chapter seven, verse nine, this threefold commission, we find it right here in Philippians 3.10. It's that she has, her desire is to know the Lord. She says, oh, that I might know him. She wants to have intimacy, but that's not all she wants. She wants more than intimacy. She wants the power of his resurrection. She wants power ministry and she wants practical ministry, just everyday helping people as well. She wants to help people, but she also, what Paul says, I wanna encounter Jesus in the fellowship of suffering, the difficulty, the hardship. Now, what happens is that often we choose one of the three. Well, nobody chooses the hardship. Well, some groups do. I mean, they get the toughest books on suffering, read them all, and they kind of get together and figure out how bad it can be. Beloved, we wanna know him. We wanna know the fellowship of his suffering, but we know the power of the resurrection. One of the most remarkable examples in Paul's life of bringing these three together is in Acts chapter 16, when he was in prison in Philippi. He went to prison. I mean, he goes to the city and he preaches, and they don't like him, so they throw him in prison. So he's in jail, but he's worshiping in the jail. Paul in silence, most of you know the story. So he's worshiping, he's loving Jesus, but everything terrible is happening. I mean, let's not glamorize this. Do you know what the plumbing system was like in an ancient jail? Do you know what the air condition system was like in an ancient prison? Do you know what the privacy factor was like in an ancient prison? Do you know what the food service was like? It was horrible. It smelled terrible. It was super hot or super cold, whichever season, and there's all these mean, smelly guys next to him, and they're angry, and a lot of them got demons. There's no quiet time at all. He's worshiping. How did you get there, Paul? I thought you were obedient to God. I was, he got in the, and then, of course, the earthquake hits and the jail opens, and then he ministers to the guy. I mean, you'd think, I'm outta here. He stops and leads someone to the Lord. He's in love with Jesus, worshiping. He's in total difficulty, and he's ministering to people for the Lord's sake. I mean, what, that's amazing. It's a great story, but when you really break it down, most people wouldn't really be in that frame of mind if they were in that prison, just like I just described. Paul said in chapter, I mean, in paragraph D, and I'll end with this. I'm gonna have Misty come out. We're just gonna sit before the Lord for a few minutes in our break time, and then you can take a break if you need to. She'll come on up right now. That 1 Corinthians chapter 15, verse 10, Paul said that he labored more than all the others. Paul was in love with Jesus, second to nobody, but he labored more than everybody. Like, how do you figure? Paul, what is it that you knew about God where he said, I labor more than all the other apostles, and yet he's compelled by the love of God and driven by the love of God in that positive sense? Beloved, we want to love him there. There we give him our love. Chapter seven, verse 12. I remember it was some years ago. I remember the very place I was sitting, and I was bothered by just the difficulty of ministry, and I just wanted to forget ministry and just be in intimacy and isolated, and the Lord says, no, no, that's not it. I wanna have partnership with you. I don't want you just to feel my presence with great love songs. I wanna actually work together with you. I want you and me to be close, and you can't do that just one-sided. You can't do it only telling me you love me and me telling you I love you. I want us to do things together. It's called serving. I want you and I to serve together, and I was thinking, man, people are mean, and things don't work, and the prophecies all end up different than I thought, and man, it's hard, and I remember, because I'd taught Song of Solomon, but I never really paid much attention, and it was just like a bolt of lightning, that verse. I mean, I never paid much attention to chapter seven, verse 12, and so I wasn't reading it. It just came to me, the phrase, and I knew it because I'd taught it. And it came to me, there, there you shall give me your love in the midst of the rigors of labor. There is where I want you to love me. Yes, keep your prayer life going. Yes, make time for me, but don't let go of the rigors and the sacrifices of serving my people. There is where you will love me best and love me most. I went, oh, Lord, I don't wanna love you there. I wanna love you over here. He goes, no, this is a far more superior way because your heart will expand. There's so much more I will give you about and show you about myself in the place of servitude. Amen, let's end with that. Let's stand. Now, just as we.