Catch All The Foxes

“Catch all the foxes, those little foxes, before they ruin the vineyard of love, for the grapevines are blossoming.” Song Of songs 2:15

What we believe in our hearts has the power to give us life or kill us.

One of the most deadly poisoning whispers that can take root in our hearts is “things will never change! ”

This lie traps our heart into the captivity of our circumstances. It imprisons us into the oppression of the moment. It kills hope, slays faith and delays all our expectations. We start to accept our captivity and distress as the normal.

It is believing this lie when we begin to doubt the goodness of God.

For the promise of God is that he will make all things new and that his glory will be made manifest in us.

It is here in the garden of our heart that we must keep out the lie. We must catch it before it destroys the harvest. We must release ourselves from its condemnation. For it is in the heart that condemnation runs riot and destroys the harvest.

And how do we catch the little foxes of condemnation?

We believe the truth of all we are now in Christ. We believe the truth of our right standing in Christ. We acknowledge the finished work of Christ alive in us. And we release our hearts by acknowledging all good things we have received in Christ.

For the promise is that God never leaves us or forsakes us and that if our heart drifts he still stays faithful to his promises to us.

The truth is that God delights and desires us and that he loves us with an everlasting love.

Are You Listening?

“Let me see your face; let my hear your voice. For your voice is pleasant, and your face is lovely. ” Song of songs 2:14

The desire God has placed within us is wild in its longing to pursue the one who is unknown.

It is a desire that only finds it’s fulfillment with communion with him.

It is a desire that rages inside that causes us to search towards the mystery.

He speaks and we hear his voice.

He reaches out to us and invites us into his embrace.

This embrace is found in his unconditional reconciliation through the death and resurrection of his son. A reconciliation universal, eternal and complete. Offered in sacrifice and given in love. But this reconciliation has to be received and has to be accepted.

For God who has done all things to bring you into a new abundant life wants you. He has provided everything and has demolished everything that stood in the way of giving you his all. All you have to do is receive the favour of God and live in its beauty.

Today God is whispering to you, to come and receive. Are you listening?

Goodness, Desire and Delight

"My dove is hiding behind the rocks, behind an outcrop on the cliff. ” Song of songs 2:14

Our heart has the power to draw us to God or take us captive. It has the power to bring us into freedom or make us hide away in shame.

God with all his goodness, desire and delight draws us but our hearts choose our lovers.

The vastness of God’s love for us is found in Jesus. His life was a living sacrifice of God’s open display of his glory. For Jesus was the physical declaration of God’s goodness, mercy and compassion to a people seduced by religious fanaticism and lost in self righteous indulgences.

For it is in these indulgences that control is pursued at the price of freedom.

We hide from the one true God but God finds us.

Jesus found us and declared to us that he was bringing us into a new day of God’s favour. That he was here to set free the captive, to heal the brokenhearted, to turn our hearts back God.

Jesus leaves us free to love and wooes us with his passionate love and overflowing desire.

Jesus is not hiding from you and you never have to hide from him. Come out from behind your rock of your own security and embrace the grace of God.

The Winter is Past

“Look the winter is past and the rains are over and gone. The flowers are springing up, the season of singing birds has come and the cooing of turtle doves fill the air.” Song Of songs 2: 11-12.

Winter heralds the birth of spring.

Winter declares that there is a new day. A new day of resurrection, of new life, of a new name.

For without winter there cannot be spring.

And here is the truth of life that new life comes from death. It was out of darkness that light was created. It was out of nothing that the cosmos was created. It was out of the sparkling dust that we were created and it was out of the death of Christ that we were created as new creations.

The cross is the declaration of God that the old has passed and the new has arrived.

The promise of God is that from Christ’s death every promise he made has now been given to us. And we receive all the blessings of God because we have died with Christ and have been raised with him to live his abundant life.

It is now Christ life living and inspiring us to enter into a life that is sourced, strengthen and assured with the power of the Resurrection.

God's Freedom Is Free

“The fig trees are forming young fruit, and the fragrant grapevines are blossoming.” Song Of songs 2:13

If we want isolation, despair and the right to be on our own god, God graciously grants us our wish.

God’s freedom is so free it allows us to live in the freedom we choose. His love is so relentless and so all encompassing that if we want nothing to do with hope, grace, peace and light he gives us the freedom to live in our own reality.

Regardless of our decisions and actions God’s goodness and grace reaches out to us and invites us to come and eat and know that He is good.

The ripe fruit of grace invites us to taste and know for ourselves that God is a faithful provider.

For grace is God’s exceeding, abundant life above all we could ask or think alive and working within us.

His season inside our hearts is the new ripe day of his abundance.

Yes God gives us the freedom that love demands. We can have whatever destiny we desire. We can have whatever future we want.

But Christ invites us to come and eat the ripe fruit of grace and let the love of God blossom in our hearts. For In Christ all things work together for your good, as he works and lives inside you.

Come Away With Me.

“My lover said to me, “Rise up my darling! Come away with me, my fair one.” Song Of songs 2:10

We are invited to come away with God.

We are invited to come and experience his love.

We are invited into the embrace of God, into the loving arms of grace.

God has created an embrace of endless joy. It is an embrace that tells us he is the one true God of the cosmos. It is about embrace of passionate participation, that cries out for us to engage.

For God’s invitation is to come and experience abundant life. To know joy and overflow with peace. To never be alone again.

For loneliness is lost in the invitation to come and be loved forever.

For God loves you with an everlasting love. He welcomes you.

You are his fair one the focus of his devotion. You are the one he wants to come away with. You are the one he is calling out of everything that would captivate your heart.

