Are Your Walls Really Protecting You?
Song of Solomon 2:14-16
“O my dove, in the clefts of the rock, in the secret places of the cliff, let me see your face, let me hear your voice; For your voice is sweet, and your face is lovely.
Catch us the foxes, the little foxes that spoil the vines, for our vines have tender grapes.”
Song of Solomon is beautiful poetry written from the perspective of a bridegroom and his pursuit of His bride.
In these verses the Groom is speaking to His bride, beckoning her to come meet with Him in the “secret places”. To see her face and to hear her voice. That’s the kind of intimacy that Jesus desires with us!
His Spirit is drawing us, beckoning us to come spend time with Him. To know Him and to be known by Him. How many times do we brush this aside and refuse to sit with Him?
Verses 8-14 paints a beautiful picture of the Groom leaping up mountains and hills to find His beloved, but He cannot leap over her wall. His love is strong but never uses force. We must come out from behind our walls and willingly come out into the openness of “Springtime”.
Is it hard to imagine having walls up with someone who loves you so much that they’ll seek you out in such extreme ways? Yet we do it to Jesus everyday.
The walls we set up in our heart, thinking they protect us. Not really letting Him into our heart, to speak, to convict, to heal and to lead us forward. Always keeping Him at an arms length distance. We’ll hear the Word, maybe even pray, but never really enter into surrender, never really being vulnerable.
We’ve believed these walls protect us when really they’ve just kept love, really being loved and knowing love, out. Sometimes these walls come up through disappointment, hurt, or unbelief. We let them stay, totally deceiving ourselves into thinking they are keeping the bad stuff out, when in reality they are keeping us from being fully seen and known. They keep us from trust!
Catch the foxes- We have to be willing to come out from behind our walls, come out of hiding, to be fully seen and known by Jesus. He is the Groom and the lover of your soul. The One who gave everything so that we could draw near, and He’s calling for you to come out into the open with Him.
The little foxes are things like unbelief, resistance, disappointment and eventually hardness of heart. If left uncaught, they will threaten the “tender grapes” that are growing on the vine. The fruit! Hardness of heart is the great enemy of love, since everything depends on receptivity and openness.
If Jesus saved you, then He’s calling you into intimacy with Him. To know Him and to be known by Him! Don’t believe the lie that you have to protect yourself, or give in to the disappointments from life. Don’t give in to unbelief or hardness of heart. Don’t allow those things to remain and spoil the fruit that He is producing in you!