The sermon explores the deep, intimate relationship between Christ and believers, using the Song of Songs as a metaphor. The speaker emphasises that Christianity is not merely about doctrines or duties, but rather a loving relationship with Jesus. He shares personal experiences of powerful prayer meetings and encourages listeners to find their unique calling in partnership with Christ. The key message is that true Christian life involves actively seeking and responding to Jesus’ presence, leading to a joyful, purposeful walk with Him.

Automatically Generated Transcript
[00:00:00] Let’s leave the passage from the Song of Songs Chapter 5 up on the screen. Now this particular book has been a mystery as to how to interpret it by many Christians down through the ages. But generally speaking there is a lot of reason why this is sort of like a dramatical song. It’s called the Song of Songs for a start. That’s one of the headings that the book is given. But it’s a song about an experience that is in the human domain. It’s an experience of a young wife slash lover of King Solomon. But the experience in the human dimension is but a metaphor of spiritual experience that it is ours in terms of our knowing God. And although you can’t prove that it does register on many, it has down through the years,
[00:01:06] it registered on many Christians as to what this is actually all about. It’s a dramatic picture. I don’t know whether if you’re an older person like me back to younger years when you were falling in love or you might have been at least gaining an interest and the other person involved in that. You weren’t quite sure whether that was their story also. But you long to have another opportunity to meet with them and to see what sparks flew and what didn’t. I don’t know whether you can remember back Don’t know whether you can remember back if you’re like me,
[00:01:46] and who else around should I direct the attention to? Oh, there’s Andrew. And you might remember how you’re wanting to meet this person or see them again. You had an interest, but you didn’t say anything, and you want to somehow to see whether or not those feelings to the heart were going to be reflected back again. to come and remember such occasions. And one of the things that happens, and it’s very common human experience this,
[00:02:17] is that as you go about your daily life and sometimes you take extra trips into the city just in case you bump into the person. But you don’t know you’ll be there but it seems as though you keep on looking and seeing people and you think it’s her and then they turn around and it’s someone else. I’m not going to ask you to put your hand up whether you’ve experienced what I’m talking about of looking and looking and wanting to find something that you’ve had a spark of but you’re not sure
[00:02:46] whether it’s there… and that sense of something deep that you’re missing sometimes in the years of young adulthood, and some of you here in the right age range for this, where you still have a loneliness that’s not been met. And so you go to church and there are some interesting people there but you haven’t met the one yet that really made your heart flutter. But you’re hoping you will. And sometimes young people, I don’t know that this is a good idea. But they go around from church to church and they’re looking to see, maybe some fresh person who might be the one. But they look and as they
[00:03:25] go away, they say, naah, naah, naah. You know. Something didn’t click, or something didn’t gel, or something didn’t, what would be the word? It’s just not some quite clicking nor. And you’re wanting and so you keep on looking. I can remember once, this is many years ago, when I had been in love and the relationship had started. It was going very well until I actually told the girl off for something I shouldn’t have done. I misunderstood. And she dropped me and from there after I was always wanting to see if I could run into her again and I remember going into Brisbane and I saw someone on the back of a motorbike. It’s her, it’s her But, then, when you get a closer look, it’s not. Now I won’t ask you, to, as I said,
[00:04:11] put your hand up whether you’ve experienced what it is to somehow sense that there’s something that you’re missing. There’s a fellowship, there’s a closeness, there’s a return love that you’re longing for and you wonder whether you wrecked it or whether you have imagined it in the first place. And this dramatic song of Solomon is actually picturing an experience that Christians have about them and Jesus. A spiritual experience of fulfillment in the closeness of Christ.
[00:04:51] And occasionally things happen in our lives, our Christian lives, where we do have a taste of it. I can remember being a Baptist college student in the church I was assigned to was down at Wynnum. Took me 40 minutes to drive from Brookfield down to Wynnum, and they were planning a new sanctuary, planning a new church. But the council were being stroppy about letting us do certain things So they formed a Saturday morning prayer meeting at two past six.
