Inner Journey Blog

Enoying the Heart of God

Song of Songs Ch. 1, Vs. 3.

"For your loves (breasts) are more delightful than wine."

The revelation of God's heart, his emotions, his deep love, his whole inner Person is so powerful and inebriating that when it touches our spirit and fills our heart with it's reality it is truly a delightful experience that far transcends any experience in this world.

This love must be received and internalized.  Like drinking wine, it is nothing to know about the wine, to describe the wine, to smell the wine, to know all about the process of wine-making.  What impacts a person is the drinking of the wine.  In the same way, God's love--His heart--must be received and internalized into the deepest part of ourselves.  In fact, our healing process is taking the deep part of ourselves out of protective hiding and allowing the fire and presence of God's love to touch those places until our heart is overflowing with the realities of this love.  We must drink it in.  We must take it into ourselves.  Then it becomes in us an experience that transforms.

Some would say that "wine" represents all the pleasures and pursuits of this world.  It is true that God's love and heart internalized are far more pleasurable than anything this world can offer.  Yet wine itself, literally, describes a chemical change that causes the body and emotions to experience, for a time, a sense of pleasure.  In a very literal way, God's heart, when revealed to our spirit and heart, produces a chemical change in our bodies and emotions that is truly, and without later regret, truly pleasurable and enjoyable.

The mystics tell us not to pursue God solely for our own sense of pleasure.  Yet they, nevertheless, describe these kinds of pleasurable experiences as normal for those who pursue God first, wanting to lay aside all other pursuits as dross compared to the gold of His presence.

Saint Teresa says it thus:

Oh, my daughters, may our Lord grant you to understand, or, rather, to taste, for in no other way can it be understood, how the soul rejoices when this happens to it.  Let worldlings come with all their possessions, their riches, their delights…even if all these could be enjoyed without the trials that they bring in their train, which is impossible, they could not in a thousand years cause the happiness enjoyed in a single moment by a soul brought hither by the Lord."

Song of Songs 1:2

I have been intending to take some time with the Song of Songs as it describes the journey of a soul toward union with its Beloved.  For those interested in this mystical (and perhaps primary) interpretation of this book, I can't recommend enough "The Songs of Songs" by Juan G. Arintero.

However, it is my own thoughts I will attempt to share here from time to time starting with chapter one, verse one: "Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth..."

This is God intimately touching humankind, awakening us to His love through the new birth, and imparting Himself, the Spirit, into us.  The Holy Spirit's initial touch is the foretaste of all that is to come.

This is what draws us on toward a deeper and deeper walk with God-- we want more of Him.  The taste of who He is has been intimately communicated to our spirit in a way that awakens a love and longing in us unlike anything on this earth.

Ruysbroeck says the Holy Spirit is "an embrace that intimately penetrates the Father, the Son, and all the Saints in delightful union."  No wonder that the slightest kiss-- the slightest taste-- can produce in us a thirst for more of God that lasts a lifetime.

The kiss produces an awakening to spiritual things generally and to the bliss of Divine love specifically.

This is merely the beginning of our spiritual development.  We don't know how to respond to this love fully nor how to rest fully in the Lover-Beloved relationship… We have only been kissed so as to woo us on toward Him.  There are many stages in this divine union yet to come (thus the rest of the Song of Songs).

However, this is not the kiss of lovers without serious intention.  Quite the contrary.  This is the kiss that seals the Bridegroom's desire and intention to fully consummate a union and to draw the bride into a relationship that is eternal and deep beyond words.

Starting With Nothingness

Thomas Merton offers these thoughts on meditation:

"First of all our meditation should begin with the realization of our nothingness and helplessness in the presence of God.  This need not be a mournful or discouraging experience.  On the contrary, it can be deeply tranquil and joyful since it brings us in direct contact with the source of all joy and all life.  But one reason why our meditation never gets started is perhaps that we never make this real, serious return to the center of our own nothingness before God.  Hence we never enter into the deepest reality of our relationship with Him."

As long as I am trying to "put on" someone or "be" someone, I am not fully letting go of self to the point where I can allow God to be at home in me.  I am still trying to hang onto the reigns.  This is true of my time alone with God just as its true of my time in the busyness of the day.  The more I can let go of everything in my times of solitude, the more I am able to let God be God in my times of busyness.  It's not easy, but it's an excellent goal-- seriously returning to the center of our own nothingness-- being willing to detach, let go, and just be... with God.

Prophetic Call to Solitude

There is a prophetic call today upon the church to solitude.  It's not a new call.  Jesus was called to solitude while living His earthly live.  It was necessary in order for Him to live the God-life He was called to.  The church cannot live it's life of power without solitude either.  It's a necessity.  Solitude is where we, as individuals, tap into the fuel of the Spirit, the life of the Spirit, and the power of the Spirit.  We take nothing of God's life with us into any situation if He has not poured it into us.  He pours when we create space for Him to do so.  That's the necessity of solitude.  It is space for God to pour whatever life He wants to pour into us.

Healing Journey

The inner journey is also a healing journey.  I recently catalogued, for myself, some of the transformational markers of this healing journey:

• From personal addictions to serenity and conscious contact with God
• From external esteem to God esteem-- honored and loved in Him
• From external comforts and pleasures to spiritual pleasures and pursuits as primary
• From worldly security to depth of trust in the Person
• From unconscious reactions to events or circumstances to consciousness of wounds and healing of past
• From other-esteem to God-only esteem
• From guilt, shame, and self-hatred to a sense of a loved and beautiful self, filled with the glory of Christ
• From fear of rejection, fear of the future, fear of pain, fear of uncertainty to an abiding peace and rest
• From anxious over-responsibility to a light yoke; joy of living as a child with the Father
• From false self coping mechanisms to the joy and self-honor of true self
• From trying to obtain the transcendental by looking for a greater reality in created things to finding the transcendental in our life with God
• From trying to live with senses that need to be hyper-stimulated to living with senses quietly alive to God first and then in tune with all creation
• From duty and legalistic living to grace loving and passionate living
• From fear of life to love of life
• From trying to protect the good that we have to living vulnerably and freely
• From self-protection to humility and vulnerability
• From fear of pain to open-hearted risking and loving
• From depression to deeply healed, fully alive heart
• From fractured, compartmentalized living to integrated wholeness in Christ
• From admiration of the idols of this world and envy of those who have them to true contentment in the spiritual riches that are abundant
• From external pursuits for happiness that are illusory to true kingdom joy and peace
• From multiple pursuits to a single, passionate pursuit
• From doing activities and projects as the primary focus of life to being as the primary focus
• From scarcity thinking to gratitude and abundance thinking