Sacred Romance 2: Straight from the Heart of God

Sacred Romance 2: Straight from the Heart of God
Song of Songs 2:8-5:1
vacMidway – 4/30/2006 – Bumble

{Intro}
Human beings were created with passionate desires. What should we do with those desires? Generally humankind has three views of the subject:

The first view is from a “monastery” {show slide}: We should try to GET RID of our desires. This is why monks preferred exclusive places so that their efforts won’t be disturbed by other factors. This is called asceticism.

The second view is from a “mansion” {show slide}, “playboy mansion” to be exact. This view says that we should INDULGE our desires. Just max out our desires with whatever it pleased. This is called hedonism.

The first view thinks that sex is sin, and according to the second, Hugh Hefner might say that sex is salvation. But God say that sex is neither of these views.

The Christian view about desires – any kind of desires - is from a “mission” {show slide}. This view says that we need to PRIORITIZE our desires. Sexual desire has its place, but not the most important place. Why? Because there are other desires which could be more important depends on its scale of lasting impact. The most important desire for human being is the desire of the soul. We were created with eternity in our hearts and that’s why we continually searching for something which can fulfill that eternal God-shaped hole in our hearts. This is why Jesus taught, “seek first the Kingdom of God, and everything else will be given to you”.

And so as we continue in the second part of the study in Song of Songs “Sacred Romance”, we will hear straight from the heart of God about how are we going to response to the God’s given sexual desires we all have.

{Let’s pray}

{THE EXCLUSIVE COURTSHIP}

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. 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.”

* Courtship need times: Notice that by this visit, winter had passed and spring had come (compared to the last time they were at the picnic). Don’t rush in to marriage too quickly. The other night I caught a segment on E’s “True Hollywood Story” about this celebrity couple who got married after two weeks of meeting each others. Without enough time, love at first sight will be disaster in the first month!

* It is also interesting to have the woman recounted what the man said. Whatever he said, she remembered the beautiful details of nature in spring: “the winter days had passed, rainy days were over, flowers are blooming, there are sound of singers and birds; there are senses of flowers in the air, etc.” It’s the nature of women to be moved by romantic thoughts. (One girl in our Marriage Builders small group recalled “Of all the years we dated, one time he gave me some flowers, and until now I still remember it!” What this is telling us is that women craved for romance. Some want more and some want less. Some like my wife, pretending like she doesn’t need any. But generally they are wired that way.)

* Courtship is the normal progression from public setting (“king’s table”, “banquet”, “picnic”) to a more private setting (“come with me”): It’s normal for one to have the desire to be alone with one’s lover. This desire seems to be easily experienced during courtship, but unfortunately it often fades in marriage.[i]

* So, allow your relationship enough times for courtship, because there are two main things you need to focus on during that time to get ready to marry this person.


{THE DUAL PURPOSES FOR COURTSHIP}

14 My dove in the clefts of the rock, in the hiding places on the mountainside, show me your face, let me hear your voice; for your voice is sweet, and your face is lovely.

* Purpose 1 is you need to know the inner-person behind the initial outward impression. Trust must be built on truth. It was characteristic of doves to hide in the clefts of the hills so that no-one could see or hear them. His request is that there be an absolute exposure of her whole person and character to him.[ii]

Remember we studied last week that normally there’s a period when we were head-over-heal, blindly in love? Now is the time to get to know your love more.

What do you need to know? the usual stuff: where they come from, where they are and where are they going? Some French author has a proverb: “Love is not just looking at each other but looking at the same direction”. Look at this triangular model, as these two points move closer to the center, they will also move closer to one another.

How do you know each other more? By communicate. It may be that most of us would be wise to not just talk about superficial stuff. Discuss topics which will reveal the person more. But be genuine and honest. This is not an interview. And don’t lie because eventually the truth will come out any way.[iii] (You will have the chance to discuss this even more in the break-out small group discussion followed this sermon. Dr. Hai will be your facilitator today, and because of our topic, the college age people will meet together with the older or married one. We cleared the tables in Agape room to make rooms for everyone.)

