I trust that, by now, you have meditated on how God's love for you is His infinite, all encompassing, enveloping love that can never be destroyed. I hope you have experienced the feeling of God delighting in you as you work in the power of the Holy Spirit to remove sinful actions and attitudes from your life. Now I want to share with you another special treasure.
My third treasure: I have the ability to ravish God's heart.
"What!" you say, "Does the Bible say that?"
Yes. In the beautiful love song called the Song of Solomon, chapter 4 verse 9 says, "You have ravished my heart, My sister, My spouse; you have ravished My heart with one look of your eyes, with one link of your necklace." (NKJV)
Ravish is not often used in today's vocabulary. In the few times that modern translations of the Bible include the word, it has the general sense of doing violence, humiliating, and oppressing another. Most often, it refers to a man forcing a woman to have intercourse.
In the eloquent declaration of His bride's affect on Him, the Bridegroom (Jesus) twice says that she "ravishes my heart." This is violence, all right, but not violence committed against another. It is the expression of such an overwhelmingly intensely loving emotion that all other emotions seem colorless by comparison.
A strongly intense emotion of the heart is seldom described in the Bible. Proverbs 5:19 gives one example. It states that a husband should be intoxicated with the love of his wife. A second example can be found in Luke 24:32, where the two disciples stated that their hearts burned within them while Jesus walked with them.
Two other examples include God in text. Genesis 6:5-6 show God looking at the continuous evil of man's life and the end of verse six states, "…and it grieved him to his heart." How the sinfulness of man pierced the heart of God!
The last example comes from Ephesians 5:25, where Paul commands husbands to love their wives. This love is not just the insipid love we associate with modern-day romance. Paul told the husbands to love their lives as much as Jesus loves the church.
How much does Jesus love the church? This overwhelmingly intense emotion caused Jesus to give up equality with God, to become a human being, to take on all the sins of the world and to die a shameful death on the cross. Here is a Heart that is waiting to be ravished.
I, who have never ravished anyone's heart, am able to fill God's heart with overwhelming love. That is so amazing to me.
God tells us what causes His heart to be ravished. The verse says that I ravish His heart when I look at Him with my eyes. As the old hymn says,
"Turn your eyes upon Jesus,
Look full in His wonderful face,
And the things of earth
Will grow strangely dim,
In the light of His glory and grace."
When I turn my eyes toward Jesus, He is already looking towards me, wanting me to see the love in His eyes. With one look from my eye, God's heart is filled with an overwhelmingly intensely loving emotion, His heart is ravished. How awesome is that?
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Oh what a beautiful revelation of the Word. The magnitude of God's love is endless and cannot be measured. If we knew only partially how much God desires to shower us with His love we would be overwhelmed with love upon love. Unfortunately, many are complacent and are satisfied to just sit in church once a week, sing a few songs, and repeat a prayer. They have no concept of what is available to them in a personal and precious relationship between the Lord God Almighty and each one of His children. Thank you for the wonderful and inspirational words. God bless.
ReplyDeleteI agree, Shrink, God's love makes me want to break out in the Halleluia Chorus.
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