[00:05:24] Now, when you live at Brookfield it takes 45 minutes. That’s some time around quarter past five, you’ve got to be out the door in the car, and I go down there and I was sort of irritable at having to get up so early when I’d had a big night, the night before. And driving down there, why did I let myself get talked into this prayer meeting, the thoughts in my mind? And then we get into prayer and those people down at Wynnum were so much longing for God to overcome the opposition of the council that they really
[00:06:03] got into prayer. And somewhere in the middle of the prayer time, there came a sense of the presence of the spirit of God. And I found I loved it. And we wouldn’t stop. We would just go on praying. We somehow had an experience of the closeness of God, that was absolutely worth driving all that distance. And from that moment on of that prayer meeting, I was aware that there was a depth of spiritual experience in Christianity that you didn’t always have yourself immersed in, but you had a sense feeling that you should, and you long for it more and more and you look for that sense of the closeness of the Lord or perhaps going around to different fellowships, sometimes in the worship. Our church does this to me sometimes, but in the worship it’s not because I think the singers have all got it perfectly,
[00:07:03] don’t have to, but something in the fellowship of the participation in the song it really gets a grip on you and you go away. I go away smiling on both side of my face, inside and out, about it. Of what it was to be there, so glad I went. I might have come down here, some nights instead of this is what I must do and make myself come, but I don’t go home feeling that way. I’m describing the normalcy of Christian experience and it has to do with the believer and Christ. Just as this Song of Songs is a metaphor of an experience there there is with Jesus. And the little parts of the New Testament you find things
[00:07:53] that are relational in terms of us in Christ. That verse people argue about a Revelation 3 20 as to whether it’s addressing non-Christians who need to become Christians by opening up the door of their life to Christ or whether it’s addressed to the Church and how Jesus is wanting fellowship with the Church and we’ve all got rather lazy and haven’t been bothering, you know, to attend the prayer meetings or to be coming close to him?” And so he says, “‘Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If any individual hear my voice,’ that’s getting a bit into this. Like the storyline, I’ll go through it in a minute in Chapter 5, the storyline where there’s almost another encounter the bride or the young wife or whatever she is, the lover,
[00:08:44] she misses the opportunity to she’s lazy. And when at last she gets herself fully awake to go and open the door, he’s gone. And then she gets up and goes around and she’s searching the city at night, looking for him, where is he? This one that she loves that she didn’t get up in time to open the door. That’s actually the experience of many of us in our Christian lives, with us and Jesus, and opportunities come where we don’t actually get the fullness or the closeness of Christ because, like the bride, the girl, and this, she’s rather lazy. Let’s look at it in chapter 5, and I’ve picked on some parts where it’s visible where in your pew bible if you turn,
[00:09:32] if you wanna follow it that way, page 562, here you could go down and note one moment is she talking in the next moment is him replying and she’s talking again and he’s replying. It goes on through the story of this search that she has when he was almost there and then the door but she didn’t get up and let him in. Let’s follow that through where it’s him talking Firstly, in verse 1, I came to my garden, my sister, my bride,
[00:10:02] I gathered my myrrh with my bought spice, I ate my honeycomb with my honey, I drank wine with my milk, He’s coming… eat friends, drink, and be drunk with love… And it’s talking about this experience of being drunk… not with wine, being drunk with love. But there is a spiritual parallel
[00:10:28] To the human experience, if you can remember back to your teenage years or whenever it was, that you were aware of a human love and you longed for the depth of it but you couldn’t quite find the person and you went looking and is that… Well, no it’s not. And you’re looking for someone. That’s quite a human experience that’s parallel by the facts that in our relationship with Christ, there are times when we want his closeness. But what can stop us at times is that we didn’t bother getting up to the prayer meeting or that we somehow got busy with other projects and the projects became so important that all the things we’re doing that we somehow lost Jesus in the activity. Well, that’s The Song of Songs that you can read it this way. It’s not
[00:11:22] the only way down through history where it’s been read, but it’s one that’s repeatedly arisen. And then in verse 2, I slept, but my heart was awake. Now you think of that. I slept. As far as the person was concerned, they were not engaged in the relationship, not engaged in the relationship, but my heart was awake. A sound. My beloved is knocking. Open to me my sister, my love. This is the call from him.” And she had said she was sleeping but her heart was awake because he was coming close. And then she replies, I had put off my garment, and how could I put it on.
