Mike Bickle emphasizes the necessity of wholeheartedness in Christianity, arguing that true faith requires radical commitment rather than a diluted version influenced by culture. He explores Luke 12:35-48, highlighting three key exhortations: to gird oneself, to keep lamps burning, and to wait for the Master, which are essential for entering into one's full spiritual inheritance. Bickle illustrates these principles with references to the Song of Solomon, showing how God invites believers to a deeper relationship and greater dedication, despite fears and hesitations. He reassures that God's mercies are new every day, offering fresh opportunities for commitment and growth in faith. Ultimately, the call is to embrace a lifestyle of extravagant love and service to God.

Luke chapter 12, this is a parable that is foundational to radical Christianity or to normal Christianity. The only kind of Christianity there is is radical, wholehearted Christianity. The other thing is a perversion. It's a hybrid of Western culture. It's not the real deal. There's only one type of Christianity. It's wholehearted Christianity. Anyway, Luke chapter 12, verse 35, I think, on to, what, verse 53, or no, 48. This parable is one of the, just the central parables that you really want to be familiar with because it calls all people in every season of their life, it's applicable. Some of the parables are really focused on various themes and to people with various assignments and various seasons of their life. This parable, from verse 35 to 48, is applicable to all people in all seasons. I've been challenged by this through the years. It's just timeless and it's powerful. We're going to look at just a little bit of it and then we're going to go to Song of Solomon chapter 2 to give the illustration of the principles here. What goes on in verse 35 and 36 is Jesus gives three exhortations of how we are to respond to God if we want to enter into our full inheritance. These are necessary to enter into our full inheritance, our full destiny. These are necessary if we're going to enjoy the spiritual pleasures of God touching our spirit in a vibrant, powerful way. Then after he gives these three exhortations and they're quite simple, but they're very necessary. They're not confusing, they're costly or they seem to be costly on the front end because our minds are un-renewed. When we first meet the Lord our minds are un-renewed and until our minds are renewed it's costly. Once our minds are renewed it seems like a very reasonable and dynamic way to live anyway. But anyway, these principles are simple but they are costly on the front end at least. They seem that way. But there is no way forward without embracing them. We'll never ever enter into our full inheritance or our full destiny. This is the only place our full destiny on this side of eternity is ever going to be walked out. It's the only place we're going to experience the spiritual pleasures of our spirit being alive with the revelation of God and feeling loved and feeling loved back which is the only way we want to live before God. Well there's three exhortations, verse 35-36. Then on in the back side of the second half of verse 36 there's a divine invitation to go higher. Jesus is saying I'm going to come to you and I want you to open up to me. I want you to go higher. He gives an invitation to go to the next degree. And then in verse 37 is one of the most dynamic promises in the whole word of God. A promise, it's very unique. It's not, we don't hear this promise very often. It's almost so out there you can't hardly receive it. And then the parable goes on but we're only going to do the introduction of it and then go on to Song of Solomon chapter 2. Verse 35, here's the three exhortations. Let your waist be girded, exhortation one. Let your waist be girded. And let your lamps burn. And let your lamps be burning, that's exhortation two. Burning lamps. We're going to look at each one for just a moment. Verse 36, exhortation three. And you yourself be like those who wait for the master when he returns from the wedding. That's the third exhortation. Be people that wait for the master, that wait before God as the God of the wedding. The God who's involved in the wedding reality. Those are the three exhortations. Then he goes on and he gives the divine invitation. At the end of verse 36 he goes, and when he, the master, when he comes to you and knocks, open up to him immediately. Because when he knocks, it's an invitation to go higher. Open up to him and he will bring you to new heights. That's the invitation. Open up to him. It's a command but it's given as an invitation. The master will come, open up and the idea is he'll take you to a new place in God if you open up to him. So that's the invitation. Now here's the promise. Here's the promise you almost can't receive. Verse 37, blessed are the servants who respond in this lifestyle. Here's what happens. Blessed are the servants whom the master, when he comes, finds watching. When he comes and knocks on the door and beckons you to go higher, it sums the whole thing up. It's called watching. The three principles are summed up as watching, waiting on the Lord. Here's the promise, assuredly. Here's Jesus speaking about Jesus. Assuredly I say to you that this master, he, the master, will gird himself. He will have you sit down at the feast, at the table, and the master will come and serve you. I mean, you feel like Peter, don't you? I mean, at least when I read it, I feel like Peter in John 13 when