Mike Bickle explores the concept of the 'ravished heart of God' in the Song of Solomon, emphasizing how God's love and passion for His people can inspire radical obedience. He highlights that true obedience stems from a deep understanding of God's affection, which empowers believers to move beyond fear and shame. Bickle illustrates that even a sincere desire to obey, despite immaturity, is beautiful to God and moves His heart. The sermon encourages believers to embrace their identity as cherished brides of Christ, fostering a deeper relationship with Him through understanding His passionate love. Ultimately, Bickle calls for a revelation of God's tender emotions towards humanity, which is essential for the church's growth and maturity.

Song of Solomon chapter 4. We're going to look at the subject of the ravished heart of God. This is session 17 as we're continuing in in our studies in the Song of Solomon. For those of you that are just beginning with us tonight, all the notes are on the website so you can catch up if you have an interest to do that. One of the most dynamic presentations of God's heart and the whole Word of God is the Song of Solomon. Let's give a quick review over the last session, the last passage, so we can understand the context of this most dynamic part of Song of Solomon where the Lord declares that his heart is ravished over his bride. And it's this truth the Holy Spirit wants to touch and stir and awaken our heart to radical obedience. We will never be more obedient than we have revelation of God's heart for us and his passion for us. Roman numeral one, a review of the last passage of scripture right before the one we're going to look at tonight, Song of Solomon chapter 4 verse 1 to 8. In that passage the bride had just come through a season of divine discipline and Jesus surprised her because in chapter 4 verse 1 he tells her, he says, behold you are beautiful my love, behold you are beautiful. And she had just come through a time of discipline and she was expecting a rebuke from the Lord because she's still in the process of maturing. She's still just in the place of saying yes to the Lord with wholeheartedness. She doesn't understand all the implications of it but she has said yes to the Lord. One of the most important principles in our journey with the Lord of having confidence in his love is knowing this, paragraph b, that our obedience begins when we set our heart on obeying not just after we gain the breakthrough and the victory. Many believers they only have confidence in God's love when they get the breakthrough and the part they don't understand that without confidence in God's love they're not going to get the breakthrough in the way that they're in the way that they are desiring. So they're waiting and waiting and waiting to feel confident in love because something dynamic happens in our spirit when we feel confident in love. Our spirit opens to God. We run to him. We become fearless in our obedience to him. We don't feel shame. We don't feel pushed back by God and something dynamic happens in us. A new resolve is imparted to us when we feel confident before him in love. We run to him. We become fearless in our dedication to him. We're not afraid that we're going to be rejected or or cast out. We're not afraid that we're missing something in the world because we're being because we're being dedicated to God. Many people they come up short in their obedience because they think they're missing something when they say no to the spirit of the world but that's something that people fear they're missing. That something is touched in their spirit when they feel confident in God's love. Now God wants us confident in his love before the breakthrough not after the breakthrough only because the only way we're going to get the full breakthrough is by having this confidence. So it's very important principle to understand that God sees that our obedience begins when we say yes and of course that was the theme of the last session so I don't want to spend too much time there. Paragraph D Song of Solomon chapter 4 verse 6 and anyone that wants these notes that doesn't have them you can get them on the website they're available there to anybody who wants them. She says in chapter 4 verse 6 this is when the deep decision for obedience is made full obedience. She says I will go to the mountain of Myrrh because if you remember those of you that have been following along with this series it was this issue back in chapter 2 verse 8 to 10 where Jesus said leave the comfort zone and come to the mountain with me and she said no and that led to the time of discipline. Now under this influence of God's love for her calling her beautiful and loving her she says I will go to the mountain I have the resolve I have the courage to leave the comfort zone and to move into deeper places with God that I've ever known before I will go to the mountain of Myrrh and we know that the concept of Myrrh in the Song of Solomon points it's a fragrant spice but it's a burial spice it it's that paradox of the pain of death but the fragrance of great perfume. She goes I'll go I don't care what it costs me I'll go and this is when our enjoyment of the Lord goes to a whole new level when we say concerning the area the Holy Spirit's challenging us to move forward in I will go I don't care what