[00:12:10] is a sort of laziness. I’ve, you know, gotten ready to sleep and I want to go to stay asleep. I have bathed my feet, so how could I soil them if I get up and answer the door? She’s going to get dirty feet and want to wash them again. My beloved put his hands to the latch and my heart was thrilled within me, the opportunity of the closeness of Christ. something I’ve discovered through the years is that there is a Christian experience you can have and in my case it’s often been and computed with prayer like the prayer meeting down at Wynnum on a Saturday morning It’s actually been through my life
[00:12:53] I once did the exercise of trying to work out how many occasions there were where it was a prayer meeting where this that I’m talking about happened to me Another one, for example, was when they came a visiting speaker to our Christian Endeavour little group and then following that we got really interested in revival and started a prayer meeting and the prayer meeting happened because we were meant to be organizing this Christian Endeavour group and everybody had a role to do a job to discharge but the fellow who was in charge of the whole thing went to Sydney in his job and left as unattended so we’d turn up for the occasion, usually Thursday after school or something or other, we’d turn up and we’d be no on there but us.
[00:13:38] And so we took over, we said we don’t really understand Christian IGF and learning to do papers, and having chatting prayers and stuff. So one fella brought along a book to read. A book which was, a book about action, of witnessing, and it was actually a book about New York gangs being won by David Wilkerson. and he sort of challenged us we didn’t have New York ladle gangsters to work on but we had friends at school and we started praying and something happened in the prayer meeting I want to tell you it’s been in my case prayer meetings again and again and again where something happens and I become aware something to do of the heart, my heart I mean the spiritual part of being related
[00:14:25] to Christ and the love that is his and the fellowship you have, because in those prayer meetings it used – not every time, but it used to happen. Where you go along saying, what’s the prayer? I mean you’ve got to pray, take your turn, go around the room. But then in the middle, Spurgeon said that the habit of prayer is good, but the spirit of prayer is better, and he’s talking about what I’m talking about, that sense of the the Holy Spirit taking over. A time when you’re just praying to Christ, but then he comes close, and you’re aware of the joy of it, and you don’t want to stop. That’s why Spurgeon said the spirit of prayer is better because it takes over, and you have that sense of the closeness of Jesus, and you know your heart has recognized the thing you most wanted.
[00:15:14] Him. Because there’s something in the relationship of Jesus and the believer which is a relationship of love and of acceptance at the deepest level. And once you’ve tasted a bit of the closeness of Christ, you want that all the time, there’s nothing more devastating when you get shifted somewhere else and you try the churches out and they’re as dead as door nails, or they’re just not so visibly dead, as there’s just nothing there that I’m talking about. You wish you could find a fellowship where Jesus was close. you look for a bit of action. I used to find it in Youth for Christ and their
[00:15:51] meetings and the times that they have prayer meetings for the action and sometimes they get together in a cafe and just talk about all the plans to put on the next outreach and in the outreach and the discussion of it, and the enthusiasm that they had, it was there again. And in my case it had to do with Jesus and me. That I had some role that he’d had for me and sometimes it was just being in charge of a prayer meeting. The people of YFC got used to putting me in charge of prayer meetings. And that was how I started, being involved in the Gold Coast Crusade every year. And then I got also to be a speaker at the place but that was those years were the most wonderful years of my life. Nearly all the ones that had, what I’m talking about is, I don’t know whether I’m succeeding in getting across to you,
[00:16:45] it usually involved prayer meetings. And then when Michelle and I went down to Tasmania in evangelism around the different churches, I used it as the part we’d have three or four months at a given church, but we designed to have all-night prayer meetings. I did them originally on Saturday night, but that’s a mistake because you get too tired for Sunday. So, we made it Friday nights. And it’s one of the features of having this we call them an extended crusade, where we had evangelistic meetings at the Sunday services and home groupie things during the week. And we’d have a prayer meeting on a Friday night, and that was a burden, it meant you had to be able to recover on Saturday, but nonetheless, in that prayer in the middle of the night, not always. Sometimes you just did it, and it went through, and
[00:17:38] But sometimes this thing I’m talking about happens in the closeness of Christ, in the prayer. Sometimes I can remember in the different churches we went to West Australia doing this as well as Tasmania and in the different churches I put it on it’s one of the features. And in the middle of the night, on Friday or Saturday night whichever it was we get the people be praying. sometimes they didn’t know quite how to pray if there were some churches we might have 25 people there so what we told them to do is, all of you pray out loud walk around, don’t worry about other people if you run out of prayer points just listen, you’ll hear someone else’s
