Abba Father and I had some deep conversations recently about marriage (something I’ve been waiting for much longer than I expected), what motivates Him, and a mind-blasting surprise twist at the end. I hope He will be glorified by me sharing it with you (He talks about that a lot!).
It started like this…
“My darling, do not be afraid. Ask Me why I want you to marry the man I have for you someday.”
Yes Lord. Father, why do YOU want me to get married?
“So that I will be glorified. Now, ask Me how I will be glorified by your marriage.”
Yes Lord. Father in the name of Jesus, how will You be glorified by my marriage?
“By the display of more of Who I AM in your life. My dearest, I have many, many Names. I have far more Names than anyone else ever has or ever will, even in your language, let alone in all the languages of men and angels and My own inter-trinitarian communication most of all. I could spend all of eternity reciting My own names, calling Myself within Myself by the Holy Names which I call Myself, Father and Son and Spirit, Love and Light and Truth.
Someday I will invite you to join Me, and we will both spend eternity together calling Me by My infinite collection of wonderful names, not because I AM self-absorbed, but because I AM self-overflowing, like a sponge soaked through so much that it still has Niagara Falls bouncing off of it and overflowing the whole world with its excess of overflowing love and delight. I do not take, I give, and all because I pour everything into that sponge of seeking My own glory, of seeking ever and always to be and display and reveal and give and share all that I AM.
My collection of Names, and the reality behind them, is My the greatest treasure I have to give, the gift of all of Myself shared with you and through you, in and through your life to the world. And in these years of ‘singleness,’ or of waiting for your husband, to whom you are already in My eyes married, to come, you are displaying My names, and that is how I AM glorified. The more names I display, the more I have been glorified. The fewer names have been displayed yet, the less I have yet been glorified in your life (and the bigger reveal I must be setting up for!). There are names I reveal like big fireworks that go off quickly and then names I reveal like REALLY big fireworks that take years and years and sometimes millennia to set off but are worth it when they do!
In your present season, I AM glorified to be revealed as Your Father who loves you, Your Shepherd who leads and guides you, your Savior who rescued you from sin and death and hell, your Healer who sets you free, your Comforter who dries your tears, your Friend who understands your heart and shares My own too, your Protector, your Provider, your Counselor, your Advocate, your Deliverer, your Shelter, your Defender, the One who gives you His own Spirit, who sings through your mouth and writes through your hand and holds you when you cry, the Way-Maker who made a path through the mighty waters to bring you to where you are today, your Victorious Banner who will lead you up from this place.
I AM the One on the Throne, from which flows the river, from which grows the trees, from which fall the leaves that heal the nations in answer to your prayers that you pray in My Name, the all-powerful name of JESUS. I AM the Creator of the Woman and I AM the serpent-crushing Son of the Woman (THAT one took a multi-millenial set-up), and I AM the God who walked with Adam and Eve in the garden in the cool of the day and shared My heart and My dreams with them in unhindered conversation, and who is now holding out His hand to you to offer to pick up right where I left off, as if all the interruptions between then and now had never been. That is who I AM. That, and so much more besides. That is how I AM glorified, by displaying all of that to you and through you you in your life.
And now I will tell you why you are still “single.” There is only one reason, not many. There only ever has been and only ever will be one reason for that. And it is about Me, not about you. It’s all about Me. It always has been and it always will be. It has nothing to do with you, I promise. It is because up until now, taking care of you Myself, without your human husband’s help, has brought Me more glory. It has displayed more of My names. And now I will tell you the question you never dared to ask Me, the one you thought you could never hear the answer to, the one you made up hopeful answers to so many times: I will tell you when you will get married.
You will get married on the day that will glorify Me the most, that is, on the day that your marriage will display more of My names than your singleness does anymore. That is when. That is the basis on which I make decisions, including but not limited to decisions about time. I have had all eternity to calculate what will bring Me the most glory about everything. I do not need all eternity to calculate that, because My mind and wisdom and capacity are infinite, so I can understand all things in no time at all, but if I did need time, I would have had it. And so, since I have had unlimited time to apply unlimited mental capacity to this question, on which day would your marriage bring Me the most glory? I think you can be quite, quite sure I have figured out the correct answer, OK?
In the meantime, have fun displaying My names. It is your occupation and vocation, your calling and destiny. If you sin, come to Me for Me to be displayed as the Forgiver, the Pardoner, the Redeemer, the Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the Righteous, YHWH SAVES, Jesus. If you hurt, come to Me and know Me as a man of Sorrows and acquainted with grief, who has healing in His wounds and healing in His wings. If you thirst with unmet needs and longings, come and know Me as the Well of Salvation and the Fountain of Living Waters welling up into eternal life. If you are confused and scared, come to Me as the Giver of Wisdom, the Author of Light, the Shelter and Defender, the One who makes your way plain as you lean all your weight on Me instead of your own ability to understand. Capture Me like a million fireflies and then pursue Me again. Come. Come. Come.