But knowing more each other is not enough. The man continues on:

15 Catch for us the foxes, the little foxes that ruin the vineyards, our vineyards that are in bloom.

* Purpose 2 is you need to deal with issues which could ruin the relationship. In agriculture little animals often came in and chew on the vines for food and ruin the crops. The foxes represent as many obstacles or temptations as have plagued lovers throughout the centuries. Perhaps it is the fox of uncontrolled desire which drives a wedge of guilt between a couple. Perhaps it is the fox of mistrust and jealousy which breaks the bond of love. Or it may be the fox of selfishness and pride which refuses to let one acknowledge his fault to another. Or it may be an unforgiving spirit which will not accept the apology of the other.[iv]

But given the term “vineyard” was used early on (1:6) and elsewhere in the Song to refer to the body of the woman, I believe that one of “little foxes” are sexual temptations the couple face. Here we see they communicate with each others about their willingness to deal with these kinds of potential destructive problems.

The foxes (of sexual temptations) are cute. They are so cute that we often question “Can I have them? Why not? Why is it that we have to be sexually pure?”

Because sex was designed by God as the mechanism to bond to two persons into oneness. It’s not just a matter of the union of two bodies, but sex was the ultimate union of the emotions, the minds, the souls into oneness. Unfortunately when you see the portrayal of sexual scenes in the movies, they don’t (and can’t) portray the mind, emotion, and soul of the people involved. (But sometimes even the secular Hollywood culture understands that sex is much more than the animalistic instinct to mate. In Vanilla Sky, when Tom Cruise was cavalier betray his old lover, she confronted him, "When you sleep with someone, your body makes a promise whether you do or not.” What promise? The promise of the sacred union, that the two-become-one-flesh!)

There was a great video from InterVarsity back when I was in college titled “Out in the open: plain talk about sex”. I wish I could show it to you but it was made in 1990 so I couldn’t locate it now. What different about this video is it portrayed an angle that people often not talk about. A college couple was in love, both of them were Christians, but they stepped over the line and have sex with one another. It was consensual between them, but the video was able to capture what happened in their minds, in their emotions, and the guilt in the souls. I don’t think their experiences are in isolation. There are many Christians today, even in this community, can testify for it. If only they could overcome the guilt and shame, they would tell you that sex is sacred, that you could only enjoy it when there is proper commitment and union and trust in the permanence of marriage. They could tell you that outside of marriage, outside of marriage, sex is sin. The Bible has two terms for sex outside of marriage. After you are married, it’s called: adultery. Before you are married, it’s called fornication [v].

Without the proper prerequisite, sex burns and consumes. When you were small your parents taught you not to play with fire in the living room. What if you won’t listen and keep trying to prove them wrong? The whole place will burn down. But with proper prerequisite, fire can be used properly to bring warmth to the living room. It’s called the fireplace in your house.[vi]


But the foxes (of sexual temptations) are also small. They are so small that we often think “Sure, if sex is sin, I just won’t have sex then. But the other “small stuff” wouldn’t hurt, how far can I go and it’s still OK?”

Asking that question is like asking “how far can I get to the edge of the cliff and it’s still OK?” Apparently a lot of us still don’t understand that the greatest sexual organs are not between your legs but it’s between your ears: It’s your mind. (If our mind messed up, we can no longer enjoy sex). Sex is not only the act itself, but the whole attitude leading to it. If not, Jesus wouldn’t need to define “You have heard that it was said, ‘Do not commit adultery.’ But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” (Mt 5:27-28)

So, as Joshua Harris newest book title said, “Sex is not a problem: Lust is”. In an earlier book titled “I Kiss Dating Goodbye” he discussed about the problem of our dating culture today. It’s un-cool to have no date. And also, when young people went on a date, they would follow the “normal stuff” they saw on “Blind Date”, “elimiDATE”, and “The 5th Wheel” reality TV shows and engage in physical attraction to early and too fast.

Those of you who went to Winter Conference last year familiar with this graph of physical progression toward one-flesh union {show graph}. The point is physical engagement are designed to increasingly lead to sexual union. You give parts of yourselves gradually away until the point of giving yourselves totally to the other person, your will, your mind, your emotion, your soul and your body.
And so Joshua Harris thinks that when you involve with someone you give a part of yourself to that person; and the more people you involved with, the more fragmented you become. After all, if “Last Christmas I gave you my heart and the very next day you give it away” then how many hearts do you have to keep enduring in this painful madness?


