A Pilgrimage Journey Counting the Omer – Part 3

A Pilgrimage Journey Counting the Omer – Part 3

We are finishing up the season of Counting the Omer, a season we have never gone through before. What is Father God really saying after the COVID virus, after the shutdowns, after a global world of fear and economy situations, political situations, and so many varieties of issues, racial issues, and things that have been going on globally that have people in a lot of tension and anxiety.


I hear many believers in Christ say, "The world's coming to an end. The Rapture is going to happen." We've heard that for many, many, years, and then when it doesn't happen, people lose faith in God. It's like, "Well, I thought this was supposed to occur and it didn't." At the beginning of this year Counting the Omer, which began on what you may know as Easter, also known as Resurrection Day, for 50 days the Bible tells us that it's not about your salvation - It's about blessings. For 50 days, from Resurrection Day to the Day of Pentecost, the Bible talks about that it is a journey. It begins with 40 days of walking with the Lord. And then for 10 days after His ascension, He had asked His followers, His disciples, to go back to Jerusalem and wait for the Holy Spirit.


They did not have a clue of what the Holy Spirit was about, but they knew a pattern and they had a relationship with Jesus as the Resurrection, not just as the Savior. Not as the cross relationship that so often many of us do not even get beyond that. We take everything to the cross, but we don't come through the cross. We don't understand that once it's taken to the cross, we must let it go. That means it must be dead. But then for us personally, you can't keep bringing it up. You must know what Jesus would do now that He is the Resurrection. He wants us to have a relationship with Him not just as our Savior, but as our Bridegroom.


So, for me this year, what the Lord had me do is go to Song of Solomon, Song of Songs that King Solomon wrote. Do you realize this is a book that many pastors really struggle with? They are very challenged to teach it, and I asked the Lord why. Why is it such a hardship? And the answer I got was for men... and we still have a predominant male pastor leadership within the church. It's very challenging to read Song of Songs, without it becoming a physical intimacy relationship. It brings out a struggle. We know that it's a relationship between a husband and wife, and oftentimes it's taught in that respect. But when it comes to a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, male pastors really struggle seeing themselves as a bride.


It may be a head knowledge. You may be able to call yourself a bride as part of the body of Christ, as part of the church, but when you start reading the details of what Jesus is telling you and you're a man, you instantly can have a challenge with a homophobia situation. On the other side with females, oftentimes, Song of Songs is a challenge, especially married females, it reads like a romance novel that women would love to have their husband woo them and say what is in this book. Most men do not talk the way the Song of Songs is written.


Whether a woman is 20, 50, or a 90-year-old, they still are created to be loved carrying that longing to be beautiful, to be pulled into a love relationship. So, for us, Jesus Christ is wonderful. It's "Wow. Jesus is talking to me, not just as a lowly woman, but as an intimacy of a bride and not just a bride, but as a wife." The challenge comes if you have a natural husband. You can almost get to where you feel like you're cheating on your husband. So, you just find yourself not wanting to go there. The key factor is the whole Bible is all Spirit, not just certain verses. None of the Bible is about your physical wellbeing. Whether you're talking about certain body parts, whether you're talking about eyes or hair, or whatever body part that may be in there, that body part is a spiritual body part.


When we go back to the Song of Songs that Solomon wrote intensely, we open our heart to allow Jesus Christ to be in an intimate relationship with you as love and as the lover of our soul. This relationship with/in LOVE is inside each of us whether we are male or female or married or single. This takes on a whole different understanding. That's what the Lord had me do this time, and in doing that, I still had a few days left, the 10 days after the 40 days of the ascension, the 10 days of going into that space of what Jerusalem is all about. And the Lord went and told me, "Go to, breaking down verse by verse in the book of Ephesians." Well, why Ephesians? 

We know in Revelation, John wrote to the churches, and the first church he wrote to was Ephesus. The main message to the church of Ephesus was you must go back to your first love. So, what if instead of pushing people into this "sinner saved by grace" message, we introduce to the world that you're already a child of God for Jesus died once, and he died for all.


Whether you are in ignorance, darkness, and the unknown, does not change the DNA fact that you are already God’s child, that you already came from good seed, and that it is a religious spirit that is telling you, you must do something to choose your parents. This is coming from the finished work of the cross and allowing the resurrection as the first day of Jesus coming forth in the newness, doing a total shift of how we read the Bible, how we understand Scripture, allowing the Holy Spirit to speak to us in a love language. Consummation of unity in Christ beginning with the Song of Songs by Solomon, and then going spreading the good news that the kingdom of God is at hand and it's now. Today, we are a child of God growing up into the maturity of the faith for the unity of the one body.


Breaking down Ephesians 2, that there is one body, one spirit, one hope, one calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God, one father, is all through grace Paul talks about. I went through and looked up each one from the original language? Do you know that every one of those words are nouns? If you use the word, “faith." Well, faith is a noun. Faith isn't just doing something. It's being something. Baptism, that's a being, yet we've used it in the context of to be baptized, "Go be baptized."


What the Lord was showing me is people were named according to their nature, according to who they were.  A person’s name was their nature. For example, my name Audrey means noble one. It would've been just as common in the naming to just simply call me “noble one.” And in saying noble one, they were also saying Audrey. So, when there's one Hope, it's not hoping in. It's Hope as an identity. These are all the attributes of who our Heavenly Father is, that He's given to us, and in the unity of His faith, we need somebody out there that's named Hope. We need somebody out there that's named Calling, somebody that's out there that says, "I am Faith."


When we come together in that realm of Life, what we are doing is we are making bone structures of the skeletal body of Christ, because none of his bones were broken, but all His joints were dismembered. What we must do is start bringing the joints of the one body together for the blood of Jesus Christ to connect the body with mercy and grace filling this one body with the one Holy Spirit of the Lord. We taste and see one another as bone of His bone, flesh of His flesh in the unity of the coming of the Lord. We want to see the return of Jesus. We must see Him in us first because He's forming one body. We can’t give away to others what we don’t recognize within ourselves. If we don’t recognize the Grace of God in us because Jesus Christ is moving and having His being in us, we are challenged to be able to give grace to others without a condition from the Tree of Knowledge, instead of the Tree of Life.