The greatest challenge we as believers face is knowing and believing what God says about us and knowing what God thinks about us. When we are not sure the thoughts of another towards us we tend to guard our hearts in their presence. If you question someone’s love for you the chance of you opening wide your heart to them is minimal. The enemy works overtime to tell us things about God and God’s thoughts about us that are flat out lies. The challenge is we hear the voice of the enemy and his barrage of lies, so when God speaks it doesn’t penetrate the way it could if we were not guarding our heart with God.

Two weeks ago I was challenged to read the Song of Songs everyday for the month of December from the Passion Translation. This daily reading has yielded an understanding that God is passionate about His love for us, but we are guarded. The more I read this book, the more I see where I am and where the church is. We love ministry, destiny and identity as well as we really do love God, but we are guarded as a church because we don’t know how much He is passionately in love with us. We know it by knowledge, saying Jesus loves me or for God so loved the world He died for me, but to let our guard down and throw ourselves into His heart is not something we do easily. If we follow the Shunamite we see the church, we see ourselves. She says in 1:3-5 “I know I am so unworthy-so in need. I feel as dark and dry as the desert tents of the wandering nomads.” We know us, but like her we don’t know what He is thinking about us. Listen to what the Lord is thinking about us knowing what we are feeling. “Yet you are so lovely like the fine tapestry hanging in the Holy place” (SofS 1:5).

This is the start, the journey continues but I wanted you to know even as this season is hard, you feel unworthy and dark and dry, know the Lord is massaging your heart with His words of life to draw you near to Him, put your guard down and know He knows where we are going. Love is going to win your heart again, so when you worship , when you pray, when you work, you will hear a voice saying I love you more than you know right now!