And the foxes (of sexual temptation) are smart and clever too. They whined, “If you really love me you why don’t you prove it?” Well, the same exact line was used by Delilah and we have the fallen Samson to learn from.

Or how about this modern reasoning, “Marriage is just a piece of paper, as long as we love each other and plan to have a wedding someday, it’s OK for us to be together?” Imagine if you are interview for an engineering job, can you say “O, the bachelor degree is just a piece of paper; I am really good at this and I will graduate someday”? If a piece of paper can provide solid proof of commitment in study for our career (which might change a few times in our lifetime); are we treating our commitment of love to our soul mate with contempt like that? No wonder we could handle our school and career better than our relationship!


But the foxes (of sexual temptations) are destructive indeed if you let them have their way:

You have to understand that sex is a very strong thirst designed for an extremely strong fulfillment by the ultimate and permanence union with your soul mate. What will happen if we attempt to fulfill that thirst without a permanence fulfillment (provided by God in marriage)? Like fulfill your thirst with sea water. You stomach is full for a short while then you go back empty, thirst for more, each time the thirst is harder to quench. Eventually, your thirst fulfilling mechanism will burst. Many people regret that they didn’t mastered their sexual temptation and let it mastered them. As a result, now even as they got married and matured, they are still suffered many problems from it. A more concrete illustration is Hugh Hefner. As described by in the June 2001 issue of Philadelphia magazine essay "The Prodigy and the Playmate" by Ben Wallace: Hugh overdosed on sex and now the great playboy icon can no longer enjoy women, he turned gay instead[vii].

Sorry I digress – but it was the burden God placed on my heart.

So, during courtship we must do two things: 1) Get to know each other authentically to build relationship, and 2) Protect the relationship by dealing with any issues that will potentially destroy it. Then besides those two purposes, there are also two commitments in relationship as well.

{DUAL COMMITMENTS IN RELATIONSHIP}

* The 1st commitment is to each other. Notice that even though they recognize that there are potential problems in the relationship – the foxes - fox of sexual temptation, of mistrust and jealousy, of selfishness and pride, etc. But despite those potential problems, what’s their attitude, “we will also see other people and see who else better comes along?” Let’s hear it from the girl:

16 My lover is mine and I am his;

The commitment is to each others! Despite there are still potential foxes in the relationship. In the verse follow:

He browses among the lilies.

In the original language, “browse” there is the same word for “shepherding/grazing-the-flock” and so the girl rested and trusted in his shepherd-like quality, despite the struggles they still share.[viii]

Commitment to each other is an obvious one in the relationship. But the next one is not as obvious. We read:

17 Until the day breaks and the shadows flee, turn , my lover, and be like a gazelle or like a young stag on the rugged hills.

What’s going on here? What time is the “day breaks and the shadows flee”? Day time. When was the last time we see him “like a gazelle or like a young stag”? Earlier when he came to visit and invited her out. And what she asked him to do? “turn”. Apparently it was getting late and she was asking him to leave[ix].

* The 2nd commitment is the commitment to God in obedience. Does she love him? Yes! But she also committed to do the right thing.

This commitment puzzled a lot of people. “Why is it not enough to just commit to one another? Why do Christians always have to drag God into everything, even relationship?” It is because we live in a fallen world, and even our strongest love will not be enough to sustain us through life.

In the marriage vow, we say “to have and to hold… to love each other as long as both shall live”. But look at the fine print. Can your love strong enough in both “for richer, for poorer”? Perhaps. Can your love strong enough to weather the changes of your spouse in both “for better, for worse”? Hhm, I am not so sure. Can your love strong enough to endure both “in sickness, and in health”? An authoritative study indicated that when terminal illness strikes a mate, seven out of ten American spouses split.[x] No wonder some people wanted to change their wedding vow to “to live with each other as long as we both shall love”.

