Vineyard Days – Do Not…Until

“I adjure you by the gazelles, and by the does of the field, O daughters of Jerusalem, 
that you do not stir up and do not awaken the Love until it pleases.”   SS 2:7 LITV

The Bridegroom had adamantly charged the daughters of Jerusalem with the above statement. As you recall, He was entreating them to seven  themselves – the equivalent of declaring an oath seven times over.

Reading it in the context of the Bride’s spiritual development was enough to send me into inquiry overload. Why  was He so intent on getting this message of do not stir up and do not awaken the Love until it (or she) pleases  across to those who surrounded  this young Bride?

Understanding the corresponding principle of that which is of the Spirit being displayed in the natural, it is easy to see why so many have relegated the Song of Songs to simply  a testament about natural love, sexual purity and marriage. That definitely has its place. If you have been following Vineyard Days, however, you know I believe that scripture holds out and invites us to more.

Over breakfast a few mornings later, I shared with my husband the question that was waterskiing figure eights in my mind. When you truly inquire of the Lord, He answers. Let’s review a few things…

– Paul’s letter to the Ephesians gives instruction in chapter 5 to husbands and wives, beginning in verse 21 and following. Paul closed that passage with stating this was a great mystery, but he was speaking about Christ and the church (ekklesia, in the Greek a ‘calling out of a Christian community of members on earth or saints in heaven or both’ ).

– Paul used the picture of earthly marriage to describe what he prophetically understood by the Spirit of revelation. For us in Vineyard Days, the key point brought forward is this: the wife (bride) is instructed to subordinate herself unto her own  husband, just as the church (Bride) is instructed to subordinate herself to Christ, her  Husband.

– We don’t typically like that word subordinate. It means reflexively to obey; to put under; make subject to; submit self unto. It stands to reason then why, from the First Married being ushered out of the Garden of Eden to last weekend’s newly married couples, there is such a struggle in our relationships. Not the least of which is with Christ as our Husband.

– Therefore, the individual and corporate Bride (made up of both genders) has often and regularly gotten hot under the collar. Where there’s smoke, there’s the firestorm of opinion.

Enter the daughters of Jerusalem (daughter in the Hebrew means not only literal daughter  but branch, company, town, village…) and the Bridegroom’s charge to them. Which remains today His charge to branches everywhere…

“Do not (seven times over) stir up and do not (seven times over) awaken the Love until she pleases.”

Would that we understand that the Bride being called out is taking steps to follow her Shepherd Lover. He must get her alone for He knows she cannot hear him clearly with all the other voices chiming in. He has succeeded in bringing her to the house of wine where His banqueting table and banner of Love begin to fill her with joy and delight. Here she finally begins to take her rest in the shelter of His  arms.

And now, He turns to the company that has been following and watching her and essentially tells them,

Be done with your talking and leave her alone. Stop plying her with your advice and your list of Christian how-to’s. You have distracted her from Me long enough. Your efforts to please and satisfy her are getting in the way! She must become dissatisfied. Until she does, do not stir up or awaken her to all the doing that would threaten to satisfy her with less than becoming who she really is.

It was here, in that coffee cup moment with my earthly husband that our heavenly Husband parted the clouds with a flash of insight.

To be stirred up and awakened by anyone other than the Lord himself is the equivalent of the Betrothed of the Bridegroom playing into the hands of another lover. Scintillating and exciting and appealing to the flesh, while leaving one in the place of a foolish virgin attending the Bridegroom.

He wants her to be married to Him, for when the Love is stirred up and awakened when she is ready, it is His powerful Agape love, as strong as death, that will become the hallmark of their Bridal relationship.

Knowingly or unknowingly, this is where the daughters of Jerusalem would prefer she remain. Attached branches render strokes and comfort in numbers. To shift one’s attachment from other branches wholeheartedly to the Vine means being helplessly laid bare and made known. If the Shulamite goes there, what does that imply about the rest of them?

“Blessed are the poor in spirit {those who are not spiritually arrogant},
for theirs is the kingdom {royalty realm, reign} of heaven {the Gospel}.”
Jesus  in the Sermon on the Mount – Matthew 5:3 NASB+

From the One who sevens  Himself and implores us to do the same…

See  Revelation 2:7, 2:11, 2:17, 2:29; 3:6; 3:13, and 3:22

 

Photo Credit: kittylitter♥ via photopin cc

Shammahs Field LLC/Shammah Ministries is the biblical counseling, life coaching, and spiritual growth ministry entrusted to Wayne & Nancy Bentz. You can learn more about the resources they have to offer at shammahsfield.com and nancybentz.com.