[00:18:22] give you a bit of a start or an idea and you’re just praying and for a moment it’s like a fairly human thing where you run out of your prayer points what would I do next, you know, read a bible passage, but sometimes, something stepped in, Spurgeon’s description that the habit of prayer is good, but the spirit of prayer is better, would happen or sometimes, listening in to someone else’s prayer, you suddenly caught a sense of the presence of Jesus was taking off at them, and you joined them somehow. You joined it happening for you. And it was a delight. And before you knew it the six o’clock time or whenever we plan to finish, came, and you just loved it. What were you loving is the fellowship that properly belongs between Jesus and his loved one, and I want to tell you,
[00:19:14] you’re the loved one, and Jesus is the lover and that’s what that verse in Revelation 3 is about. Behold, I stand at the door and knock, if any person can hear my voice the church may not fully open it up to him but an individual can run to the door and say Jesus come in I’m opening it for you I’ll seek you out I’m gonna have a special time myself sometimes at the college where I was studying the students all left soon one of the difficult things when your dad was a principal is that I couldn’t had nowhere to go I actually gave me a room in the college but then I had the room in the house where I lived where my mother and father were. And I would walk from sleeping in the room in the college
[00:20:01] to the room in my house. I still sort of used it anyway. But all the others had gone, and there’s nothing like the emptiness of an educational institution when it’s not term time, everybody goes off. It happened even worse in America when I studied over there. And all the students, the moment, you know, the five o’clock bell goes for the last lecture and it’s a week of holidays the whole place goes sh AUD Hug And all the internationals were left there looking at each other
[00:20:32] but the bulk of the people just disappeared in their cars or on their planes to go home for Thanksgiving week whatever it was And you feel so alone when you have got nowhere to go But in those times of having nowhere to go About Baptist College used to be at Brookfield. I had somewhere that I made to go. Because up above the college is all the back of Mount Coot-tha and there’s lot of little tracks. And I used to get in those little tracks and find somewhere where I could pray and no-one could hear you.
[00:21:07] And I’d trample them down a little up and down area in the middle of the bush and pray. And sometimes those were those special moments. For me, I’ve been challenged by one of the other students that I was a bit of an awkward case and not going to be very good in ministry. They told me I’d be a bit of a flop because it’s all about relationships, it’s all about organising. I didn’t seem to be good at either of those things. And they I got told by the senior student
[00:21:40] that I was you know don’t know why, you know. he told me I was never going to make it. But I found a Bible verse just at that time where John 15, Jesus says, he who abides in me has a word and if you, how do you say, if you take my words in you, you can ask what you want and it will be done for you. I haven’t exactly wording but in John 15 he gives a promise based on letting his word get a grip on you. So I wrote out all the words of Jesus. And I had a Bible where the words of Jesus were written and read. I wrote them out in cards and I took them little, slice a lot of cards and I’d walk up to my spot, up in the background of Mount Coot-tha area, all the other students not at college, just me to spend my days finding something to do that was worth doing. And I read those verses and I learnt them
[00:22:44] off by heart. And the verse read, If you abide in me and my words abide in you, you shall ask what you want and it shall be done on to you. And I had this criticism, that my personality was no good for ministry. And I said, Lord, if it is if that’s the truth let Jesus be my personality or help me in that area and I will learn the words of Jesus and then I claim the promise that some of those mornings were those precious mornings where he was there and my heart, that wanting to see my Beloved, I found him again and again in those moments. Christianity is not just a lot of doctrines from the book, Christianity’s not just, you know, I’ve been criticized some of the people in other churches and said oh that Jim Gives them’s theology. Well that’s actually a bit of a compliment
[00:23:49] actually as it meant I was Biblical, I gave them, gave it to you all, what the Bible says. But the theology, or what the Bible says, is not just a lot of doctrines to learn. It’s about a relationship. And this passage in the Song of Songs is here, because it’s a relationship of love between you and Jesus. And there are times when he comes to you, but we can be very lazy – I know know, this is true of me. It still is. I have to say I have never gotten over the fact that I like sleeping in more than I like going to prayer meetings and I could always think of something on TV to watch. But Jesus at times comes and says, come away. Spend some time with me. Down the storyline the girl concerned, the guess is that she’s one of She’s one of the new wives of Solomon, and he’s been away on a trip and he comes back