it costs me I know there's a pain dimension to Myrrh there's a costly dimension but there's a fragrance and a perfume that's related to Myrrh I will go. Now interesting paragraph f she hasn't yet gone to the mountain she's only said yes she doesn't actually embrace the difficulty till chapter 5 verse 2 to 8 but the saying yes moves the heart of God and that's a very dynamic principle as we're growing in the Lord because it establishes our heart in confidence in the fact that God has he sees beauty in our life through the grace of God and he loves us he sees our life is beautiful before him she hasn't even gone to the mountain she's only said yes and when we say yes it moves the heart of God even before the follow-through is complete because the yes was a sincere yes the ravished heart of God for his people revelation I mean Song of Solomon chapter 4 verse 9 Jesus's heart is ravished for his people he says you have ravished my heart my sister my bride you have ravished my heart even with one look of your eyes this verse summarizes the Song of Solomon the high point of the Song of Solomon that you have ravished my heart this is God speaking to his people many believers who are very sincere they have no grid for the idea that God is filled with desire for them and this will be a significant foundational truth for the end-time church because the end-time church that cries come Lord Jesus cries in worship and intercession come Lord Jesus but we cry as a in our bridal identity we we cry out as people who understand we are a cherished bride before a passionate bridegroom a working definition of the word ravished from the Webster's uh the Webster's dictionary to be filled with emotions of joy or to be filled with emotions of delight because of one who is unusually attractive and God is filled with emotions of joy and delight because he sees unusual beauty in his people he sees beauty in his people like he sees it no other place in creation now we don't see it because we don't have the mind of the spirit but the more that we see through God's eyes the more we see the beauty in our own life and we see that beauty in the lives of others even while they're maturing in the things of the spirit paragraph b the ravished heart of God this revelation equips us for a hundredfold obedience a person who feels rejected and filled with shame they do not press in with the kind of resolve and fearlessness and courage and confidence that's required to go deep in God in a hundredfold obedience again as i said a few moments ago many believers they're just so afraid they're going to miss out on pleasure and joy if they say no to the spirit of the world they're so afraid they don't quite know what it is they're afraid of but it's missing out but the person the man the woman that's confident in their spirit about the love of God and his feeling for them something is so different in their spirit they feel a satisfaction they feel a delight and a pleasure that gives them the courage to move on even in their brokenness and in their shame they feel excitement and courage to go deeper in God and to run towards him with an open spirit instead of drawing back in fear of rejection from God or fear of missing out on something in this world salvation is so much more than receiving the legal position of the gift of righteousness now it's important that we understand that when we come to Jesus 2nd Corinthians 5 21 he gives us his own righteousness as a gift and when God sees us he sees us in a legal position as accepted accepted fully in God's court in God's presence but it's not enough to only understand we're accepted salvation is more than God stamping our passport you know accepted approved it's much more than that God has deep feelings for us and he wants us to have reciprocal feelings he wants us to be moved by those feelings and then empowered by them to have the feelings back for him in a deep way beloved our feelings for God are only a reflection of our understanding of his feelings for us this is essential to understand God's affection for us because we will never have more passion for God than we understand that he has for us 1st John 4 19 the well-known passage says that we love God because we understand he first loved us that's what the verse means we love God because we understand he loved us we will be dedicated to God because we first understand he's dedicated to us we will have passion for God because we first understand he has passion for us you want to grow in your passion for God study God's passion for you it's a very very important subject the next Roman numeral the Christian paradigm of God the Christian paradigm of God that is a revelation of God with deep emotions and tenderness and feelings of passion for us now many Christians don't have this paradigm of God the revelation of God is a tender father and as a passionate bridegroom which are different facets of God's heart this idea was an entirely new idea in religious history now I want to lay this out for just two or three minutes that when Jesus came the people even the people of God did not have this comprehension of God though the Old Testament clearly stated that God was a tender father and a passionate bridegroom the leaders of Israel in that day did not grasp this concept and they did not emphasize it and when Jesus came and revealed himself