Attending a retreat in August, I had been emotionally prepped that worship would be a little different than my norm. The speaker intro-ed it giving us the freedom to stand, sit, jump, lay on our face, move to another room, full freedom to do what we needed. So worship began, a freeform worship, go where the Spirit leads. I’m trying to close my eyes and focus, but a little frustrated I don’t know the words. We aren’t really singing a particular song. Struggling to not be distracted, the varying volume level was messing with my heart. But then I felt the Lord say, “You don’t need to know the words. Relax and let Me lead you.” He gave me the impression of dancing, which is beautiful because dancing is two-fold for me. When you have a good partner (in this case the Holy Spirit), you don’t need to know the song, how to dance, or where you’re going. But also, I love to dance and have been praying, waiting for my future husband to dance with me.
So ok, Lord, let’s dance. She did give us permission to move into one of the nearby rooms.
It probably took me a good 5 minutes to get the guts to stand up. “The floor creaks, I’ll distract people, Mom will notice and be worried about me…” I had to work through a list of things in my head before I moved. Once in the next room, there was a whole new list. “The floor still creaks, what if someone walks in, I’ll stay by Mom’s bed so no one will feel like I’m in their bunk space, I can twirl myself…but how does this work Lord? I still don’t know the song.” Another few minutes passed before those barricades were all down and I had a sweet time dancing with the Lord.
Partway through worship, I could hear Mrs. asking a question. While I have no idea what the question was, the road it took me down was clear. My dancing turned into honest free-flowing tears seated on the floor. “Lord I feel like you are holding out on me, keeping something from me.” I’ve prayed for a husband for years, but He has yet to answer that prayer. So I walked out that train. If I truly believe God is holding out on me…that means that I don’t trust
1) His goodness and that He gives good gifts to His children
2) in Him or who He says He is
3) or that His promises are true
There was something freeing about just being open with those thoughts and feelings. It’s something that I subconsciously believed but never actually verbalized to myself or God. It came down to, “Will I trust Him even though His timing is different?
As the music wrapped up, I slipped back into the main room. The evening’s teaching was on involving the Holy Spirit in your daily quiet time and the passage was Song of Songs Chapter 1. As she began pulling apart the first chapter, my heart continued to stir.
The Shepherd-King says, “You are so thrilling to me.”
The Shulamite lists all the things that are wrong with her, and “Please don’t stare in scorn…”
The Shepherd-King - “Yet you are so lovely!”
The words began to sink deeper and deeper into my heart. Jesus wants to be my first love!
Why did this feel like a new concept to me? Jesus loves me. It’s the song of my childhood and a well-known brain fact. God loves me, as a father loves his child. The bride/bridegroom level of love is Biblical and I could explain it to you…but it wasn’t heart knowledge for me. Jesus loves me, had just taken on a new meaning.
Parental love is totally different - they have to love me and maybe reprimand me. But a groom chooses to love and thinks his bride is beautiful. That is not a place I’ve allowed Jesus to be. I’ve prayed for a husband for years, but Jesus wants to fill that role first. Here I am praying for the understudy and ignoring the Master. Being a gentleman, Jesus doesn’t force His way. I realized that the intimate love of my heart had not been a place I’d allowed/invited Him to be. It had not been a love that I’d accepted from Him… Until now.
(PS I have never been more grateful for a new-to-me worship experience. The Holy Spirit used new to turn my attention and make sure I was all ears for what He had in store.)