Our Ecstatic Love for God
I love those who love me; and those who seek me will find me.
Proverbs 8:17
I am fascinated by the Song of Solomon, also called the Song of Songs. In these eight chapters are found the outpouring of Adonai Yeshua’s love for His Brothers and Sisters and our love for Him, through the voice of Solomon. How can we not find our hearts tingling, as we read: How beautiful you are, my love! How beautiful you are! Your eyes are doves behind your veil. Your hair is like a flock of goats streaming down Mount Gil‘ad.[1]
Many pastors shy away from this book of love poetry, thinking it to be too erotic for either their study or for their congregants’ hearing. I agree there are places within the Song of Solomon which are ‘steamy’, but tell me please, shouldn’t our ecstatic love for Adonai/ Adonai Yeshua be ‘steamy’? What does it mean to have ecstatic love for God?
Many through time have attempted to unpack the understanding of ecstatic love for Adonai. For example, in the 1600s, Francis Rous, a British preacher and Puritan and a prolific writer of devotions and sermons, spoke about our relationship with Adonai Yeshua as being a ‘mystical marriage’ one that created for us a chamber within us, and a bed of love in that chamber, wherein Christ meets and rests with the soul.[2]
Elsewhere in Scripture, we find King David’s words of ecstatic love for Yahweh, in Psalm 42: Just as a deer longs for running streams, God, I long for you. I am thirsty for God, for the living God! When can I come and appear before God?
Beloved, do we have this desire, this ecstatic love for our Creator? Do we long to be at His side, day and night? As believers in the One, True Elohim, this is our desire and, if we are lacking the yearning of ecstatic love, then we need to ask the Holy Spirit of the Living God to guide us back to our First Love.
CONSIDER: Who comes first in your life? Is it yourself, you wife, your family, God?
ACT: Consider this question without guilt or without thinking who should be first. Be as honest with yourself as possible. Ask the Holy Spirit of the Living God to lead and guide you.
PRAY: Abba B’Shamayim, Father in Heaven, help me, please, to regain and strengthen my Love for You! Provide me with the support of Ruach HaKadosh, Your Holy Spirit, to rekindle to a roaring inferno, the love I hold for You. B’Shem Adonai Yeshua, Amein.
May the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob bless you fully and richly.
[1] Song of Solomon 4:1
[2] Rous, Francis, 1667. Christian Ethics.