in this way it was so foreign to the mindset of the religious and the secular mindset of the people of that of that time paragraph b in Jewish tradition they emphasized God is holy that was the primary emphasis of the Jewish mindset of that day and what they meant usually by God is holy is that God is separated from sin they didn't think of God as sharing human experience they thought of God as so awesome and terrifying which God is awesome and terrifying but they thought by the very fact that God is God he was incapable of understanding let alone sharing human experience so they saw God is totally separate from anything that they were really about the Greek philosophy of that day had a similar problem in their thinking about God they saw God as emotionally distant from human beings one of the primary ideas in Greek philosophy and it's still in the church today is this idea that of God's inability to experience or to have emotion the inability for God to feel anything there's many people holiness preachers that God is so high and so awesome he's not affected by anything that we do because they think that would in some way detract from his glory if he was moved in any way by us or anything on the earth in a deep in a powerful way here's the idea that the Greek philosophers had and this Greek philosophy is is rampant in the church even today they had the idea here here's how they reason that if God felt anything he would be so influenced by what he felt he would be capable of being controlled by what he felt it's the idea they they would argue that if you felt joy or sorrow you became vulnerable to the person that made you joyful or sorrowful if they made you joyful you might do something that you would regret later or if you became sorrowful you might draw back and be overwhelmed and and you it would affect your character it would affect your actions and so they reason that if God could be affected by any emotions high or low in that way even in that short amount of time somebody who brought those emotions to God would in that moment be greater than God for that one circumstance and they said this is an impossible idea God can't be affected because if he was he would be vulnerable and then that means we would have power over him and that means in that limited way we're greater than God in that situation and so the Greeks were very uh established in that idea and that thought process though maybe not brought out to that kind of you know thought through in detail many believers have that way of thinking but it's Greek philosophy the Epicureans which were part of the one uh school of Greek philosophy they argued that the gods the plural gods they lived in the realm of bliss detached from the affairs of the lower world so they didn't even know what happened down here because they lived in a bliss that that would affect them in a negative way if they had any connection to what happened in the earth so paragraph d just in summary the Jews understood a holy God who was separated the Stoics had a feelingless God the Epicureans had a detached God and it's into this context of religious thinking that Jesus came on the scene and presented a totally different idea than anybody was thinking he presented the idea of God who deliberately subjected himself to human feeling to human experience even temptation and suffering he deliberately gave himself to these kinds or allowed himself to be touched by these kind of human emotions and dynamics paragraph e top of page 3 it says in Hebrews 4 15 for we do not have a high priest of course that's speaking of Jesus is the high priest we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses Jesus can sympathize with our weakness he has sympathy there was never an idea of a God with sympathy that was emphasized even among the people of God even in the Old Testament time they had an idea of God with mercy now King David touched this as an individual but it was it was not something that was emphasized or established in the time of Jesus that we have a high priest who cannot be we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weakness but our high priest is one who that in all points is tempted and experiences the human dilemma in the way that we do this is a I mean absolutely remarkable and but a completely bizarre idea to the religious mindset of Jesus's day it says in Hebrews 5 that Jesus actually suffered he learned obedience he learned obedience by the things he suffered what an unusual idea that Jesus presented when he came to the earth presented it in the way that he lived in the way that he died in the way that he related to the father paragraph f it was inconceivable to the religious mindset of the first century it was inconceivable that a holy God could have the capacity for tenderness or the capacity for affections or sympathy or for suffering that resistance continues today in the religious mindset both Christian and non-christian religions I mean Islam has no comprehension of a God like this and it's the message of the ravaged heart of God that's made manifest through Jesus that's going to cause Islam to awaken I mean to cause the Muslim people to say the God of love the God of tenderness the God of passion that's the God my heart craves to know and the Hindus and the Buddhists and Judaism the Jews the religious Jews do not have a God