Come Then, My Beloved, My Lovely One, Come

January 5, 2017

Come Then, My Beloved, My Lovely One, Come

My love lifts up his voice, he says to me, 'Come then, my beloved, my lovely one, come. For see, winter is past, the rains are over and gone. 'Flowers are appearing on the earth. The season of glad songs has come, the cooing of the turtledove Is heard in our land. The fig tree is forming its first figs and the blossoming vines give out their fragrance. Come then, my beloved, my lovely one, come.”

The Song of Songs 2:10-13 NJB

Brennan Manning said that he marked as a milestone the interior development of moving from, “I should pray” to “I must pray.” I first pulled back from that statement because I shy away from words such as ought, must, should, and have to. To me, those words carry a connotation of guilt that violate Paul’s liberating proclamation, “So now there is no condemnation for those who belong to Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1) However, I am coming to realize that indeed, I must pray.

I need air to breathe, water to drink and food to eat. Without these I will die. So also, I need to be loved, accepted and to have a sense of self-worth. Without these I may not die physically, but I’ll be dead to life. God alone can satisfy my needs for love, acceptance and worth; and God can only meet those needs when I am in communion with Him. Thus, I am indeed desperate for Him, I am indeed lost without Him and I must pray in order to live.

Why then does it seem so hard for me to give myself over to uninterrupted quiet time, allowing myself to hear the voice of the One who is furiously longing for me saying, “Come then, my beloved, My lovely one, come”? Because the enemy of God, our adversary will do everything in his power to obliterate the liberating voice of God. Even so, the furious longing of God will never, ever quit. He’ll keep calling and calling and calling out to me until I can hear His sweet voice say, “Come then, my beloved, My lovely one, come.”

And, I’ll come. With tears of joy streaming down my cheeks, I’ll come. I’ll bet you will too.

Sē’lah

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(Selah is a word that appears in the Book of Psalms that I often use as the Complimentary Closing in my correspondence. Its meaning, as I use the word, is to pause and think about these things.)

These meditations are written by Alex M. Knight as he seeks the life in Christ as his way of life.  The meditations are published on the BLOG, http://seekingthelifeinchrist.blogspot.com/ and they are also distributed on the Constant Contact email server. You may subscribe to this email service by sending an email to: amkrom812@gmail.com. The BLOG is also available on Amazon Kindle, by subscription.

Publications by Alex M. Knight:

·        Seeking the Life in Christ, Meditations on the New Testament and Psalms has been published and is now available at Amazon.com in paperback and Kindle.

·        The second edition of  First Think – Then Pray is available on Amazon Kindle.

·        Meditations on The Story of My Life as told by Jesus Christ has been released as an e-book on Amazon Kindle.

Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.