Jesus said, I'm going to wash your feet, Peter. He goes, no, no! And he says, Peter, if I don't wash your feet, you can have no part of me. He goes, oh okay, oh no! I mean, it's something to be forgiven. I love being forgiven. I love to be anointed. I love to experience God. But to have the master gird himself, kneel down and serve me. I don't know if I'm that humble yet. I don't know if I can quite receive that. This is one of the most dramatic statements in the Bible. The master, the servant of all, in eternity, even in your life now, will use his resource to strengthen your life, to come and serve you. Well, I'm not going to talk so much about verse 37, the promise of him coming to serve us, but that just, every time I read that, I go, oh! Look at your neighbor and go, oh! No, that's kind of intense. I like Jesus blessing me and forgiving me, but not serving me. He says, I'm a servant. That's what I do. You'll find in verse 37 that he girds himself. The very thing he asks us to do, he does. He goes, I ask you in verse 35 to gird yourself, and that's what I will do in response to you. Okay, let's look at these three exhortations. Number one, we're just going to spend a minute on each one, because they're the simple exhortations of Scripture. Again, they're not confusing. People say, what's the secret? I go, the secret is there is no secret. There really is no secret of going deep in God. It's just so clear. It's everywhere. It's reset. It's restated a dozen different ways. It all means the same thing. Come with all your heart, prayer fasting with a big yes in your spirit. Grow in the bridal paradigm and confidence of God's tenderness as a father and his passion as a bridegroom, and have a servant spirit and take risks and stay with it. That's really all there is to it. Honestly, that's it. You can say it a hundred different ways. It's not confusing. It's just costly while our minds are renewed. When our mind is lined up with truth, it's not costly. It's only reasonable. But at this stage of the church and the West, this is a very costly lifestyle, but not forever. He tells them, number one, gird your waist. Now the girding of the waist was the exhortation to the servant to get ready to extend themselves fully. When the servant girded their waist, they were ready to fully expend and extend themselves for the cause, for the purpose. This is a big one. Jesus, though, is not asking us to do anything he is not going to do and has not already done. He extended himself fully in the incarnation, in the crucifixion. He calls us to gird our waist, to settle it, to settle that which is not often settled in the lives of believers, to settle it. That all of our resources, I use the three T's, our time, our treasure, and our talents, all of our resources are going to be sincerely and actually focused on being spent on the kingdom. Not a little bit of our money. Not a little bit of extra time when we, you know, give the Lord an hour every now and then. And not a little bit of our talents. That whether our primary place is in the home, the marketplace, or in a ministry, a professional ministry organization, it doesn't matter, it's all ministry to the Lord. It's a mindset of asking the question, not what is the minimal, the minimal way that we can interact with God in those three arenas. What's the minimal time, the minimal money, and the minimal use of our talent that we need to give you to still kind of be a viable person in the kingdom, and then we get to go do the rest on our own. But it's the question, Lord, we want to know how you will anoint us to give all of our strength. I'm talking about extravagance, a girded waist. It's talking about extravagance. Now, of course, I would like to go off on that for 20 minutes. Because the church in the West does not have a paradigm of a girded waist, of extravagance. We give a little bit of time. We give a little bit of money. We get a little bit of our talents, and we mostly save it, the rest of it, to spend it the way we want to. He said, you've got to gird yourself. Set your mind to be in the extended, expended mode entirely. That's a giant statement, by the way. Number two, he says, I want you to have burning lamps. I want you to have a burning lamp. He's talking about cultivating a fiery spirit. Well, a lamp, a burning lamp, is actually sharing with others. A lamp is almost always a picture of ministry. But a burning lamp, the picture of the burning lamp is giving to others in the overflow of our own fiery encounter with God. So, it is talking about having a fiery encounter in God. Not encounter, a fiery spirit, a vibrant spirit. I've been calling it the last couple weeks a spirit of prayer. That's the final frontier in the kingdom of God, is walking in a spirit of prayer. It's rare, but it's going to become a whole lot more common before it's over. Now, to have a fiery spirit, again, that's, that's as uncommon in the body of Christ today as having a girded waist, a fully expended and extended life for the kingdom. It takes time to develop a fiery spirit. It takes time to build a bonfire. It really does. We cannot go deep. Even just being on the run in ministry, whether it's our ministry in a ministry organization, whether it's ministry in the marketplace, ministry in the home. We can't be so consumed in ministry that we have a lamp, but it's not a burning one. It's kind of a little flashlight and the batteries are on their final few moments. The Lord says, no, I want you to be on fire. I want your spirit on fire. That's, again, that's