like this in their image beloved the body of Christ does not have a God like this in their thinking now they know typically that Jesus is merciful they everybody that's a believer knows the idea that Jesus has mercy but the implications of that on our emotional life and the breaking of that down to God's emotion towards us is something the body of Christ needs a significant revelation of and the church will before Jesus returns because the church will function in her bridal identity the spirit and the bride will cry come and the church will have confidence in Jesus as a passionate bridegroom and herself as a cherished bride before the Lord returns this is going to happen this is why the message of the song of Solomon we know that the Holy Spirit is going to establish it in the church worldwide I'm not talking about my version of it or your version of it but the general message of the song of Solomon God is raising up singers and musicians and preachers and writers who are going to put these ideas in the people of God across the nations with great power and great authority paragraph g the capacity to deeply love the capacity for deep feelings is unique to the human spirit and I want to add this point and the reason it's unique is because only the human spirit is made in the image of God Genesis 1 verse 26 angels are not created with these capacities that God has only humans have and this capacity for affection this a capacity for tenderness that is unique to the human spirit because God has those capacities therefore we have them these this capacity brings us to unimaginable heights in the glory of God now in the age to come it will happen to every believer but beloved we can touch some of these dimensions of glory in this age we don't have to wait to the resurrection to begin to experience this more and more and more but it's this capacity for affection is also a very dangerous capacity because it's this capacity if not if we don't yield to the grace of God it's this longing with passion and affection if perverted it brings a human being to agonizing depths of depression and despair but it's the same capacity that brings us to the heights of glory as well and we only have this capacity because God does roman number three Jesus's revelation of his love for us God loves us in the same way that God loves God I just wanted to say it kind of in a strange way but I just want you to catch it Jesus declared in John 15 verse 19 he said the way the father loves me in the same measure that God loves me is the same measure that I love you beloved this is indescribable in its implications of glory that the measure in which God loves God that's how he loves us and that's how we're going to love God eventually by the power of the Holy Spirit we're going to grow the church worldwide will reach a dimension of that in this this age surpassing any time in history but we will go on into the depths of that reality in the age to come in the in the power of the resurrection with our resurrected bodies let's go to the top of page four roman numeral four Jesus's passionate affection for his bride well let's look at the passage now we'll just look we're not going to cover all the verses that's why I'm leaving you with notes so you can read them on your own Jesus is speaking to the bride who has just come out of a season of discipline who has just recently said yes to the Lord to the deeper thing to the deeper issues of obedience she hasn't actually walked them out but she has sincerely resolved to obey the Lord in her private life in God she goes yes I will I will go to the mountain there is no area that I will refuse you in Holy Spirit that's what she was saying in terms of our language of today now Jesus is responding and in verse 9 he says you have ravished my heart my sister my bride you have ravished my heart with one look of your eyes your eyes of devotion with one link of your necklace then he goes on to make one of the great statements also in the song of Solomon how beautiful is your love my sister my bride how much better than wine is your love to me this is God speaking about the beauty of the love of his people and the and the bride is not yet fully mature she's I mean we're still in chapter four she has to go through chapter five six seven and eight and yet Jesus is relating to her in this progression of her passion unto holy love before Jesus she's only in the growth process and yet this is how Jesus views her paragraph d Jesus says with one look of your eyes Jesus's heart beloved if you grasp this this will change your life what I'm about to say in this next sentence or two Jesus's heart is moved by every movement of your heart towards him even in this very hour there's an issue that he's the Holy Spirit is challenging you to greater obedience or greater faith and maybe you've been resisting him and drawing back and I'm not sure I know I don't want to lose out I don't want to fail again I feel like you're mad at me anyway Lord and and I don't even feel comfortable in my relationship with you and we begin to understand that our love to him is beautiful and with even one look one the movements of our heart to obey him each movement of our heart it moves him each look of devotion every prayer meeting anytime you whisper a statement of commitment or love walking down the street or driving in