The search in your heart, the longing for love, the restlesnes inside, the questions that perplex your mind are all whispers that God is calling you to come away with him.

Christ Looks For Us.

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"My lover is like a swift gazelle or a young stag. Look there he is behind the wall, looking trough the window, peering into the room.” Song of songs 2:9

The lie that we are given by the world and the lie Satan has feed us is that God does not want us. That we find value and acceptance for our lives by abiding in the security of our own divinity. That to be like God we must be our own God.

So we settle in the land of fear, shame, lust, anger and guilt and worship our own God’s of immediate gratification, self reliance and individual enlightenment.

And Christ looks at us from behind the walls that we have built and reaches out to us as we struggle with emotions that cripple our heart. Consumed with grief, abandonment, disappointment, loneliness, misconnection and detachment.

It is in the puzzle of our helplessness that God reached out to us. For God did not wait until we got it right. He did not wait until one of his chosen kept his law perfectly. He did not wait until we turned to him. He came when we were held in the captivity we had created. He came when we were trapped in the prison we had made. He came when we had said no to him, but He had said yes to us!

In our stubborn resistance we had turned to answers in our own hand crafted God’s.

Christ came to declare to us that his death is now our resurrection. His old life is now our new life. His sinless life is now our New Creation life. Our old life died with him on the cross, our new life was raised with him and he has delivered us from all the consequences of sin.

The Glory Made Flesh

“Ah, I hear my lover coming! He is leaping over the mountains bounding over the hills. ” Song of songs 2:8

Jesus was born to deliver those in captivity from their oppression.

His coming was a declaration that God’s love always triumphs over judgement.

He desperately tried to demonstrate the love of God to a chosen people locked into to a business contract with God. He tried to make them see outside of the contract so they could free themselves from its binding clauses and obligations .

He went in to their business center and chucked out the debt enforcers, he broke their working agreement and healed people on the agreed day of no work, he refused their sick pay provision and healed every one who was held by its defaulted clauses and he sat with those who were marginalised, rejected and abused by its impossible perfect conditions.

In what seemed to be random acts of compassion, he acted out of a heart of mercy to declare that the essence of God is love, freedom for the oppressed and release for those held captive.

But it was on a lonely mountain top in the presence of a few of his close companions that Jesus revealed his true nature and in this act he declared the majesty and brilliance of a New Covenant.

For the transfiguration on the mount was much more than just a one off event it was a revealing to mankind of the glory of God alive in human flesh, it was a revealing of the New Birth of a totally New Creation, the physical demonstration of heaven kissing earth. Everlasting love alive in flesh .

For every New Creation is connected to the power of heaven and is made right with God. Each has been set free and delivered from the reign of sickness and death.

And today this is the declaration of God. That through the death of Jesus we are now reconciled to God and that God is not counting our sins against us. We are forgiven and the choice we are given is to receive it and trust it or ignore it and reject it.

Love Appeared At The Appointed Time

“Promise me , O women of Jerusalem, by the gazelles and wild deer, not to awaken love until the time is right. ” Song of Songs 2:7

Love appeared at the appointed time. Love was given to us in flesh, for Jesus came to satisfy our hearts.

He came to satisfy your hunger, satisfy your thirst and satisfy the longing for connection within your heart.

One of the most heart breaking moments in the Bible is when Jesus broke down and wept over Jerusalem. It is so powerful that it can only be summed up in two words “Jesus wept”. The heart break of God as his chosen people rejected his mercy and settled for obedience in the place of grace. The eternal invitation to come and thirst no more rejected for a business contract with God.

With all of us the trap of our hearts is to get God to bless us by our actions instead of trusting his devotion.

Christ is the promise of Eden now planted into our hearts. The grace of God his unmerited favour given to us as a free gift to satisfy our hearts desire.

Jesus wept over Jerusalem but he rejoices over us his new creation with singing. His death and resurrection opened a new and living way into all the wonders and treasures of heaven.

So if there is longing in your heart, today eat from the fruit from the tree of life and that fruit is the grace of God which will nourish, nurture and protect you so you hunger and thirst no more.

For in Christ you enter into the day of God’s favour over your life. Love, joy, peace, freedom from oppression, deliverance from captivity in your mind, health to your body, release to your emotions and wholeness to your soul are your inheritance, given without reservation and placed into your hand.

Immersed Into Christ

Life is full.

We are attacked on every side, by every distraction, amusement, piece of gossip; a media soaked world can throw at us.

We are constantly spinning plates precariously on sticks as we try to keep up with all our commitments.

Somewhere in this land of busyness we begin to lose our sense of wonder, we become increasingly aware of trying to plug the gaps that take prominence in our lives

It is in these moments of awareness that the opportunity arises to embrace the Promise Land of Christ. To move away from the chaotic, amusement driven atmosphere that encroaches on our minds and to let our thoughts and imagination be immersed in the love God has for us.

We have received inside of us the fullness of Christ. The physical Promise Land of Canaan has now become the living New Creation life empowered by the Holy Spirit.   Our valleys are filled with his light, we now bask in the heat of his sun, our lives become fruitful with the knowledge of his presence and we flourish in the abundant provision of his grace.

We can move away from the barrenness and slavery of life and begin to experience the delight of life in the fertile, lavish, overflowing fruitfulness of Christ.

Our wholehearted, full-life response to his grace begins when we learn to lie down in his green pastures of love and realise that the satisfaction of our heart’s desire is found in the divine pleasures of God.  For within these pleasures we discover a Father who is patient, kind, understanding, who bears all things, believes in us always, hopes the best for us, plans only good things for us, has only our best interests at his heart, is always thinking of us, always giving to us, never rejects us, cherishes us, values us and see us in the value of his son.