J. Robertson McQuilkin recounted how God had helped him continue to love his
wife in her last days of Alzheimer: “In the days when Muriel could still stand
and walk and we had not resorted to diapers, sometimes there were “accidents.” I
was on my knees beside her, trying to clean up the mess as she stood, confused,
by the toilet. It would have been easier if she weren’t so insistent on helping.
I got more and more frustrated. Suddenly, to make her stand still, I slapped her
calf, as if that would do any good. It wasn’t a hard slap, but she was startled.
I was too. Never in over forty years of marriage had I ever so much as touched
her in anger or in rebuke of any kind. Never. I had never even been tempted, in
fact. But now, when she needed me most… Sobbing, I pled with her to forgive
me—no matter that she didn’t understand words any better than she could speak
them. So I turned to the Lord to tell him how sorry I was. It took me days to
get over it.” [xi]

Commitment to God will sustain your life and your marriage. Studies shown that “80% of the relationships in which couples were living together without marriage vows end in separation. Sixty percent of those who are married by a justice of the peace are divorced later. Forty percent of those who are married in churches eventually divorce. And those who read their Bibles together daily [not just professing church goers, mind you] divorce only at the rate of 1 out of 1,050![xii] At the heart of marriage is a spiritual bond, sex is should flow out and enhance that bond. And until that spiritual foundation is in place, you can not reliably build on it.

{FEARFUL DREAM OF LOST}

But doing the right things to obey God in relationship is not a simple matter. After her lover left for the night, this was what she experienced:

1 All night long on my bed I looked for the one my heart loves; I looked for him but did not find him. 2 I will get up now and go about the city, through its streets and squares; I will search for the one my heart loves. So I looked for him but did not find him. 3 The watchmen found me as they made their rounds in the city. “Have you seen the one my heart loves?”

A nightmare! The phrase “All night long on my bed” gave it away. You cannot “look for” anyone on your bed but except in a dream. She was dreaming about losing him after sticking to the proper boundary before God!

Fear of losing love is the number one reason why girls giving up their purity. Unfortunately doing so never helped them keep the man their love. Worse, it made the whole relationship oriented on a bad foundation.

In her dream, she found her lover again. And she was very happy to bring him back to the safest place she knows: her house[xiii]

4 Scarcely had I passed them when I found the one my heart loves. I held him and would not let him go till I had brought him to my mother’s house, to the room of the one who conceived me.

One thing to note here is that the girl had no problem with having her lover over her parents’ house. Apparently they won the acceptance of her parents. Contrary to popular belief, proper romance can bloom in a good environment, even a “protective” environment. An has a friend in Vancouver BC named Tracy. She got on our website forum a few years back and I had followed her Xanga ever since. I met her last year and she was as charming in real life as in her blog. From what I know of her, I was most impressed with the romance she had with her husband. And last week she blogged about how the romance got started:

Actually I must boast that I love my love story !!! LOL ! before we got
married, we dated for 9 years and during this 9 years because we both live at
home and our moms are homemaker, we never really have any "private" moment
! and I’m a bit of a ‘traditional’ girl so we don’t hang out in each
other’s room without the present of a friend or my brother. So sometime,
just sitting next to Collin in the living room and have him held my hand when no
one is looking was over the top !!! I swoon every time !!! LOL ! If I
have to give advice on a great relationship I will say, get to know them as
friend and love them as a person first, and take it slow ! save the best for
marriage Love to me is like a fruit, it takes time, sunlight, water,
and lots of care before it ripen into sweetness. Long before Collin and I
dated (I was 14 and he was 16), we were friends when I was 8 and he was
10. So long before we were in love, we were the very best of friend and as
the chemistry ignited here and there, we fell in love before even knowing it
!!! And as I stare at him now watching Smallville, trying hard not to fall
asleep, I must say I love this best friend/soul mate of mine with all of my
heart. Thank you God for this beautiful present.[xiv][Boldfaced was mine]

So, get to know the inner-person of your lovers first, protect your relationship from destructive problems, commit yourselves to one another, and commit yourselves under God! Take the proper times needed to grow your relationship:

5 Daughters of Jerusalem, I charge you by the gazelles and by the does of the field: Do not arouse or awaken love until it so desires.

{THE PUBLIC WEDDING CEREMONY}

Like a sweet flower under proper care, one day love will become a precious fruit, ripen rewarding. Here we see the description of the wedding procession:

6 Who is this coming up from the desert like a column of smoke, perfumed with myrrh and incense made from all the spices of the merchant? 7 Look! It is Solomon’s carriage, escorted by sixty warriors, the noblest of Israel, 8 all of them wearing the sword, all experienced in battle, each with his sword at his side, prepared for the terrors of the night. 9 King Solomon made for himself the carriage; he made it of wood from Lebanon. 10 Its posts he made of silver, its base of gold. Its seat was upholstered with purple, its interior lovingly inlaid by the daughters of Jerusalem. 11 Come out, you daughters of Zion, and look at King Solomon wearing the crown, the crown with which his mother crowned him on the day of his wedding, the day his heart rejoiced.

