Love…More! Be In Love!

Love…More! Be In Love!                                                    By Kelly Durant 7-6-14

Song of Sol. 5:16 His mouth is most sweet: yea, he is altogether lovely. This is my beloved, and this is my friend, O daughters of Jerusalem. Rev 22:17 And the Spirit and the bride say, Come. And let him that heareth say, Come. And let him that is athirst come. And whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely.

 2.My wife and I were married on this exact day 36 years ago! That’s 13,140 days ago! Wow, right? The good part is we are still attracted to each other, isn’t her smile amazing? She is beautiful, right?  We still work at trying to make the other one happy too! One of the best moments in my life was kissing my wife in the falling rain! Love always starts out with a big bang, but each one of us has to put in effort to keep our universe of love expanding after that! Love between people exists as God does, it gets created, and then it must keep getting energized, renovated, and preserved. Love is eternal if you want it to be! 

Isn’t love amazing? God made it unfathomably mysterious and multifaceted! Love between humans overcomes all limitations and still loves anyway; love seems to unite people together who are opposites and very improbable to be succeed or be attracted to one another. Take me and my wife for example, ha! We are from backgrounds in many ways quite opposite. We are from very different types of families, culture, generation, etc. And our kids who married turned out being attracted to opposites as well: the tallest one married a short one, the lightest one married a dark one, the brown girl one married a light one, and they all have very different personalities, gifts, and talents! Funny, right? That’s love!

How many of you think you are quite different from your spouse in many ways? Well, I think God allows us to experience differences in relationships so we can get balanced out and understand how God is the same in all things, all loving and all accepting of us no matter how we are physically or in personality! For God, ugly people do not exist, but all God wants from us to love Him back! He loved us first, I John 4:19 “We love him, because he first loved us”.

3. Our verse of the day is from Song of Solomon. How many of you have ever read this book? It is entirely romantic! Few people preach from this book, and it is hard to use this book for the general public, but like I have done here, one can chose the least scandalous verse to preach on so we learn more about love relationships, God’s love, and all relationships in general.

Basically we can interpret the verse of today two ways, either the man knows how to speak sweet enticing words with his mouth to his love (the woman speaking here), or he knows how to kiss good! Ha! God made people to enjoy each other but I will stop right there with those details.

So now, what does the part mean, “he is altogether lovely”? Well consider this, when a person doesn’t have love for someone, they can’t even walk across the room without you finding fault in it! And love works as is stated in this verse, when you love someone you see everything about them as perfectly good and refined, attractive and lovely, and no matter how they walk, or what they do, you find it agreeable. Here as everywhere, there are some people that never see any wrong in their favorites! (Despite the fact this is not good many times as there could be plenty wrong that someone should tell them about)

4. So let’s go on to the last half of the verse, it is a proclamation to everyone in the town (the daughters of Jerusalem) that he is her “friend and beloved one”. There are many details in the whole book describing in what ways how this couple is attracted to one another, but I personally find this verse makes the main point.

It is the fact that when a person is in love, they will go around and declare that love to the whole town! When identifying with the other, you are full of emotion, and both of you are mutually accepting ownership of each other in your love. By declaring your love to all, you are affirming to all everywhere that you are happy with the one you have, meaning you don’t want anyone else.  For something to be real, we must proclaim it with our mouths as in Romans 10:9,10.

Like a few recent young couples that have come to the Corps, at first they declare on their facebook their love for each other, which is the equivalent of telling the world or all of Jerusalem, that they are engaged and love each other, and then later they get married! Well, first they check the “in a relationship” box. Do you check and claim your mate, your family, your Corps, your Christian brothers?

5. The first book of the Bible I read to my wife was this book of Song of Solomon, how crazy that was, right? I should have read her John 3:16 first, right? Well, we did discuss salvation and our Christian convictions first thing. I supposed that since I had been praying for a wife, I wanted to be sure that she got the Word of God in her immediately about passionate love, so she would want to share this kind of God’s love with me! Well, many emotions were there for sure!

Love between couples is a subject that for me hard to share about. For one, I am aware not everyone here is married and you may feel that this does not relate to you (but it might one day!). As a matter of fact, some people that have not had their love life turn out the way they wanted it to may get mad at the idea of discussing the fact that love between couples is something beautiful and from God and that we all should support it. Don’t live with no love! Seek more love!