as uncommon today as a girded waist. Then he goes on to say, I want you to be, verse 36, as those who wait for the master who's coming from the wedding celebration. I want you to be, I want you to wait before the God who is a bridegroom God. It's not enough to wait to build the burning, the burning lamp, the fiery heart. The fasting, the prayer, really, the filling our hearts with the Word, trying to find more time and more way to get in God's presence, to give ourselves, to be expended and extended for the sake of others. But we don't want to just serve others. We want to serve with some fire. We want to bring some fire to those that we're serving. When I'm talking about serving with fire, I'm not talking about having a preaching ministry. A few will have a preaching ministry. I'm talking about we can be serving in any kind of capacity. We can be picking up paper out in the parking lot and have a fiery spirit and impact people. I'm not talking about a public ministry. I'm talking about a fiery spirit. Most of my ministry, and everybody's ministry, doesn't matter who you are, most of my ministry, for 30 years I've been in ministry, is one-on-one. Some of you might look at me and say, oh, I thought most your ministry is publicly. I spend one, two, three hours a week in public ministry. I got a hundred and sixty-eight hours a week just like you. I spend one or two or three in public ministry. Maybe some weeks four or five or six, seven or eight. But that gives me a hundred and sixty hours left. Most of my ministry is one-on-one, just like the most of your ministry is one-on-one. You don't need to wait to find a position on the organizational chart to start your ministry, because even when you find the position on the organizational chart, even with that position, most of your ministry will be one-on-one. It's really true. It's been true in my life for 30 years. So when I say ministry, don't imagine being on a platform. That's not what I'm talking about. Though some of you inevitably will be on platforms, that's not mostly what I'm talking about. I'm talking about giving out of an overflow of a fiery heart. Okay. He tells him to wait, but he tells him to wait in a very, very specific way here. He tells him to wait, in verse 36, on the Master who's returning from the wedding. It's not just waiting on the Lord, but it's waiting on God with a particular understanding about this God. We call it the bridal paradigm, or the bridal perspective of the kingdom. It's the revelation of the God with a fiery desire for His people, even in their weakness. Waiting on God is good. Waiting on the God of the wedding feast is better. Many people wait on God. Well, I don't know how many, but, you know, all through history. But we quit a lot quicker if we're waiting on the God who is just the strict coach, the taskmaster. Waiting on that God, we tend to quit pretty soon. Some of us might get a year or two, but most people don't wait on that God for a lifetime. They do it, you know, they rev up and go hard for a season or two, and they wear out because they're just confronting harshness. At least they're imagining they are. Waiting on that God makes us quit, and waiting on that God makes us just consumed with accusation and condemnation. But waiting on the true God, the God that comes from the wedding feast, is a whole different proposition. Now, there's obviously been those through history that have pressed in, and God in His kindness has touched them, even though they didn't wait before Him in the way He described. But, beloved, as a people, we want to wait before Him in the way He prescribes. Okay, now He gives the invitation in verse 36. In the middle, He says, and when He comes, this God, this master from the wedding feast, and knocks on the door of your heart, open up to Him immediately. And the open, the open up is immediate. That's, that's the goal, and it's to open up to Him fully and immediately. That's the ideal. Typically, my experience is, I open up to Him partially and incrementally. But eventually, I get fullness. When the Lord taps, I mean, knocks on the door of my heart, it's not like within seven minutes, I am fully there. It's like, say it one more time, Lord, what you're talking about, what you want me to do differently? Because, see, the Lord comes and He knocks on the door of our heart. And He calls us to a new height, a new mountain, a new, a new measure of dedication, but a new experience in the Holy Spirit, a new life in the Spirit. So this coming of Jesus, if we're gonna read it in its full sense, has three applications. But I'm only gonna focus on the one application. But it has three applications. When Jesus comes and knocks, first of all, it's talking about the second coming, that eschatological coming at the end of the age. When He comes, it's all about the second coming. Okay, we, we like that. The second way He comes to you is on the day of your physical death. He comes to you. We don't even, we don't, most people don't know when that is, but He comes suddenly. And there they are before Him. Oh, we didn't expect you to come today. I didn't, or rather, I didn't expect you to come to me and then me to be before you today. Physical death is a very important application of the Lord coming to you. But the third type of coming, and the one I want to focus on, is when He comes in one of those strategic seasons in your life, He comes to invite us to come up higher. Now the call to come up higher always is the call to give, to come up higher in terms of our dedication, our abandonment increases, but our experience of God increases as well. God comes and knocks on the door of our heart. The coming is sudden many times. We don't know when it happens. And He knocks and He wants us to voluntarily open, and He presents us with a new opportunity that, that requires a new dedication. Now when the Lord comes and knocks on our, the door of our heart like this, and it's what Psalm 2 is all about. It's just the best illustration I can see in the whole Bible. I'll get there in just a moment. When He comes, now understand this, this is not the daily coming of the Lord. In one sense, you know, we come to the Lord and He comes to us daily, or moment by moment, or however you want to say it. You know, there's other ways to say all that. