Vineyard Days – Selah IV

In this Selah moment while we’re lounging in the house of wine, I’d like to share a little heart to heart.

Having a heart isn’t easy. But if you consider the alternative, I vote for having a heart. Even if it hurts. Even if it gets shut down. Even if it beats wildly with joy! Even if it needs some quiet. Even if it needs to do something! Even if it aches to be understood. Even if it says one thing while life is delivering something else. Even if…even if…

No one ever walked the way of the Beloved without living this tension of the heart and the seeming tightrope between being and doing. I call it the do-be-do-be-do dance. Along with the Shulamite bride, most if not all of us are familiar with this shuffle.

When I was writing Treasures of Darkness and Desert Days back in 2010-11, this one thing I understood: there was purpose in that season that, while much remained shrouded in mystery, would make itself known in time to come. When the Lord brought me front and center with that understanding, I also understood I had a choice to make. Look at Him in all my fear and deep hurting, or look away.

I made a conscious choice to look at Him (what turned out to be a decision to be  and become ) even while there was little I could physically do.  So I wrote. I stirred up the gift that was in me, because what else was I going to do with my time? Which was my way of doing  in accordance with my faith (James 2), even while my being  was being turned inside out and upside down. Four years of writing later, there’s some tangible doing that’s been produced which I am still doing today. But it is also the fruit of being, for if no one else ever read any of my writing, it remains part of my story and testament to the supernatural work of the Holy Spirit.

That season brought convergence of several things:

• the jolt of realization that the Lord’s seeming distance was a false assumption on my part; He was awakening me to the fact that He had not missed a single bitter or hopeful beat of my heart
• discovery that the hard sayings of Jesus and His heart of great love applied equally to me; I cannot tell you which enlightening came first for they could not be separated – His flow of just correction mingled with HIs mercy; and though He wounded, He was healing me (Job 5:18; Ecclesiastes 3:3; Hosea 6:1)
• the insight that if I loved Him as I said  I did, I  had to be willing to change; not changeless Him.
•  understanding that though I had given Him what I thought was much and sufficient, He wanted it all – every nook and cranny and locked door that even I didn’t want to open and acknowledge
• the aching awareness that I had spent a lot of life giving up things He had never asked from me
• realizing His call and His invitation is continually extended, while He continues to walk on. He is eternal, yet He is operating on a timepiece that continues to daily tick toward His return. It was never so piercing as it was during that season when He was asking me to come away with Him, learn of Him, really  know Him – while growing to love Him more than life itself.  To yield to His beckoning is not easy – especially when you do not know what it will require – but it is the difference between existing and living. I didn’t want to sleepwalk my life away…
• to not answer His call of invitation meant I may at the very least delay, or to my detriment miss entirely, His purpose.
• this cycle was not unfamiliar, but its intensity was multiplied. I was being asked and I knew it, “Do you want Me ?”

I can’t think of a more gut-wrenching, purifying question to be asked by one’s Spouse.

How we individually answer the Bridegroom’s call builds up or weakens us, as well as the corporate Body of Christ. But we are not responsible for how someone else answers. Only know that we all do.

It is here, between Song of Songs 2:7 and 2:8, that the beloved finds herself hanging out in the house of wine. In its personal application, this may be the longest stretch of one’s Christianity; a mere pause in scripture but possibly months, years or decades in its outworking in our life.

The Spirit compels, but the Bride determines when she is ready for the next step on the ascending stairs. How does one know they have made that determination?

Can you, will you, do you answer from your heart as Peter did?

“You do not want to leave too, do you?” Jesus asked the Twelve.
Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.” 

John 6:67-68

To your heart I say, Selah*…

The feeblest glimpse of hope in His word, is a sure earnest of increasing light which shall be attended with purifying, comforting grace that makes fruitful.**

Living in His purifying, comforting, fruitful grace…Gracefully Free

*Selah = pause, meditate on, think about…
**( Hosea 6:1-3 Matthew Henry’s Concise Commentary)

 

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.