* The process of the Israelites’ wedding back then very similar to our Vietnamese culture: the groom and his entourage came and escorted the bride and her side to the wedding site for the ceremony, then to their new place. They also have a wedding feast for everyone too.[xv]

{I am running out of time so I will go through these points quickly}.

* Notice the materials in the wedding: it should be the best that the groom could afford; it expressed the self-sacrifice nature the groom should have toward his bride[xvi]. Don’t incur any debt, but don’t be so cheap on this. I fought with Jenney about this for our wedding and I realized that it made sense to show how much we value our soul mate for the occasion {I will elaborate if I have time}.

* Notice the public nature and the other people’s involvement in the wedding party: The best men in shining armors of protection, the daughters of Jerusalem in helping decorate the carriage, Solomon’s mother made him a wedding crown in blessing – all were showing support for the couple in their marriage. Wedding had always been supported by the community around them.

{IN PRIVATE CHAMBER}

And now the author takes us right into their private chamber to witness their love making consummation. Are you blushing at what we are about to read? My mentor taught me on this and expressed it so well:

Let’s be clear that sexuality is meant to be a private thing, not a secret
thing. Secrecy is about having something to hide. Secrets have power over us,
when something is private, we have power over it. Ask yourself right now, is my
sexuality and what I am doing with my body, how I feel about myself, what I look
at, who I talk to, how I act: Is it secret or private?
When something is
private we can allow others in when we need to or want to, when it is
appropriate.
Privacy is about protecting what is personal and tender. If you
walked into my office and heard me on the phone talking to my wife about our
making love last night, you would have heard a private moment. Believe me, I
would feel slightly embarrassed, but I wouldn’t be ashamed. Because our
enjoyment of each other is private, not secret.
This is why married couples
put locks on our bedroom doors. Not because there is something to hide, but
because the privacy allows for safety and intimacy. This is also why wise
families put filters on their computers, so pornography can’t enter the home.
Pornography is not wrong because it shows bodies and sexuality. It is wrong
because the bodies and sexuality depict something private made explicitly public
for no reason than to make it so.
For so many of us, this most tender area
of life is filled with secrets, fear, guilt and shame. And at the same time, we
live in a world that tries to tell us that sexuality should be a public thing,
that there is no need for either privacy or protection.[xvii]

{HE ADORES}

Here the groom let us in to the most private and sacred moment. He started by expressing his adoration to her beauty:

1 How beautiful you are, my darling! Oh, how beautiful!
Your eyes behind your veil are doves. Your hair is like a flock of goats descending from Mount Gilead.
2 Your teeth are like a flock of sheep just shorn, coming up from the washing. Each has its twin; not one of them is alone.
3 Your lips are like a scarlet ribbon; your mouth is lovely. Your temples behind your veil are like the halves of a pomegranate.
4 Your neck is like the tower of David, built with elegance; on it hang a thousand shields, all of them shields of warriors.
5 Your two breasts are like two fawns, like twin fawns of a gazelle that browse among the lilies.

To our modern 21st century readers, this is a strange way to describe a woman. But no doubt everyone would understand that he was praising her beauty. He also expressed his excitement toward her:

6 Until the day breaks and the shadows flee, I will go to the mountain of myrrh and to the hill of incense.
7 All beautiful you are, my darling; there is no flaw in you.

Two features of 4:1-7 call for comment. First, these verses include one reference to the first person (“I” in v. 6). His total attention was focused on his bride and her beauty. The conclusion to be drawn from this is that sex, when enjoyed properly within marriage, draws attention from oneself to one’s mate, to his or her needs and pleasures. Second, the metaphors and imagery which Solomon used in praising his beloved were drawn from a pastoral setting: doves, goats, sheep, pomegranates, fawns, gazelles, mountains, hills. Solomon’s bride, having been raised in the country, understood and appreciated these images.[xviii] So, we need communicate love to our spouses in a way they could understand! {This is a good segue into the 5 languages of love and the great funny honeymoon story from John Oterberg, but I will skip it for now because most of the audience don’t need it yet.}

But then the next few verses were fairly puzzling:

8 Come with me from Lebanon, my bride, come with me from Lebanon. Descend from the crest of Amana, from the top of Senir, the summit of Hermon, from the lions’ dens and the mountain haunts of the leopards.