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about that every one, two, three, four, five years, that strategic hour where the season shifts, the assignment is different, and the call to dedication is higher. There are prophetic seasons. Typically I don't know when it's a minute away. Suddenly it's on me. I remember a very dramatic one from my life. It's 1997, 98, 99. With the birthing of IHOP in 1999, the Lord was coming nearer to me in 1997, calling me to a new level of commitment to fasting and prayer, and the forerunner message. And I didn't know IHOP was, it was the next moment. I just was going, I was discombobulated. It was, He was saying, I want more of your money, more of your time, more of your strength. I'm calling you to a new opportunity in the Spirit, but I'm calling you to a new dedication that's commensurate with that new opportunity. And when, and it took, you know, like probably most of us, it took me a few minutes, which means to me a few months. A few minutes always means a few months or a few years. That's what a few minutes means to me. It took me a few minutes to sort out. I'm going, hey, I'm being beckoned higher. That's what's going on. It's really clear now on the other side of it. Really clear. I thought, Lord, that was invasive. That was glorious. That was disruptive. That was painful, awesome, terrifying. I love it. I hate it. What on earth was that? We've experienced that, right? Some of you are right in the middle of one of those seasons right now. I'm not in an intense season. I feel a stirring. I've been talking a little bit about Revelation 10. The Lord's been calling me. Some of you have been in the class on Saturday night. He's been really talking to me about a, about going deeper, but it's a more of a, it's a clear word, but it's not so radical. It's kind of a, it's not as radical as other invasions. In 30 years may have had five or six or seven or eight of them. I don't know. But I'm talking about, the Lord says, you gird your waist, you extend yourself, you get that fiery spirit and you wait before the bridegroom. And when that happens, you will be ready. When the knock on the door comes, you will, you will be ready. You will have the grace to say yes, immediately. And that didn't mean they may take a month or two or three or four to sort it out. I don't mean that you get to call it at one o'clock on Monday and by two o'clock, it's all clear. It's, and that might happen one here, one there, but typically a radical new season and a new dedication is something we think through it settles, but that is still, it happens in a minute, even if it takes a few months, it's just a minute. Now, when the Lord comes, he comes to us individually, but he comes to us corporately. There's an individual coming. There's a corporate coming. He comes to us as a ministry. He comes to your family. He might come to your, your business in the marketplace. He comes to corporate groups as well as individuals. And whenever he comes, it's always an invitation to have more and to give more. It's always an invitation to have more in the spirit, more of him, but to give more to him. I would say that again. The invitation always is to experience more, to have more of God, to experience more, but to give more. It's never one without the other. Typically over the years, and it's a pretty normal thing to hear. The Lord's really challenging me. He wants me to, and they talk about the, the promise. He wants me to be more anointed in this or more anointed in that. And he's promised me I'm gonna, you know, prophesy or heal or lead worship or pray or preach or come or go. And almost never do you hear the corresponding, and I'm going to give myself my time and my money in a more extravagant way before him. The call to have more always is synonymous with the call to give more, always. Most people that I've talked to over the years think of going higher in the spirit while maintaining the same lifestyle. It's very, very common. And it's not real though. So it's five, ten years later. They go, I guess I didn't go higher. I guess it wasn't for this season. And the Lord might whisper, oh yeah, it was for that season. It was a twofold call. You know, we cry out. I love to say this. I must have more. And the Lord says, good word. I must have more. When the Lord promises to give more, he requires more. And it's practical. I'm talking about it's more time. I'm talking about it's more money. I'm talking about it's blessing our enemies more. I'm talking about it serving more, more focused. There's more. The more that my mind is renewed, and I have a long way to go, I find out how many pockets in my own spirit, how many pockets in my life I have that are a whole lot more me than I imagine. And as