New Seasons

So, at the beginning of this year was the Counting of the Omer, which began on what you may know as Easter. I refer to it as Resurrection Day. For 50 days the Bible tells us that it's not about your salvation, it's about blessings. So, for 50 days, from Resurrection Day to the Day of Pentecost, the Bible talks about a journey. It begins with 40 days of walking with the Lord. And then for 10 days after his ascension, he asked his followers 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 the savior. 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 as 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 most pastors really struggle with? They are very challenged with teaching it, so I asked the Lord why. Why is it such a hardship? For men, it is 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 with seeing themselves as a bride.

And 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 might have a challenge with homophobia or gender issues. On the other side with females, Song of Songs is often a challenge. Especially for married females, if you have a husband who takes you for granted, it can be difficult to read about this perfect man and perfect husband. Most husbands don't talk that way beyond the newlywed phase, but it's still a longing in women's lives.

Whether 20, 50, or 90, we all still have a yearning and a longing to be beautiful and pulled into a loving 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, a wife." The key factor is this whole book, the whole Bible is all spirit. None of it 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 you go back to the Song of Songs and allow Jesus Christ to share an intimacy relationship with you as love and as the lover of your soul, it 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, Ephesians, 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, and the big factor 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, coming into it as you're already a child of God for Jesus died once, and he died for all.

Whether you are in ignorance and in darkness and the unknown, does not change the DNA fact that you are already his kid, 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. So, I say, let’s shift our thoughts to the finished work of the cross and allow 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, and allowing the Holy Spirit to speak to us as a love language. Beginning with the Song of Songs by Solomon, understanding the Scriptures from LOVE, and spreading that good news that the kingdom of God is at hand and it's now. How is this possible? Because each one of us was conceived by God in intimacy of LOVE with His DNA as the Husband of our spirit and soul whether natural, love intimacy took place. Today, we each are a child of God growing up into the maturity of the faith for the unity of the one body called Christ.

Do you know that in Ephesians, when I was breaking down each verse in this book, I came to Chapter 4 where Paul wrote that there is one body, one spirit, one hope, one calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God, one father, all through grace? I went through and I looked up each one not by chance of what I might have thought Paul was saying, but what were the original words he used? Do you know that every one of those words are nouns? If you use the phrase, "Just have faith," faith is a noun. Faith isn't just doing something. It's being something. Baptism, that's a being, but we've used it in the context of to be baptized, "Go be baptized."

What the Lord was showing me is people used to be named according to their nature, according to who they were. Those names, like baby names, were not a name necessarily like John and Mary and Paul, but the name was given because of the nature of who that person was. So, for example, my name Audrey means noble one. It would have been just as common in the naming to just simply call me “noble one.” In saying noble one, you were also saying Audrey. 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 the 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."

And when we come together in that, we are not making bone structures of the skeletal of the body of Christ, because none of his bones were broken, but we start bringing the joints of the one body and filling it with the one spirit of the Lord. We see one another as bone of his bone, flesh of his flesh in the unity of the coming of the Lord.