the car each look of your eye of devotion moves his heart many believers only think of the the the extravagant acts of obedience the occasional breakthrough in their life and that God might possibly remember that and write it in his book the the scripture makes it clear and I have several verses there I won't go into but even a cup of cold water done in his name he will remember hebrews 6 verse 10 he says if I forget even one act of love you can charge me with injustice it says that God is not so unjust to forget any of the love that we've shown in his name God writes every single movement of our heart towards him he writes it in his book and it's precious to him paragraph f Jesus is speaking he says how beautiful how fair is your love to me if we could understand that our love even our weak love our immature love but it is sincere it is real even when it's weak because the bride at this point of the journey is not fully mature she hasn't even embraced the difficult tests that are yet awaiting her in chapter 5 but she has said yes earlier in chapter 4 verse 6 I will go to the mountain there is nothing I won't do to obey you and the Lord hasn't seen her walk it out but he has received the sincere cry of her heart and beloved you will cry out in sincerity many times before you have the full breakthrough in an area of your life and when we understand that our love is beautiful to God even now even in its weakness it gives courage to our spirit it is attractive we open our spirit and we run to him we're attracted to God is what I mean when we feel rejected we feel that God is despising and despairing of us even we we close our spirit even if we're in a worship service we worship with a closed spirit many people do because of the fear of rejection and the torment of condemnation but there's something that happens in us that's that that makes God very attractive when he smiles and he says I delighted you I like you I want you something else this is too good to be true if this is true I would give up everything and run to you with all of my heart I can't quite believe this this is one of the great truths of the word of God that the devil does not want you to connect with but by the power of the Holy Spirit the church worldwide is going to connect with this reality and when the devil comes and says just give up and give in and quit you can say it is written how fair is my love how beautiful is my love to him even in my weakness because again in the context of this book she isn't mature yet in her obedience beloved we can use song of Solomon 4 9 when the devil says give up and give in and quit it is written he has ravished over me it is written he is I have ravished his heart even in my weakness my love is beautiful before him with one look of my eye it is written one look of my eye his heart is moved every movement of my heart towards him moves his heart beloved if this would get into your prayer language if these phrases would get into your language of your prayer life before God and when the devil comes to tempt you with sin or with condemnation and guilt you could speak these things back it is written it is written that's the way that Jesus resisted the devil of Matthew chapter 4 how beautiful how fair is your love I love to be in a time of worship before the Lord and just declare my love before you is beautiful in your eyes I tell you something moves in your heart it gives you courage it strengthens your resolve it makes God more attractive to our naturally guilt-ridden spirit by nature we have guilt and condemnation and it takes a renewed mind a mind renewed by the word of God to see the attractiveness of a smiling God who's beckoning beckoning us to come even in our weakness then he goes on to say this is one of the great ones one of the great confessions of the song of Solomon and you want to use the book of song of Solomon to locate the confessions you can declare before temptation and before the devil's accusations against your failure there's many excellent statements in the song of Solomon that you want to become familiar with you want to use it in your prayer life you don't want to just underline it in your bible and email it to a friend you actually want to quote it to the devil or speak it in the presence of sin and temptation paragraph g how much better than wine is your love if you remember right this was the phrase that the bride said to Jesus back in chapter one verse two she said uh let me know the kisses of your word because your love Jesus is better than wine now Jesus is taking the very thing she said to him and turning it around and saying you know what your love is better than wine to me as well and the wine in this passage speaks of the is the metaphor of exhilaration of the heart and celebration of the banqueting table and just the celebration of God's goodness in this metaphor here in the song of Solomon in paragraph h Jesus is saying that our love is better than and even more beautiful than all the splendor of the works of his hands of all of his creation he says i would rather have your love or rather your love moves me more than the splendor of all that i've created with my hands beloved when this touches us it is impossible to draw back and quit when we see a God beckoning us with this kind of desire this kind of tenderness and this kind of openness to us