my mind becomes more and more renewed, I find those unperceived areas. I go, oh, the Lord says, oh, I want that area now. I want more. Well, it's an invitation with consequences. Because if you say yes to the invitation, you do go higher. If you say no to the invitation, dullness increases. It's never the same. When the Lord comes in one of those seasons and knocks, it's you never, I am never, we're never the same. We always go higher or we go lower in the negative sense of going lower. Our spirit becomes more tender or more dull. We never encounter this coming of the Lord without it changing us one way or the other. But the great news is this. It's Lamentations 3 verse 23. I'll just quote it to you. God's mercies are new every single day. You know, maybe the Lord came and it was a year, a month ago, a year ago, or five years ago, and he beckoned you to a new place in the spirit. I mean, he wanted to give new revelation. He wanted new intimacy. But he did require a new investing of yourself in him. And when we just kind of said, told our friends about the new invitation, but we never changed our lifestyle. We check our pocketbook and our calendar, and it's nearly the same after that invitation. And you can be sure if it is nearly the same, you said no. You can almost be sure you said no. Excited by the potential of having more of God, but pretty disconnected by the reality of giving more of yourself to God. But the good news is, the Lord says, I'm going to come every day is a new beginning for new mercy. Lamentations 3 23. I mean, that's got to be one of your all-time favorite verses, even if you've never quoted it. The concept has to be, is my one of my favorite forever. New mercy. The Lord says, you know what, I will give you a complete new start today if you want it. The way that you drew back, you got excited by the higher spirit dimension, but you didn't respond by a higher giving of yourself. You know what, I will give you that same invitation today yet again, and I will push delete and all that disqualified you. I will put it behind us if you will say yes now. It's fantastic. And we open, he says in verse 36, open to him. That's the full responsiveness open to him. That's the pursuing of wholeheartedness open to him. Now, the way you open to him, it says open to him here in the same verse it. No, no, no. The next verse, it says blessed when he comes, you find watching. The phrase is, the term is watching in verse 37. It's be open to him in verse 36, but it's really those three exhortations. Gird yourself, have a burning lamp, and wait before the bridegroom. That's really what it means to be open to him, is to do those three things. To say yes, or to be, or the term is watching in verse 37. It's the same idea. It's the, it's not just the casual yes. It's the wholehearted yes. Now, the yes in our spirit is progressive, meaning the yes that I said when I was 20 was wholehearted. It was a total yes, but it was only a little bit of my being saying yes. It was all that I knew. It's all the light I had. Then what, 10 years later, when I was 30, I go, why did give? I wasn't quite as given to you as I thought I was when I was 20. I mean, look at, oh my goodness. The light increases, but the yes was to the measure of the light, and that's all the Lord ever asked for. Your yes is a hundredfold when you walk in the light. The Lord's not asking me today to say yes in an abandonment, or even in an experience of the spirit that I will only be ready for in 10 years. He's asking me yes today, but it's always more than 10 years ago. It's always good to take a little stalk in our lives. It's painful. I do it occasionally, and it's got a little ouchy on it, but that we review the amount of time, the amount of money, and the level of which we bless our enemies and serve in secret compared to five years ago and 10 years ago. Is it different? Is it measurably different to you? Anyway, you just work on that on your own. I'll quit meddling. Okay, turn to Song of Solomon, chapter two, because I just, Song of Solomon, right after Psalms and Proverbs, right before Isaiah. I just want to, it has to be practical. If it doesn't change, honestly, this seems just so kind of almost crass. If the amount of time of fasting, prayer, giving, serving, and blessing does not increase, you've not grown. Honestly, it's really true. It's Matthew, chapter six, Sermon on the Mount. That is the measure. That's how we measure our responsiveness to God. Some of those areas are more than others in different seasons, but that's it. It's like, no, I just love you more, sort of, but I live the same way with my time. I live the same way with my money. I live the same way with my words and with my enemies, and I live the same way with my servanthood. And the Lord answers, you've not given yourself more. You're in the same place you were 10 years ago. And the reason I say that, my goal isn't to be mean about it. My goal is, the thing I fear most, I have several fears, but the thing I fear most is regret when I stand before God. And I do not want to be shocked on that day. I would rather be disturbed and shocked. Now, I don't want to be shocked on that day. When I stand, I go, here I am. And he says, well, the good news, I love you. The good news, you live forever. The bad news is you lived a little bit in delusion about how given you were to me. Oh no, are you kidding? No, you're kidding, right? You don't mean me, you mean him. No, I mean you. You do love me. Not so much, but you do love me. And I love