[00:24:57] but he only gets back after midnight idea, and he comes and knocks on her door, and that’s the verse it says. She’s sort of asleep, but also her heart is awake, and she’s aware in the subconscious part of her that he’s there wanting to come in. He’s her new husband, I guess he is, and like they are in those years of wonderment and beginning of love, but she’s lazy. And she says, I don’t want to get out of bed. I’m telling you my interpretation of it. I can’t be sure I’ve got the right one, but she’s slow. By the time she gets herself awake enough to go and open the door he’s been trying
[00:25:43] to undo the latch and not succeeded and he’s gone away. And so she tries to go and find him and she wonders around in the night, there’s another personality in the story line which is the watchman and Spurgeon’s interpretation of the watchman is they’re the pastors or the ministers. I don’t know whether it’s good that he has that interpretation because she says It’s about the these ministers that, that they found her. The watchman, verse seven, found me. And they went about as, as they went about in the city, they were doing the duty.
[00:26:22] They beat me, and they bruised me. They took away my veil. These, those watchman of the walls. And they’ve given her a hard time now. Is that a picture of the ministers? You don’t really understand but they get you doing jobs, and they tell you to do this. they haven’t understood that the deepest need you have is what I’m talking about tonight. It’s your relationship with Jesus and his closeness and your searching for it. But a lot of the people who run churches don’t understand that what you need is not another
[00:26:58] program, it’s not another story, it’s not another job. And one of the problems of we Baptist churches we give people jobs and we keep them busy and we think that’s what it means to be a person who’s a member of the church. I want to tell you, Jesus is not so much concerned as to what job you do, though I don’t want to talk down doing them because there’s so many that need to get done. But that’s not the essence of what it is to be in a church. It is to be close to Jesus and to be answering to His call to spend time with him, and you to find a way, and when you find something to do, It’s actually you do it with Jesus. It’s altogether different that when someone gives you a job
[00:27:40] and you’ve got to, you know, put the windows up or down or turn the lights on or off, where you got to do work around the buildings, if someone gives you a job like that but it’s just a job, they’ve missed the mark at what they gave you to do. What you should do is fine, but he wants you to do it. And then when you do it, you’re doing it with him. nobody has to nobody has to tell me you know Jim you can preach oh bother I don’t want another sermon do you hear me ever saying that you give me a chance to preach I will do it every time because when I
[00:28:19] do what I’m doing now when I tell you in the preparation therefore and in the practice is one of some of the times most when I know the closeness of Christ and it’s a job, it’s something with a beloved but what could spoil that would be if I’m so lazy and just you know want to watch TV and you know football or something or other and don’t get prepared I’m missing an opportunity but if I recognise that this is something that I do with Jesus it is because it’s my calling. It’s something that gives me the greatest of joys but I go out just to have lunch like I was telling the people this morning. So often I find an opportunity to talk to someone about Christ, it just happens. And I go home if I get some chance on a bus and I’m sitting there and someone asks
[00:29:12] what are yous to do, and I tell them and they look funny and then they ask a question and then suddenly I have an opportunity to talk about Jesus. I want to tell you I get off for the other end of the bus trip and my heart’s zinging, because I do the thing that I do with him. I don’t know whether I could express this in a way that you’ll get the point, but if you could find the thing that is yours to do with Jesus, and when you do it, you do it with him, and oh your heart zings. That’s the Christian life. He may let you go through times of difficulty. Sometimes, Leighton Ford told me how he went a period where it felt the Lord had just left him and every time he tried to pray it was like the heavens were barren. But he had to persist. Sometimes God tests us
[00:30:04] with his silences when we want guidance and he won’t tell us anything. We want something to work out and we can’t find what’s the right thing to do and we pray about her but don’t get an answer. Sometimes he tests us like that, but just persist because what counts is, eventually, when he found you were searching and still and wanting to know him if you persist in searching for Jesus I want to tell you you will be found by him it is the spiritual principle that the Song of Songs is all about it why is that called the Song of Solomon or the Song of Songs it’s called about the rejoicing of the heart when you found real love and that happens in the spiritual world it’s what this book is all about, the Scriptures are not here just to tell you a picture of how human love
[00:30:57] works. It does that too, it’s not an either or, they’re both true, but it is a book to tell you about you and Jesus and to let you know that sometimes we in our part are lazy like this woman is and opening the door, and if we were to catch up with Jesus more readily We’ve found the reason for our being a Christian. It varies the actual activities where you might be gifted to be, or called to be from other people, don’t just think because this is for them that will be for you. Find what he leads you to, and do it with all of your heart, because that’s what it’s actually about. It’s not just the discharge of some activity humanly. You know, I found the same about people who are in ministry.
