Morning By Morning #116

Arise, my darling, my beautiful one, and come with me.

Song of Songs 2:10

From the pen of Charles Spurgeon:

Listen! I hear “the voice of my beloved!” (Song 2:8 ESV). He speaks to me! Fair spring weather is smiling on the face of the earth, and He desires I not be spiritually asleep while all of nature around me is waking from her winter’s rest. He bids me “Arise,” and well He does, for long enough I have been lying among the weeds of worldliness.

“He is risen” (Matt. 28:6 KJV) and I am risen in Him. Then why should I cling to the dust? From lesser loves, desires, pursuits, and aspirations I desire to rise toward Him. He calls me by the sweet title, “my darling,” and considers me beautiful. Is this not a good argument to “arise”!

If He has exalted me to this place and thinks of me as lovely, how can I linger in “the tents of Kedar” (Song 1:5) and seek my friends among “the children of mankind” (Ps. 31:19 ESV)? He bids, “Come with me.” Further and further from everything selfish, lowly, worldly, and sinful He calls me. Yes, from the outwardly religious world that does not know Him, and which has no understanding of the mystery of the higher way, He calls me.

“Come with me.” The call has no harsh sound to it in my ears. Yet what is there that holds me to this wilderness of vanity and sin?

O my Lord, I desire to come with You, but I am tangled among the thorns and cannot escape them as I would like. I desire, if it were possible, to have neither eyes, nor ears, nor a heart for sin. You call me to Yourself by saying, “Come with me,” and it is a melodious call indeed. To come to You is to come home from exile, to come to land after a raging storm, to come to rest after tremendous toil, to come to the goal of my desires and the summit of my wishes. But, Lord, how can a stone arise? How can a lump of clay come with You from deep within a horrible pit?

Raise me! Draw me! Your grace can do it. Send forth Your Holy Spirit to kindle the flames of love in my heart, and I will continue to rise until I leave life and time behind and indeed come to You.

From the pen of Jim Reimann:

Oh, how we are loved!

And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him. In this way, love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment, because in this world we are like him. There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love. We love because he first loved us.

1 John 4:16 – 19

Father, thank You for the love expressed in the death of Your Son to redeem me, for “greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13). Help me express Your love to others by being willing to give of myself in the way You have given to me—not sparingly, but generously; not selfishly, but selflessly.

“God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us” (Rom. 5:5).