that. Oh no, you're kidding. Yeah, you were just swept away in the culture of your nation, in the body of Christ. And my word was not your measurement. The church down the road was your measurement. No, you got the wrong guy. This is not me. I do not want that regret. I want to be disturbed and shaken up. I want to live a lifestyle in my inheritance, in my destiny, in my fullness. And I know that's what you want as well. Song of Solomon chapter two. It's one of the great chapters where God calls his people to the higher place, the higher place in God. He comes and disrupts the bride. Most of you are a little bit familiar with Song of Solomon and some of you a lot more. It's an eight chapter love song and it's the story of the maturity in love of the individual believer or the whole church. There's several ways to look at it. And chapter two, she's still on the front end of her journey. She's very sincere. She really loves God. But again, her sincerity, she's wholehearted, but her light isn't. She didn't have much light. She's a wholehearted as much as she knows. And that's good. That's all the Lord ever wants from us. But the Lord is going to come and break in and going to give her more light. He's going to knock on her door. He's going to do Luke 12, verse 35 and 36. He's going to call her to a new height. And in chapter two, she's going to be disrupted by this completely thrown off. And in chapter two, verse 17, she's going to say, turn away. She's going to tell him no, but it's a short term. No, it's a no based in fear, not a no based in rebellion. She's hesitant, not resistant. And there's a big difference. She goes, no, he calls her to new heights. And she goes, I don't like heights. No, no. And then in a minute, she says, yes. So it was a temporary, no, it was hesitation. At the end of the day, it was not resistant. It was hesitant. It was not rebellion. It was immaturity. It was not compromise. It was fear. There were pockets of fear in her spirit. She just kind of froze when he says, come up higher. She went, uh, I don't know. Not yet. Not yet. Not yet. In a minute, in a minute. Oh my goodness. Are you sure now how high is high? Chapter two, verse one to seven. She is so enjoying the presence of God. She's superficial. She's she's not deep yet, but she's fully committed. Her light is small, but she's fully committed. Look at her in verse three. It's one to seven is the whole, is the whole, uh, passage of, but we're not going to look at it all. She goes right in the middle of verse three. I sat down in his shade with great delight. His fruit was sweet to my taste. She goes, Oh, I love the presence of God. He loves me. I love him. I'm totally his. He's totally mine. And the Lord says, you're right. I love you and you love me. You're not totally mine. You're totally mine to the degree you understand. And I like that. That's good for now, but I want to reveal, I want to expose the pockets of fear and resistance in your spirit and hesitation. And I want to plunder them and bring you to the place where you are fully mine in reality, not just to the measure of your light. You are fully mine. She goes, I want to go. I want to go. She is so enjoying the Lord. Look at verse three, sat down with in his shade, great delighted, sweet. I love his presence. Verse four. He brought me to the banqueting table or the banqueting house, the house of wine, the wedding feast. Oh, she knows the, a little bit about the bridal paradigm and she loves being loved. She doesn't understand it so much, but she, she loves what she knows. And that's all she does. No, she has no idea. She's only a chapter two of an eight chapter love song. She had the beginning of the beginning, but it's a powerful beginning. His banner over me is love. His leadership over my life reveals love. She goes, oh, I love him. Verse five, sustain me, refresh me. I am lovesick. And the love was very real. It was not deep, but it was real. And it was all that she had the capacity for. It was wholehearted. It just was new and young. It wasn't deep and it wasn't tested. It wasn't seasoned and it's powerful and God accepts it. And he goes, I love this is real. She is really lovesick. It's not fake at all because it's, it's, it's superficial. And because it's not deep does not mean it's fake. It's real. Then he comes in verse eight, no verse seven. And he tells, uh, at the end of verse seven, he tells the others, he goes, don't disturb her. I have her where I want her. I'm building a foundation of confidence in her spirit. I'm letting her know that all that she's going to do in chapter two, three, four, five, six, seven, and eight is going to flow out of this fundamental reality. Don't disturb her. I will awaken her to the next dimension when I'm ready. And in the language of Luke chapter 12, suddenly the Lord knocks on the door and there's a new season suddenly in front of you. And we've all experienced that. I mean, I've been going, just going for it and loving it. He loves me and I'm a, I'm going as hard as I know. I just don't, I mean, technically I know there's a lot more there, but kind of in practically it feels like you're, you know, this is that. And the Lord says, no, Mike, I have so much more to fascinate and consume you with. You will so love the higher places, but it's gonna challenge you to get you there. So he comes in verse eight. Look what she says. The voice of my beloved, behold, he comes. That's good news. The bad news. He's leaping on mountains and hills. He's jumping on the mountaintops. The good