Intimacy

And here is what I am going to do, I'm going to start all over again. I'm taking her back out into the wilderness where we had our first date, and I'll court her. I'll give her bouquets of roses, I'll turn heartbreak valley into acres of hope. She'll respond like she did as a young girl, those days when she was fresh out of Egypt. At that time, you'll address me 'Dear Husband'! Never again will you address me, 'My- Slave Master'. I'll wash your mouth out with soap, get rid of all the dirty false god names, not so much as a whisper of those names again. Hosea 2 The Message

Marriage, we know is a picture of Christ the Bridegroom and the church, His Bride. I believe that to be true. I have heard the sermons and I have analyzed the scriptures and I get it. Christ as Husband, me as Bride. Sounds great to me in theory. Who wouldn't want to be that precious and prized to be the Bride of Jesus! Who wouldn't want to be that intimately associated with Him! I sing the songs about being His beloved, and I journal all these deep womanly prayers about being His beautiful Bride, and until now, I was hiding. My heart was pretending to be okay with it, avoiding the shaking truth of what I really feel.

Because to me marriage is not a picture of me and my Jesus. Marriage is not the perfect picture of intimacy, and covenant love. To me, and many others I am sure, marriage is a source of heartbreak. Not beauty. Marriage means fighting and screaming and hating and piercing words and division and heart scarred and deep scar wounds.

Marriage to me means cheating and lying and stealing and breaking. Marriage means loss. It means shame. Marriage to me means broken promises, failed attempts, and love fake, easily shaken.

In a world of pretty close to 50/50 chances of survival,  the let down is so common that it is almost not allowed to hurt. If the majority of us are touched by the tearing of families and the dividing walls and paperwork and money and two Christmas trees, we can't all react the way we want to or our world would crumble. So we say we are fortunate, we are privileged, we are living first world, we are fine.

Two years now of inner healing, and layers peeling back and water washing darkness and wounds healing slow. Yet only now could my heart open enough to see it. Only now am I made strong enough to let the wave of truth hit me. Only now is my heart ready to handle what it means for me to be called a Bride and to be joined as one to someone else, even if that is Our Perfect Jesus.

I am sure that each day I spend in the secret place with Him only breaks me down deeper, but this breaking and tearing is for healing. It is for refining and perfection and redemption. Deeper into the secret place with Him than ever before, I feel weaker still. Two years of crying out for the filling of His Spirit, two years of calling out closer, deeper, more. Two years of stones removed, roots pulled out, and new roots going deep. Two years of wondering what was left standing between me and Him. Here it is.

Fear.

Bowed low in a room of 3000 people, He sends a woman to me with His message. She sits, her spirit sings over me, I weep and she somehow reads deeper into my being than I ever seemed to. Her eyes became His and when she spoke I knew it was directly from Him. Without me saying anything she answered my prayers. Then she looked at me and point blank said "Go ask the Holy Spirit to show you why you are afraid to receive from Him, intimacy is not something to be afraid of ".

God is good, but He lets me get away with no nonsense. So I sit crying with my head bowed, journal opened. "Holy Spirit, why am I afraid?" Almost before I can think the words I know the truth. Infused from His Spirit to my inner being, now rising to my soul. Striving fades and from the dust, I am standing up, ready now to face the fight. The fight of intimacy.

Intimacy to me has meant invasion. Regret, nightmares, it meant divorce, adultery, it meant impurity, it meant violation and young hearts broken. It meant saying yes and allowing the destruction of soul, the ties of darkness and the mark of shame. No one to blame but self, yet somehow feeling like a victimm not of the face next to mine, but a victim of the Enemy and his schemes to steal anything pure.

I hear the words now that I heard in a sermon once "The Holy Spirit is the most intimate part of God, He comes to consecrate us to the Bridegroom". At the time I thought nothing of these words but now they are a sword tearing down high strongholds I have carefully built stone by stone. 

All this time, loving the concept of being a Bride, yet never seeing how it came against every day I have lived in fear of consecration, fear of being truly seen by someone else. I break again. I can almost feel an ache inside that is stretching my heart and making more room for Him.

Memories flood and I feel the weight of sin and pain weighing heavy on my heart. But without a word, without even a prayer, I lift my hands, palms up.

I see the threat of that closeness, the risk of being seen again and denied, I feel the pain fresh and searing, I remember the regret. But God, my God, He is not a man that He should lie. He is God. He is Jesus. I brave the storm, and I take the risk. I open my hands to receive now anything that the Spirit wants to give. I feel I am flying now in freedom.

Out of my mouth bursts forth a new language. A language between my spirit and His. A channel has opened. It is a channel of intimacy. And the cost is great. It means letting go. It means fear falling down hard, and it means nakedness of soul.

This intimacy means courage. It means stripping myself bare before the King of Kings, in my weakness, in my sin and shame, it means coming to Him with no covering and letting Him truly see me, over and over again until every part of me belongs wholly to Him.

I remember now the vision last year in this same room, in this same church, at a conference like this one, with a different set of worshipers, I remember what row I stood in,and the worship band that was playing when He showed me myself dressed as the Bride at the Marriage supper. I remember the way my heart broke in half when I realized one year ago that He loved me, deep. I had no idea what was underneath, or what comes after the celebration and supper. Consummation. From the marriage supper to the inner chambers. Weird, bizarre, new. Yet biblical and pure. The cloud of witnesses before us always have this in common, they experience intimacy with the Divine. I forget sometimes the He died to unite us to God in Oneness. Nothing is closer than Oneness. And nothing represents that in our world better than marriage. Do we ever really open our hearts to believe that God wants that with us?

Only now one year later can my heart even allow for that to be true. How gentle and kind and slow and loving is my King. Never forcefully, always invited in. I love my God. And I am sure I have never loved anything or anyone as deeply as I love Him now. Yet next year I hope it is new again, and each year the love goes deeper and the intimacy grows more precious and the moments together in prayer and worship are moments that define my life and who I am. This moment of breakthrough is one I will remember.

He washed my mouth of false god fears and left my heart beating bare before Him. He did what He promised. He brought me back to Toronto where me and the Bridegroom had our first date, and He gently allured my heart. He again captured my attention, and my mouth no longer cries out with the names of shame and mistakes and falsehood. My voice cries from deep within, in a new language, pure, desperate, in love, "My Husband"!

Martina Sobey