[00:31:49] You either get, some of them, who get bored and out of touch and at distance from their saviour in doing the things, and then they usually want to quit. or you find people that really love what they do in Christ. Which are you? Have you found the things that you and him doing together? Because then you know something more than just the discharge of the action but you find the thing which is to do with his love for you and you for him and that’s a fantastic thing. I’ve met people around Australia who often wait for the moment to talk to you about what I’m talking about now because they spotted in me and they come and tell what it is with them, they tell how
[00:32:50] once upon a time the Lord led them to do something. I remember visiting my sister in Canberra when she’d had her first child which was a difficult thing, it didn’t happen at first, But when she did, it was a great rejoicing and she’d be off doing something and I’d be in the house, her husband was working. And what would I do with myself? Well, I ended up talking to the lady who was the neighbor next door. And this lady went to a Brethren church and she’d found difficulty finding something to do
[00:33:24] for the law, but she found it in writing letters. She had a gift of encouragement that she would express through a letter, and she found people that she be led to write to and be used of God to bless. And she told me all about it that in the writing of those letters, she did it with Jesus. Have you found your thing with Jesus yet? Sometimes he lists And a part of what I think the story line here is that this woman goes out looking for her beloved. And in these lower versus, it says some that I arose to open my verse five. I opened to my beloved, and my hands were dripping with myrrh.
[00:34:17] My fingers with liquid myrrh, this is as best as I can guess. Some feminine preparation she has for when eventually he’s going to arrive. And on the formats of the bolt, I opened to my beloved. But my beloved had turned and gone. My heart failed when he spoke. I saw him, but found him not.” Well, when he spoke, trying to get her to open the door. She had that awareness of she and him. But she found him not.
[00:34:49] I called him, but he gave no answer. The Watchmen. Now this might be a sarcastic comment about ministers, about people like me. If they’ve got the wrong idea, found me and they were going about their duties in this city, and they beat me and they bruised me, and they took away my veil. These watchmen of the walls. Or maybe there’s another interpretation if you’ve got one, tell me. Because it doesn’t sound good about the ministers if that’s what it’s about. I adore you, O daughters of Jerusalem, if you find my Beloved.” Can you feel, can’t you sense what I’m talking about tonight? There is natural to the Christian experience of you and Jesus and the love that you have between you, that you tell him, I am sick with love! They answer, these daughters of Jerusalem that she talks
[00:35:46] with all the women. What is your beloved more than any other beloved,” I can just hear women talking like such a most beautiful amongst women and she was in fact a newly addition to Solomon’s group of heritage, he’s hereim and she would have been physically very beautiful and they imagine that’s the reason why she has a special relationship with Solomon, what is your beloved more than any other beloved that you should endure us like this.” She replies with many other verses that go on about all the good things about him. The Christian life is one where as you walk with the Lord something gathers in your understanding of Jesus about the wonder of his person, of the joy of his fellowship, and I came and to some day… came a day when I looked back and noticed how many prayer meetings
[00:36:45] in the North Beach Baptist Church I was there for four months with Michel and, and we got going a Saturday night prayer meeting all night we changed eventually to Friday night I think because Saturday night gets you tired for Sunday and we pray all night and they just join in prayers others and that was one of the highlights of that church time is the oneness with Christ and that group of people in the middle of the night extraordinary I can remember other prayer meetings I had with David Andrews when his parents went away from the Sand Gate Church where his dad was a pastor and so we had it and we had a prayer meeting he was in a bit of a enthusiast, or fanatic, it depending how you looked at it.