news is the beloved is coming. That's Luke chapter 12, verse 35, 36. He's knocking on the door. The bad news is this isn't the Jesus under the shade tree at the, at the banquet. This is Jesus leaping on mountaintops. And she's going, you know, what mean is now this, you know, what's this mountain top thing? I've never seen you this way. I've only seen you with the phone off the hook and the door locked and nobody bugging me. You know, I'm all, everything was mine. I got to keep all my money, all my time. I had no enemies bugging me. It was pretty easy. It was just me and you. And I cried a lot. I loved it. He says, I loved it too, but I want you to be my partner in the harvest in the earth. And I want you to stand as my bridal partner against the schemes of the evil one. We're going to plunder the nations. I am the Lord. I'm the King of all the nations. There's no mountaintop that it's an obstacle effortlessly. I can abound and leap over them. So he comes as the sovereign King that effortlessly leaps on mountains. She says, verse nine, my beloved, he's not just a guitar player at the wedding feast. He's a gazelle. He's swift. He's a young stag. He's strong. He's fearless on the mountaintops. He goes, I don't know about this. I didn't know about, I thought you were just a singer of love songs. I did not know you did mountain climbing and left from top to top. And he smiles and says, I gave you a good foundation, but I want you to go with me. I want you to take that foundation to the next level. He says in verse 10, now the news really gets bad, starts good, but it gets bad. He goes, my beloved spoke to me and he said, arise. She goes like, what are you thinking? He says, I want you on the mountains with me. She's like, Oh no, I don't like heights. I don't want to go to the mountains. It's I call, I've called this over the years, challenging the comfort zone. That that's a real practical way to view it, but it's an invitation to new heights. And it's not just new heights of power. It's new heights of dedication and new heights of power. It's new revelation and power. Yes, but it's also new dedication because the, the height, I mean, the call to have more is the same call to give more, but he says it to her tenderly. He speaks with such tenderness. He goes, my love, my beautiful one. He goes, I love the way he responded to me, but I must have more. And I want to give you more. And then again, I already mentioned in verse 17, out of fear, she says, no, she goes, turn. She's stuck in her fear. She's not rebellious. She's fearful. She's not resistant. She's hesitant. The question of the hour of this passage is Jesus safe. This is leadership safe. And if we mean, will our heart be safe by, will it be vibrant in God? He is safe. If safe means our reputation is intact and all of our plans will come to pass, then he's not safe. Depends on what safe means. I hear people talk about that all the time through the years they go, dah, dah, dah, dah. It's safe. I go safe for what your life plan is not safe in his hands. His plan is safe in his hands, but not necessarily your plan. Your reputation to the common man is not safe in his hands, your reputation before him and those that have understanding of that safe. Your heart being vibrant and alive in the love of God, that's safe. Your heart running out and doing what you want to do when you want to do it outside of the grace of God, that's not safe. I love what John Wimber said. He goes, I've always heard about the Holy spirits of gentlemen. He goes, let's settle it. He isn't. He says, when he breaks in, he does the wildest things. He goes, he's not safe. Like we count safeness. I like that. So he breaks in and she says, no, he wants her to arise. He, he beckons her with tenderness. Verse 14 at the middle of it. Here's the critical part of the entire journey of the call to high places. He looks at her, of course, in verse 14 in the middle, he knows she's going to say no out of fear of verse 17. He's not troubled by that because he knows in chapter three, she's going to say yes. In chapter three, verse two, she does arise. She does say yes. It's only a temporary resistance. I mean, hesitation. He, he says, I can handle this and he's going to speak and woo her with love to a new place in the spirit of power and revelation, but also a new place of dedication because we fear dedication. If we give all of our time and we give all of our money and all of our strength and we don't keep maintain some of it for ourselves, we, we might get hurt. We may not have fun. Why don't I have fun? Anyway, we may not be rested. Well, you're not that rested as it is. We, we may not live long where there's no guarantee you will. Anyway, there's this feeling of we keep it, but we can guarantee something. We'll be happy. Never seen at work. We'll feel good. That didn't work so good. Anyway, it's this, it's this lie that if we keep it somehow we'll be safe. And if we give ourselves humility and abandonment, we'll send how injurious it's not safe to be a hundred fold. And he looks at her and he says, my beloved calm, you will only enter more into love. You're not going to get out of love by abandonment. You're going to experience more love in abandonment. It's a complete new paradigm. I fear it. You fear it. We have that dimension of giving more will somehow invade us in a way that will injure us. We don't know how it will injure us. It just seems like we will, it will stretch us out. It will do to something bad. What will it do bad? I don't know. It just