Inspired by last year's "Be Found in the Kiss" Colour Conference (read here, how God gave me his heavenly kisses weeks before the conference) for this year's lent I decided to read Song of Songs. Even for someone who did Literature for her undergraduate degree Song of Songs poetic style is hard for me to read. I wanted to read it with the help of the different interpretations and insights from different writers.
The title, Song of Songs, is a Hebrew way of saying the greatest song -- just as king of kings means the greatest king (Song of Songs 1:1) [Jesus in All of Song of Songs, Spoken Gospel]
Here I tried to summarize some of my personal key takeaways at the end, and start my reflection with what God has recently taught me about love.
Song of Songs and love
There is Jesus and there is gospel throughout Song of Songs, because the love described there reflects our love and intimacy with God.
Song of Songs is erotic love poetry describing the passion shared between a husband and a wife, along with the sexual intimacy that rightly accompanies it. This type of literature can seem out of character for the Bible and might make you blush when you read it. But it is so valuable because it also reveals much about our intimacy with God. [Jesus in All of Song of Songs, Spoken Gospel]
On love, last year I received one of the most precious gifts, that God taught me something new, for the first time, that forgiveness is a definition of what love is -- read my story on that, here.
And in my Song of Songs reading now, with only several devotional readings on Song of Songs available, God taught me yet another definition of what love is: a travail of intercession.
Who is this one?
She arises out of her desert, clinging to her beloved.
When I awakened you under the apple tree,
as you were feasting upon me,
I awakened your innermost being with the travail of birth
as you longed for more of me. [Song of Songs 8:5]
"This is rare, but this makes your journey with God even more real."
On a Sunday in July last year where we relayed Brian Houston preaching, even though it wasn't specifically doctrinal, but I was encouraged by what he shared on pre-marital sex. This isn't a topic you would typically hear from the pulpit on a typical Sunday. I shared with my small-group last year that looking back, since when I was younger until today God has been protecting me, when it comes to virginity.
All the men who pursued me were all from church and they had the same view with me on preserving sex for marriage. Even the non-believer men who pursued me, still valued me for having that life principle. But these men, for none of them God did what He is doing to me now: to intercede for him before I even met him, before I even knew him, and then to forgive him, and to continue interceding for him.
In November 2020 when God supernaturally asked me to pray for a man I never met I didn't immediately think that as a love story. Because it scared me actually -- I actually thought he was someone else's husband, and I never received such 'task' for a stranger. But this is the story that helped my immediate obedience:
- I lived in Berlin in 2015. A church sister then told me a story of her friend who one day, out of the blue, God asked her to pray for an ex-boyfriend. That ex-boyfriend had moved on with life, married and had children. But she obeyed. And until now she still didn't have the answer why God did it then.
So I thought, as I was reminded of this story, maybe it's not too impossible, for God to ask you to pray for a man you never met before, even if he's someone else's husband, maybe he needs someone to pray for him, God sees and knows everything anyway. Even Google didn't give me any clue about it.
But as months went by, as He began to reveal more to me, I could see His relentless love and pursuit for this man all over this rare story. And now I still ponder the same what I pondered last year early March as I was talking to a brother then, that even the miracles He provided me for in this journey, they were and are all part of this assignment of His relentless love.
See for yourself
Right up front, the greatest Song challenges us to meditate on the links between God's presence and sexual desire and intimacy (1 Corinthians 6:13) [Jesus in All of Song of Songs, Spoken Gospel]
The Shulamite2Let him smother me with kisses—his Spirit-kiss divine.So kind are your caresses,I drink them in like the sweetest wine!3Your presence releases a fragrance so pleasing—over and over poured out.For your lovely name is “Flowing Oil.”No wonder the brides-to-be adore you.4Draw me into your heart.We will run away together into the king’s cloud-filled chamber.
I was reminded on the presence of Holy Spirit in me; the Holy Spirit provides us constant intimacy with God. But to see it for myself, Holy Spirit helps me on this, to see that God's presence is more satisfying than all physical intimacy.