What’s going on here? “Lebanon, Amana, Senir, and Hermon” were all geographical places in northern Israel near the Shulamite’s home town. Another clue was “the lions’ dens and the mountain haunts of the leopards”, scary beasts. Apparently the bride was a bit nervous and distance. And so the groom stopped. We live in a fallen world and sometimes there are many obstacles leading to sexual intimacy, even in the proper place of marriage. Often victims of abuses, broken pasts will have to take more times to adjust. But for normal people, there is also a lot of anxiety about the unknown which made them hesitated as well. The groom took her feeling into consideration and assured her that for her inner-love, not just her outer-beauty:

9 You have stolen my heart, my sister, my bride; you have stolen my heart with one glance of your eyes, with one jewel of your necklace. 10 How delightful is your love, my sister, my bride! How much more pleasing is your love than wine, and the fragrance of your perfume than any spice! 11 Your lips drop sweetness as the honeycomb, my bride; milk and honey are under your tongue. The fragrance of your garments is like that of Lebanon.

He called her “my sister, my bride”, a familial term like “em” in Vietnamese denotes they became family. Then he also praised her for her sexual purity, reminded her that they’ve work hard to prepare for this moment:

12 You are a garden locked up, my sister, my bride; you are a spring enclosed, a sealed fountain. 13 Your plants are an orchard of pomegranates with choice fruits, with henna and nard, 14 nard and saffron, calamus and cinnamon, with every kind of incense tree, with myrrh and aloes and all the finest spices. 15 You are a garden fountain, a well of flowing water streaming down from Lebanon.

Using the most exotic and valuable botany known to Israel at the time, Solomon was saying that his bride was a rich treasure beyond measure.

{SHE INVITES}
In intimacy: he adores her.
What about her: she invites him.
This is the voice of the bride:

16 Awake, north wind, and come, south wind! Blow on my garden, that its fragrance may spread abroad. Let my lover come into his garden and taste its choice fruits.

Nothing satisfies a man more than his wife was responsive to him in love making. He exclaimed:

1 I have come into my garden, my sister, my bride; I have gathered my myrrh with my spice. I have eaten my honeycomb and my honey; I have drunk my wine and my milk.

{GOD BLESS THE UNION}

At that climatic moment, there was a strange voice emerged in the song.

Eat, O friends, and drink; drink your fill, O lovers.

What? Who voice was that? Since the voice was obviously from a third party, your NIV bible margin noted that it might be from their “friends”. But given the setting of their bedroom, during the consummation of their marriage, most Bible commentators and preachers concluded that this voice was the blessing from God Himself, the creator of love and the designer of sex.


{Conclusion}

As we come to the end of this session, the nagging question remained to me was “Could God bless me in my sex life? Would He be pleased with my sexuality like he did with this couple?”

As I come to understand the Word of God for me and for you today, seeing His desire and standard, listening straight from His heart; I found His heart was broken. God’s heart is broken because we are so very broken as sexual beings.

I am aware of all of the brokenness in our congregation in this area. We have people who were sexually abused; we have people who were marred by results of adultery; we have people who are in bondage of lustful pornography; we have people who stepped over the proper boundaries in courtship.

And I am among you too. It’s not an accident that I don’t illustrate these sermons from my own life example. I wish I could have, but I fall short just like you.

So what do we do now? How are we going to bring the brokenness of our flesh to Jesus, the God who came among us in the flesh?

First, we need to know that God’s heart is also broken because of our sin. He loves us and don’t want to see us continue to be in pain. Jesus came, and stood by the adulterous woman. He didn’t condemn.

Second, we need to come to him repenting. God called us to come to Him with our sins now: “Come now, let us reason together,” says the Lord. “Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool.” (Is 1:18) His promise was not only just forgiveness, but full restoration!

Third, we need to rely on His strength to move on. Jesus said to the adulteress “Go and sin no more!” God loves you they way you are, and He loves you too much to leave you that way. By God’s grace and strength, it is possible for you to experience passionate love with all its splendor and glory the way He intended us.

This is the Word of God, for me and for you today.