Someday, it will bring Me more glory to let you come together with your husband, and need Me in a million little ways. You need Me to help you wait. You need Me to help you with the thing you are waiting for when you get it. You will need Me. I will release the strength you need like a million fireworks, again and again. You will find what you need in Me, and I will reveal to you, and to all who witness your life, more of My names. It will not be easy or difficult, it will be the same. You will just keep doing the same thing you did all along, knowing Me in both My suffering and My resurrection, learning all My names. Your life will be the empty glass jar in which all those captured fireflies will shine, the moments in which I unpacked aspects of who I AM WHO I AM is in your every situation.
And I trust you, Storytelling Princess, to tell that story well. I trust you with a lot, because I know you will put it into words on the earth for Me. So trust Me to write your story, and let it be all about Me. Let it be about Me. I will give you the best story I can possibly write. It will not be a cliche, a ‘boy meets girl and they live happily ever’ story that the world has heard a million times before. Nor will it be a tragedy. It will be something far better than either a comedy or a tragedy. It will be a gallery of My names. And all who read it will be able to reach out and take the Name they need most and drink it and live. It will be a medicine cabinet as well as an art gallery. It will be a testimony. It will be Good News, I promise.”
Yes Lord. Thank You. Wow. All I know is that I want this thing You just said: to hold Your hand and walk with You like in Eden and pick up where You left off in the conversation that got interrupted. I want that more than anything else in the world.
“We are little one, we are. We are Friends, and I share My heart with My friends, and I listen to their hearts as well. And our hearts are beating in unison for the redemption of this world, I know. But in the darkness that needs a Deliverer, a Redeemer, a Serpent Crushing Hero of an Eternal Son, I display more of My names.
I don’t want you to get confused at what I AM up to. I AM not thinking about the factors that you are thinking of, like what is normal in your culture, nor are My purposes the purposes you and other humans have thought of, like romantic love and children and companionship and self-improvement and seeming normal. The mission I AM on is to be glorified, to display My names. If you are seeking anything other than that, then it will be merely coincidental when we want the same things. Only when the desire you have thought up and the display of My glorious names overlap will we be walking together in the same direction. When they stop overlapping, I will start pulling in one direction, and you will start pulling in another, and there will be tension in the place where we are holding hands. You will be disappointed in Me and wonder if I AM disappointed in you. You may even be angry with Me or fear that I will be angry with you (but I AM very slow to anger. You probably won’t live long enough to see Me get angry. It usually takes centuries before I stop calling people to repent and do something about it).
So when it seems like I AM saying ‘no’ all the time, tugging against you when you move towards something you thought we both wanted, stop and ask Me how I want to be glorified. Ask Me how I AM displaying My names. Ask Me who I want to be to you in this moment. And ask Me how I want you to share that with the world.”
Lord, Who do You want to be to me in this moment, and how do You want me to share it with the world?
“I AM the Father of Jesus. I AM His greatest treasure, His Supreme and Chiefest Source and Delight. I AM the Fountain-Source of the Fountain-Source that He is to you. I AM the One who enabled Him to be who He was and to do what He did. If you like Him, you’ll love Me. I AM the Producer who made that spectacular act possible. I AM the Mastermind behind your salvation. I AM the Scriptwriter who gave Him the lines that move your heart. I came up with “I AM willing, be clean” and “Your faith has saved you, go in peace” and “Leave her alone, she has done a beautiful thing to Me” and “Father forgive them they know not what they do” and “Today you will be with Me in paradise” and that grand denouement of just “Mary.”
It was My idea to set that climactic scene with the Second Adam in a garden with a woman, a woman who had not just listened to one serpent but had seven inside of her, and have Him come back from trampling the curse of death underfoot to give her voice back and send her to tell the men the truth from Him instead of the lies from the snake. Did you miss that? Was I too subtle? Did I not make it utterly, completely clear that I AM reversing the fall, and that one way I AM reversing the fall was by giving the woman her voice back, by putting truth in her mouth for men to listen to the same way the serpent taught her a lie for Adam to listen to and die?
It wasn’t just a nice touch, it was the point of the whole story. The Serpent Crusher reverses everything. If women cannot be trusted to teach men the truth about what God says, then I haven’t finished winning yet. If Jesus left the voice of woman as the tool for the serpent, then He lied when He said “It is finished!” on the cross. It isn’t finished until women preach. That was one of the first things Jesus did when He came back from the dead: He found the daughters of Eve and told them to go tell the sons of Adam the good news that their serpent-crushing Son had won, that He had risen from the dead after the snake bit His heel and that the happy ending is beginning right now. If women are not preaching, then the snake is still pretending he gets to hold onto something. I trust you not to let him do that. You go out there and you tell the men and women of this world about Jesus in the way that only you can.”
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