even in our weakness let's go to roman numeral five Jesus's pleasure over her heart i'm not going to develop this passage here but in in the language of love in the poetic language of the song of Solomon Jesus is affirming her for her thoughts her words and her deeds paragraph a i just have to say what slip one of them in here i'm running out of time but i love this one he says how much better than wine is your love the scent of your perfumes is better than all the spices paragraph a the scent of your perfumes that speaks of her thought life filled with the word of God because as the invisible fragrance of a perfume expressed the inner quality of the plant it came from because perfumes came from different plants and it would express the quality the invisible quality of that plant and in the same way this when the Lord sees the fragrance the scent of our fragrance before him spiritually it's the invisible action of our spirit in our mind and when we love him when we make statements of commitment that are sincere even though in our immaturity we don't walk them all out but they're sincere he says back in chapter 2 verse 14 he said your face is lovely your words are sweet to me even in our weakness our words are fragrant and sweet to him our words of commitment our words of devotion when we stand on the word of God and hold the line and hold our confession to what the word says is true against the devil against temptation that is fragrant in God's sight and in God's before God's presence I like to confess before God as my life purpose I like to say Lord that's the very fragrance the very scent of my thought life before you it is my purpose it is my intention it is my destiny that the very thought life I have would be fragrant in your sight beloved in our prayer time we make these statements of confession my mind will be as fragrant scent and fragrant perfume before you I will fill it with obedience I will fill it with your word and you make it a life purpose to have a mind that is like the scent of perfumes before the throne of God and God sees the negative he sees the anger he sees the pride he sees the lust he sees the other but he sees and focuses on the perfume that ascends from us when we commit ourself to obey him and when we worship him just a few moments ago we were worshiping and as the fragrance rose before God throughout the bible prayer and worship is signified in scripture as fragrance it's the thought life of the believer that is ascending to God it's what it's the thoughts of our heart when we're coming into agreement with him it it ascends as fragrance when our thought life comes into agreement with the word and we speak it out before him it moves his heart roman numeral six the bride's extravagant consecration or her devotion to Jesus this is one of my favorite verses now you can have a bunch of favorite verses in song of Solomon but uh this is one that I've used many times in my private confession and devotion to the Lord now Jesus is the one speaking to her he's describing how he sees her he sees her heart as an enclosed garden as a spring that's sealed up as a fountain that's sealed you can read the notes more on this I just want to give you the the general idea of this paragraph a a closed garden was a private garden in contrast to a public garden in the public gardens of that day the animals would come and pollute the water source of that garden or pollute the garden defile it so the king would put a fence around his garden so in a closed garden means a garden that has a fence around it and a fenced garden is another way that you could say that now the purpose of a king's garden was pleasure in rest the garden the common garden in that day the purpose of it was to grow food in order to survive but only a king had enough money and slaves and the in the amount of time and energy it took to cultivate a garden just for pleasure very few people had gardens for pleasure beloved we are the garden of pleasure that jesus seeks to find rest in when our life is consecrated to the lord and devoted we are as an enclosed garden our heart is locked from the spirit of compromise and the spirit of the world and we become the garden of pleasure that the lord comes and he rests in our midst in communion and in fellowship as he says i don't have uh this uh i don't develop this idea i did but in john 14 verse 21 to 23 where jesus says if you will love me and come into agreement i will come and rest upon you and manifest myself to you and at times of temptation or times of discouragement or weariness i will be quiet before the lord and i say lord i present myself before you as an enclosed garden as a locked garden my heart is yours my mind is yours i'm living for you as a place of your pleasure and a place where you can rest a place where you can rest in agreement and the idea of god resting with us the opposite idea is god striving against us and reason us resisting him and him wrestling with us so when i talk of god resting i mean he's at peace with us he's in unity with us is what i mean this is the call of the nazirite that radical dedication that our heart would be a locked garden in sexual areas financial areas where we put our eyes what we do with our speech we would live as a locked garden that is for the pleasure of the lord himself he's saying this to her you are a garden and