Jesus is the Groom who loves me, His bride, "so intimately that he laid down his life". [Jesus in All of Song of Songs, Spoken Gospel]
His love is relentless
The woman in Song of Songs is called a Shulammite, "a feminine version of the name Solomon. Both names, Solomon and Shulam, come from the word Shalom, meaning peace or wholeness. When the two parts become whole, Shalom is found". [Jesus in All of Song of Songs, Spoken Gospel]
It can be difficult to hear God lavish compliments on us and rejoice over us with singing when there are so many other voices calling out for our attention (Zephaniah 3:17). Like the bride, we can easily and abruptly be snapped away from moments with God by the voices of culture, entertainment, or our past life.
Those voices tell us to leave the imaginary garden of God’s love and throw ourselves back upon the previous ways we found validation and love. When God says we are beautiful, those voices drown him out with comparison. When God says he desires us, those voices tell us that type of love doesn’t exist.
But we need to listen to the truer voice of our husband, Jesus. As the woman (Shulam) was given the name of a king (Solomon), we have been given an even greater king-–Jesus (Matthew 12:42).
He is the king of the whole earth and yet he calls us his bride (Revelation 19:7). When he calls us radiant, holy, blameless, without stain, wrinkle, or blemish, we can know that his voice is more true (Ephesians 5:27).
[Jesus in All of Song of Songs, Spoken Gospel]
I learned something new here, that the bride's response is a reverse of those spoken by God to Eve as a curse:
Now I know that I am for my belovedand all his desires are fulfilled in me. [Song of Songs 7:10]
Travail
I also learned that besides God's very depth of heart and love has intensity, it is also filled with purpose.
That explains that we are called -- as we "mature and unselfish love drives us" -- "to share His heart with others". [The Divine Romance, Broadstreet Publishing]
As we grow in him and become spiritually, emotionally, and physically whole, we want to see others experience equal wholeness. We're motivated by an intense longing to see more of Christ birthed in the earth. We labor in intercession and in sharing the gospel in order to see others captured by these same holy affections and to see them begin their own glorious Shulamite journey. [The Divine Romance, Broadstreet Publishing]
travail
noun [ usually plural ]UK /ˈtræv.eɪl/US /treˈveɪl/
We can stake our trust on Him, whose love holds us in eternity
Our past wounds may cause us to miss God's blessings. When we're not ready we could spend every energy in us, to push the blessing away. In my journey if seeing this grieves me, then I know it has grieved God first in eternity.
In the same breath, if separation hurts me, I would know it has God too in eternity. Song of Songs captures this separation when the groom disappeared, her husband is nowhere to be found (Song of Songs 3:1). In our lives God may seem far at times -- if Jesus loves us more than anyone (even our own parents and spouse), He must be closer to us than anyone.
But we still wait for Jesus' return -- that's why, like Song of Songs, "the whole Bible ends with a sense of longing and unfulfilled desire (Revelation 22:17). Like the bride, may we wait for Jesus, full of love, expectancy, and praise." [Jesus in All of Song of Songs, Spoken Gospel]
At the receiving end of far from nice and friendly gestures, I may never know if God is doing this journey as part of Him writing my love story. One of my fears now actually is, if I would be able to love any other man, after this intercession ends, until God reveals what's next. But what I know, this is about His love, that just like everything in this universe this is for His glory. I got a glimpse, a tiny bit of what it means, of His unconditional love. Because if I could learn to love a man so much through praying for him before I even met him, through praying for him so intensely, even all the more God's love for him.
He has first loved him, just as He has first loved me, in eternity.
I tell you this: You will be sad and you will cry. But the people who belong to this world will be happy. Yes, you will be sad. But soon after that, you will become happy instead.
....
It is like that for you. You are sad now. But I will see you again, and then you will be happy. You will be really happy. Nobody will be able to stop you being happy. (John 16, EASY)
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