In the end, what does Satan want? He wants to destroy love and wants everyone hating one another, hating conventional families, hating the opposite sex, hating the ex- that got away, hating life and hating love itself, hating the fact that  God’s word makes it known that love is pleasant and enjoyed! People that don’t want to hear about love, whether it be romantic or between family or friends, need to check their hearts, it might be that deep inside they have hate and if you discover that then pray to overcome it because of I John 3:15 “Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer: and ye know that no murderer hath eternal life abiding in him.” 

6. So if this message does not relate to you to cultivate more love in a romantic way because you are not in the situation of talking about how sweet the mouth of your beloved is, then consider this, God wants you to have a love fulfilled life anyway regardless of your situation! God is pure love and He wants you to feel in the clouds in love with life, fulfilled, and living out a purpose, a calling for Him. God’s emotional love for you can be intense, deep, and felt inside if you seek it!

Some Biblical scholars believe that S. of S. has a double meaning or maybe just a spiritual meaning. The words contained herein are not just about a physical romantic attraction and relationship lesson, but it may be an allegory of the love God has for us and the passionate love we should have for Him. It doesn’t matter how you interpret it, the general lesson is simple, any relationship whether it be with a person, or with God, should be passionate, intimate, and faithful! God’s love should be to you like being in love and if it is not then something is wrong!

For you to be crazy in love with Jesus is what God wants! God is crazy in love with you! Isa 62:5 for as a young man marrieth a virgin, so shall thy sons marry thee: and as the bridegroom rejoiceth over the bride, so shall thy God rejoice over thee. The Salvation Army’s best words on holiness are from Samuel Logan Brengle who expressed that he had an epiphany with God’s love, all colors became brighter, he loved the most tiny animal, all was beautiful, it was like being in love!

7. Have you ever known people obsessively in love? I suppose it happens mostly to people in the teenage years, but you feel like saying, “Will you shut up already about_(so and so)_!, we know you’re in love!” Some people can talk non-stop about how fine the other one is, how amazing they are, etc. When you don’t have the same feelings as someone else it gets sort of tiring to hear, right?

God never gets tired of talking about you, his bride that does wonderful things to love others in serving those in need! If He loves us like this, so passionately, should we not return the same love and talk about Him with passion? When Jesus came, the love of God shook all of nature! The love of God suddenly was made more powerful, more penetrating, more intense, and more complete!

How can anyone not love Jesus when the way he gave His love to us so painfully? Who can tell me about the very first miracle of Jesus? He turned the water into wine at a wedding party right? Well, what does that tell you about His love for people in love? He wants people to love and have a good time and celebrate when they are uniting. And finally His love for us will be shared at a great wedding party in heaven, at the Marriage Supper of the Lamb! Have you got your invitation? No wise teacher, no prophet, no philosopher, no king, no one ever loved people as Jesus did!

8. In the end our job is to woo others so they drink of the water of life, that Jesus, the groom, gives freely! Rev 22:17 And the Spirit and the bride say, Come. And let him that heareth say, Come. And let him that is athirst come. And whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely. Jesus invitation is to have love for eternity!

So what more can we conclude from God’s word in Song of Solomon? That God created love to be shared, love is to be proclaimed and announced, you share it as if you will die without it! As a matter of fact, people do die a slow death of stress and internal pain when they do not give love nor receive love as God made us to! And sadly, there are many people who need love and they will not take it nor give it!

Just sharing the love we have in Jesus between our brothers and our sisters is enough to make one happy in life but you put effort into it! It takes effort and time to love God, you must pray and study, but after doing your part you feel touched inside, isn’t that true? Loving others makes us feel alive and ecstatic!  

9. A final thought, the apostle Paul was not married but he was in love with Jesus busy preaching and talking non-stop about his greatness and love and notice he was content in whatever state he was in! You don’t have to be in love with a soul mate to be in love with God and life! Being in love with Jesus will cause others to be in love with you though!

God is eternally passionately in love with you and me, his bride, and Hw wants this news to be spread to all the world!

Without a doubt you and I are not living with the intenseness of love God intends! You and I need to love God and each other more! And if we do love more, we can generate our love into a synergy of euphoria, sort of like how it is in the praises of heaven, amen? With more love for each other as God intended it to be, all of us could experience the Holy Spirit to the maximum! I believe that is true! But God is limited by our lack of love for our neighbors! Don’t live dry and ordinary! Fall in love with Jesus today! Love God, enjoy “your friend and beloved”, and your brothers and sisters as never before!