close to me this is one of the highest things that jesus could ever say over our life but beloved we can turn this thing around into a confession of how we're going to live and a statement of our devotion back to jesus roman numeral 7 a description of her fruitfulness we're going to skip that part you can read it a little bit on your own i just have a little bit there but it's a it's a magnificent passage we're going on to roman numeral 8 the threefold description of the holy spirit and the bride's life we're going to skip that too but i just wanted to point that out to you that the holy spirit comes to us as a fountain a well and as streams you can read that on your own on the notes and again if you don't have the notes you can get them on the website they're there right now for anybody that wants them we're just coming just to the last uh a moment or two here of this session and this is where the set the session comes to a a high point the bride is so encouraged and emboldened by the fact that jesus is so tender towards her and he delights in her because you know if he's against us and he's mad at us he's about to crush us the person it's a very common mindset why not just give up and give in and why even fight i'm so messed up there's no hope beloved this isn't the truth this isn't how god sees us as sincere believers i'm talking about a believer one week old in the lord if every area the holy spirit's revealed to us we're seeking to obey him even though we're stumbling and coming up short when we fall we repent we renew the war against that for that dimension of darkness beloved we are sincere and we can receive all of these affirmations from the lord's heart to us chapter 4 verse 16 she has the courage to cry out this this very courageous but important prayer it's a two-fold prayer for the and and her prayer is really for the release of the presence of god in her life the release of a greater anointing the release of his fragrance in her life she says to the lord number one awake oh north winds now the north winds were the bitter winds of the north the cold winds that means i'm not afraid of difficulty i'm not afraid of saying yes through and going through the difficulty to know you in a deeper way beloved i don't like the north winds i don't know anybody who does but she also prays come oh south winds those are the winds of refreshing now normally we pray mostly for the south winds if you're like me i focus a lot more on the south winds but she put the north wind first even though i normally get to it last the north winds are the are the times of challenge to bring us to a new place in him she says this i'm not afraid of the north winds because earlier in her journey when he called her to the mountaintop she was afraid and said no now she's saying i'm not afraid of anything you will call me to because you love me you're so tender you evaluate me with such kindness i want to be closer to you beloved anybody wants to be close to someone who thinks about us in the way that jesus describes here in chapter four of song of solomon it makes us open our spirit and want to run to him we want to be in the presence of anyone who thinks this tenderly and this kindly in this well of us because our spirit soars with delight in this kind of affirmation and so she goes i'm not afraid of the north winds anymore i'm not afraid i'm going to miss out i'm not i'm not drawing back because i'm afraid i'm going to fail i'm going to go fully into obedience because i love you i trust you and i want you i want to be closer to you awake oh north winds and then she adds and come oh south winds the winds of blessing as well blow upon the garden of my heart why i want the spice or the fragrance of god to come forth in my life in a greater way so a lot of us pray for the fragrance of god but beloved the fragrance of god is the combination of the north and the south winds and only god has enough wisdom to know where the combination of north and south winds is best in each season of our life i don't know what my life needs right now i always lean towards the south winds but he allows the north winds because it's the combination of both winds that bring the garden of our heart to the place of full fragrance and then she says i want my beloved to come to his garden and i want my life to be his life let me say that different she says i want my garden the garden of my heart to now be his property instead of mine this is the great turning point in the book of song of solomon she has now seized the garden of her life as belonging to him instead of belonging to her the first four chapters of the song of solomon it was all about her inheritance and her garden from this point forward it is all about her life being his inheritance and his garden this is the great turning point in the book and that's where the holy spirit is bringing us by affirming us and revealing the beauty that god sees when he sees our love the way that god feels about our love the holy spirit is is producing courage and resolve that we will not draw back from the north or the south winds because we want our garden to become his garden and then in chapter 5 verse 1 he answers her and he comes to her and you can read more about that on your own we'll pick up with this in our next class amen let's end with that right now let's ask the holy spirit