not yet. Not yet. And the Lord says, no, no, I'm beckoning you as my love and my beautiful one. I'm only going to re unfold this to you more in the process. He calls her in verse 10 and verse 13, my love, my beautiful one in verse 14, the key. He says, let me see your face and let me hear your voice. This is the call to the spirit of prayer right here to see her face. And to hear her voice is to be in the presence of God worship and intercession of what he's talking about right here, because I want you to come before me. And I want you to cry out because he knows she already is drawing back and verse 17 going to say, no, he says, cry out for help. I know that you don't have the, the experience yet to say yes fully, but you're going to. And then he gives her one of the most dynamic statements in the whole Bible. I mean, this is one of the most endearing statements. He goes, because your voice and you cry out in prayer and worship, even in your weakness, even in your fear, even in your backing up, your voice is sweet to me because I really know your heart. I know chapter three, you're going to go with me. You don't know, but I know your voice is sweet. Your voice touches my spirit. Remember back in chapter in verse three, the Lord was sweet to her. Now the Lord's turning it around. He goes, you're sweet to me. He goes, and not only that you're lovely. He said that in verse 10 and verse 13, he called her fair or lovely. He says, your face, when you stand before me in your weakness, in your brokenness, trembling, like a little, a shaking little leaf. I don't know if I could go higher. I can't, I can't, I can't. What if something messes up and I don't have stuff for me? What if it doesn't work? Right? And he says, ice it's you're beautiful to me. I see you. You don't know that I'm going to unfold you in love. You think I'm going to injure you. I understand. You don't know. Come cry out, ask for help. Don't back away. Come to me and cry out in a verse 15. We'll end with this. She cries out, catch the foxes, the foxes that spoil my vineyard. The vineyard spoke of the wine and the heart. Her heart was the vineyard. She said, these foxes, these little areas of compromise, fear, hesitation, making sure we keep enough for ourselves. She says, Lord, those foxes, I see how they're ruining love. Verse 15, she says, catch the foxes, her prayer. Let's say it another way. Lord, take those areas and help me get through them. I want to be wholly yours. I want my whole life to be vibrant with reality of love. I want to feel love, flow in love. I want to be a carrier of love. I want to be lost in love. I want this reality to consume me. Catch the foxes. Catch them. Please help me. And she actually uses the plural, catch us, the foxes, or let us together go after it because she has to still participate. But if she says, help me, help me, help me. Beloved, that's what the Lord is doing to us right now. The mercy of God is new every single day. And we've been stuck, some of us. And one day, one season, I'm not stuck and some months go by and I'm a little bit stuck. I said, Lord, how do you feel? The Lord says, my mercies are new every day for you. Every day is the new day for the new season if you want it. Every day I give you the beckoning to call. I call you calm. I knock calm. He says, if you said no on the last season, I will give it to you again. I will reissue the invitation to you. Now, beloved, there is no entering into our destiny without the girded waist, the burning lamp and the waiting before the bridegroom. Some people imagine there is a there's a dimension of grace where we don't do those three things, but we still enter in. They imagine there's a we go higher in the spirit, but not in dedication. That is not truth. The call to come is the Lord says in confidence all that would have disqualified you. I will push, delete and wipe it clean if you will say yes now. The bridal paradigm is is that confidence we have before the God who sees sweetness in our voice and beauty in our face, even our weakness. He says, come to me, don't draw back from me, run to me and I will set you free. I will I will forgive all that disqualifies you. But that does not that does not change the call to be wholehearted. Some people imagine the bridal paradigm is how to live in spiritual compromise and laziness and still to go high. That is not the bridal paradigm. That's deception. That is not the bridal paradigm. The bridal paradigm is how to be stuck temporarily, how to be surprised by our sin. Ah, we're stuck. I can't go forward and my sin is overwhelming. Am I disqualified? I want to repent. I want to go all the way. The Lord says the bridal paradigm is I will freely forgive you and reissue the commission. Come up higher. Now you get the same commission again. Come and know that I want full fellowship with you. It is not the ability to live in compromise with confidence that things are well. It's the ability to have a new beginning in confidence, no matter how much you hesitated and procrastinated before or how much you were defiled before you get a new beginning today. But the wholeheartedness to go up higher is to give yourself more. They go together. But the God who wants to bring us to new realms of love and to express love through us is beckoning his hands to every one of us today. He says, arise my beloved. Come to me and I will give you a new beginning. Each day there will be new mercy. Amen. Let's stand. We want to be a people that go all the way, don't we? I want to go all the way.