Being A Fool For God

Being a Fool for God

Song of Solomon 2:8-13 (New International Version)

8 Listen! My lover!

Look! Here he comes,

leaping across the mountains,

bounding over the hills.

9 My lover is like a gazelle or a young stag.

2 Look! There he stands behind our wall,

gazing through the windows,

peering through the lattice.

10 My lover spoke and said to me,

"Arise, my darling,

my beautiful one, and come with me.

11 See! The winter is past;

the rains are over and gone.

12 Flowers appear on the earth;

the season of singing has come,

the cooing of doves

is heard in our land.

13 The fig tree forms its early fruit;

the blossoming vines spread their fragrance.

Arise, come, my darling;

my beautiful one, come with me."

This is the world of God for the people of God and the entire world. Thanks be to God hallelujah, amen.

Let us pray.

I’m going to make a confession. When I first read this passage of scripture, I used it in a love letter that I wrote to my high school sweet heart. I thought that this was a passage of scripture that talked about the love between a man and a woman. I thought that it would make me seem mature and sophisticated.

I bet you’re wondering, how I would know to look in the Bible to find something to write in a love letter. Well, when I was eight years old, I always made it a habit to read the Bible everyday. I didn’t just read a verse or two. I was reading chapters. And on Sundays I would go through an entire Book. So by the time I was 13, I read the Bible from front to cover several times. That’s a great feat for a child. But I wasn’t reading the Bible for understanding. I was reading the Bible for entertainment purposes.

I had a yearning to read everything that I could get my hands on because I love to read. When my mother wouldn’t buy books for me at the grocery stores or Wal-Mart, then I was forced to either re-read my old books or read the Bible.

Because I read my Bible so much, I would get frustrated every Sunday when I went to Sunday school. I would ask my parents why I need to go to Sunday school. They told me that’s where I learn about God. And I would tell them that I think I know more about God than the teacher because the stuff we learn in Sunday school is stuff everybody should know already. I want to talk about the stuff that we never read about in Sunday. (Give some examples of this).

All this stuff that I read made me build up walls when it came to God. I didn’t come to church to worship God out of love but fear of being wiped out like he did the Ammonites or the Canaanites. I didn’t long to have a more personal relationship with God until I was called into ministry.

But God is waiting

When I was doing my research for my sermon this week, I realized that the Songs of Solomon are romantic but it is symbolism. Symbolism can be defined as the practice of representing things by symbols, or of investing things with a symbolic meaning or character.

In this passage of text, God is comparing the love that he has for the church to the love that a man has for a woman. I hate to say it, but if God loves us with that sort of passion, then what would seem so out of the ordinary for him to try to woo us into wanting to be in a more intimate relationship with him.

Have you felt the nudging and stirring of the Lord to pray more than usual lately? Have you heard the voice of the Holy Spirit calling you into a deeper relationship with Him?

It seems that the Lord calls me to prayer at some of the most inconvenient times (my perception of the matter). However, I am quickly learning that His call to intimacy is what I need more than anything else on the face of this earth. I don’t know if ya’ll remember, but I gave a sermon on being naked before God. Baring your soul before God sets us up for the ability to establish an intimate relationship with God. Think about it we have to start somewhere. But my thing is, let’s not stop

why does the church reject that which they so desperately need?

Luke chapter 10 gives us the account of Jesus paying a visit to Mary and Martha. Mary chose to sit at the feet of Jesus and receive the words of life proceeding forth from His mouth, while Martha proceeded to prepare a meal. Martha’s focus was on the natural, while Mary’s focus was on that which was spiritual. Jesus told Martha that the spiritual aspect of living was most needful. The natural things of life can sometimes distract us from receiving what we so desperately need from the Lord. We need Jesus! We need to hear what He has to say! We need the words of life that He has to impart to us. We are and will be a people who desperately need a Holy Ghost deposit in our lives.