[00:37:42] And he said, Jesus fasted forty days and will fast for forty days, well, I couldn’t last forty days. I think I lasted half way through, but at least in that time the closeness, the vision we had for the next year which eventuated and the joy of that I left early and made up an excuse and drove down to Canberra to see my sister’s first child. But partly because I was too hungry to stay any longer That prayer meeting nonetheless started an idea, we got a vision for a prayer meeting at Baptist house and we got the Baptist Union people to let us use
[00:38:21] Baptist 6 to 9 o’clock a week, every weekday morning, call on young people to come on their way to uni or come on their way to work, to come and pray. Somewhere around 30 or so, on some mornings, blessed that others would come and pray and in those prayer times God did so many marvelous things. One was a Methodist girl who sat up straight halfway through the prayer time and she said, I’ve just been born again. She actually had been a church girl but didn’t really know Christ and she found him. Another girl, or anyway, there were different things that came out as they shared in the prayer time and some of those people if I were to bump into them, though this now be over 50 years ago, there’s some connection we have. Do you have a spiritual
[00:39:21] connection with people like that? Because you shared some special moment where Jesus came and was close. This is what I think the Song of Solomon is. And if you’re like the girl in the start of it, the young wife, the young lover of Solomon, who explains herself as being asleep sleep but her heart was awake.” Don’t let the sleepiness of whatever is your sleepiness, your business, your activities, your guitar playing, good thing to practice a guitar. Please don’t take this as against any of those things. But if they’re the important things most and not Jesus you haven’t arrived yet at talking about, or this passage is illustrating. You’re asleep, but yet your heart is aware that he’s near.
[00:40:22] Answer him. When you get home tonight, get down by your bed and say Jesus, I would be greatly honored if you would come and come close to me. Please let me know where it is you and I can do something together. If there’s something that you want me to be, to be particularly involved in, trained for, or just made available for
[00:40:48] so that when we go and do it, it’s actually you and me. What we do together. You will be a different sort of person doing that kind of work and other people will get blessed by him because all the blessings that people come from him. And we’re the channels and we’re the co-workers And it’s better to be someone who lets Jesus work and you hold the tools for him than you think that you’re doing is what.” You do.
[00:41:18] Oh, oh, God, let me have something special that I do. No, that’s not what it is. It is what he’s going to do. And all you need to be willing to do is to hold the tools or to be there alongside. The people might just see you, but the one who does the doing is Jesus, and they always make your heart so thrilled, so thrills, when I have a Sunday where the Lord sort of turned up in the services, do you think I go home unhappy? I go home and cry with joy at another Sunday where the Lord came. It’s a bit like the two
[00:42:03] that walked the road to Ammaeus and Jesus met them and he made sure they couldn’t recognize him and they just talk away and eventually they get to their house, and he made us though to go further, if you noticed that this is in Luke 24, he made us though to go further, but they asked him in. That’s what Jesus needs is for you to wake up to where the love of Christ is and ask him to come in in terms of closeness to you, and then they had the joy of suddenly realizing who he was. And that is, I think, a quintessential experience of the Christian life. Don’t live just in the shallows.
[00:42:53] Know that there is this deeper Christian life where Jesus is close, he wants you to find that place where you do it with him and it becomes your special place. if you’re a teenager and you’ve fallen in love and the person you’ve fallen in love with does a certain activity you eventually make up lots of excuses to do it to isn’t that how it works? because it’s not just the doing of it… it’s who you do it with. It is the secret of the Heart. Let’s have a word of prayer. Lord, I thank you for the song of Solomon.
[00:43:33] And I know that my interpretation, I believe it to be correct, at least in part, and I know that others could do far better at expounding this, but, Lord, it’s not the wisdom of my exposition that counts. It’s the content about a relationship about the most wonderful person of all the world who’s fit to have you write songs about him, who’s fit for us to worship him And who wants us as his special people with whom to team Lord, I pray that from tonight you’ll find some team-ship-ness with folk here in ways that only you can open up to them. This I pray in Jesus’ name and for his sake. Amen.