WHY LIVE BY THE BRIDAL PARADIGM?

Some may ask, “Why is the Bridal Paradigm necessary? I’ve got- ten along fine in this life without thinking of God in this way. Why is it imperative to start now?” There are many answers to this question but I’ll give you just a few. The Bridal Paradigm offers a framework to live an energized life in Christ, relating to Him as more than just a healer who heals and savior who forgives. Yes, He is forever our Healer and Savior, but He is also a Lover, a God who is lovesick for us. We pray differently to God when we know His primary motivation is desire for us and His passion is to have our attention—indeed, we find ourselves growing more deeply in love for Him. Since the days of Mary and Martha (Luke 10:38-42), we have been aware that the King- dom of God is populated by both workers and lovers. We all fall somewhere along that spectrum and, if we are honest with our- selves, would admit to moving back and forth between the two from time to time. Over the years, I have noticed something: lovers will outwork workers every time.

Thirty-three years ago, under the lights of a high school football game, my brother suffered a horrific collision that re- sulted in a broken neck. Of course, he was immediately rushed to the hospital, but the damage was already done. He is totally paralyzed to this day. I have been in and out of hospitals with him over the last thirty-three years. In the early years we spent months at a time in rehabilitation hospitals. Once in a while we would see a nurse fall in love with a patient. It didn’t happen often, but every now and then a worker would change their re- lationship with the patient to become a lover. It was interesting to see how, when a worker became a lover, they could throw their nursing checklist out the window and serve out of love, not needing a list to remind them of what their beloved needed. The endurance and energy demonstrated by a nurse who had fallen in love with a patient was astounding. They would work much harder because of love than they ever did when it was just their job. My point is that love is a much more powerful

motivator than duty. Love changes the way we respond to the will of another. Being a lover of God will transform how we live for Him, and having the Bridal Paradigm, in which we un- derstand that Jesus is our Bridegroom and we are His Bride, is essential if we are to think of Him as an eternal Lover.

The generation in which the Lord returns will be charac- terized by a level of emotional brokenness unprecedented in human history. The perversion and woundedness of the human heart will reach previously unimagined proportions. Sinful per- version, occult activity, divine judgment and widespread mar- tyrdom will reach levels of intensity mankind has never known. The pornography industry and the occult will both continue to intersect with rapidly-growing technology. Jesus described the last generation as being filled with bitterness, offense and betrayal, with people’s hearts growing cold in love (Matthew 24:10-14). In that dark and pressing time, the Church will need to see herself as a Bride who has a jealous Husband on His way to deliver her. God has strategically reserved the fullest expres- sion of the Bridal Paradigm for the unique and complex pres- sures of the last generation. It is God-inspired to empower the Church to overcome the coldest, most lawless, fearful, demonic and sexually perverted generation in history.

Jesus is going to cleanse His Church, washing us with the Word, and present us to Himself as something more glorious than we can imagine. He absolutely will bring His people to victory, to a place of power, of lovesickness and of triumph over sin. Paul wrote, “That Jesus might cleanse the Church with the washing of water by the Word, that He might present her to Himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blemish” (Ephesians 5:26-27). This reference to having no spot or wrinkle is not merely speaking of our legal standing of justification—ob- viously we will stand blameless because Jesus died for us. It also refers to the actual building of character in the people of God as we come into full cooperation with God. Jesus will accomplish it without violating anyone’s free will. There is nothing more

powerful or pleasurable than when God reveals God to the hu- man spirit. This washing and presentation to Christ can only be accomplished as the Church steps into her identity as the Bride of Christ, who loves Jesus just as the Father also loves Him (John 17:26). Paul did not say that Jesus would wash a family or an army or a farmer. He said Jesus would purify and cleanse His Bride.

The Church will be empowered by the grace of God until she overflows with holy lovesickness for her Bridegroom Mes- siah. It takes God to love God. We need the Spirit’s impartation of God’s love to equip us to love God. Our desire for God is God’s gift to us. Our love and desire for God is an expression of His desire for us. All the emotional resources necessary for God’s people to walk victoriously in love will flow out of our enjoyment of God as we walk in our bridal identity.

As we consider these seven longings of the human heart, begin to look at them as a roadmap to viewing the Lord as our Bridegroom and ourselves as His chosen eternal companion. There is a delightful redundancy, in that in order to fulfill these longings we must see Jesus as our Bridegroom, and in order to see Him as a Bridegroom, we must come to Him to satisfy our longings. We will never be satisfied in the pursuit of false and temporary fulfillments. Only when we begin to touch and expe- rience some of these eternal satisfactions will we be empowered to let go of the inferior ones. No matter how easy it is to prop up our lives with counterfeit pleasures, we must give ourselves in wholehearted pursuit of the pleasures that will carry us now, and continue to carry us even billions of years from now.

Sin is pleasurable and sin appears to be the most pleasur- able thing the human spirit can experience. Satan did not invent pleasure: he perverted it and offered empty substitutes that can never satisfy. The difference between false pleasures and the truth of the romance of the Gospel, of God revealing Himself to the human spirit, is as different as the counterfeit always is from the purity of the real thing. The superior pleasures of the Spir- it are far more powerful than the inferior pleasures of sin, and

supernatural emotional strength and power will be vital in light of the coming global crisis of social, spiritual, economic, po- litical and emotional disruption. Only satisfied people who are happy in God will be equipped to stand in that hour. Thus, the seven longings related to the Bridal Paradigm are significant for today. Paul prayed that we would be strengthened with divine might in the inner man (Ephesians 3:16). God will do this as He releases truth into our hearts.

The realm of pleasure belongs squarely in God’s camp. While God has certainly granted us physical pleasures, emo- tional pleasures and mental pleasures, the most profound plea- sures are spiritual in nature. This is evident when the Holy Spirit reveals the Son to the human spirit. The superior pleasures of the Gospel are implied in Matthew 22:2. When Jesus referred to the Kingdom as a bridegroom and bride at a wedding, He was pointing to a whole new arena of experience in redemption— the experience of being an eternally-cherished Bride. Tragically, the inferior pleasures of sin have the potential to dominate our lives if they are the only pleasures we experience. If someone has not experienced God, or has very little knowledge of who He is, the inferior pleasure of sin seems a worthy fulfillment, rather than the hollow counterfeit we know it to be.

Many Christians focus only on resisting the inferior plea- sures Satan offers. They look at their sin and promise God, “I’ll never, ever, ever do that again!” They make promises they can’t keep and go through religious incantations as they seek to be set free. Still, in the back of their minds they’re remembering that their sin was pleasurable … it was wrong, but it still felt good. It was sin, but it was the only pleasure they’d ever known. They struggle to live their lives in Christ, but if they were hon- est, they’d admit that they consider their days before coming to Jesus as “the good old days.”

God’s desire is to awe us with the pleasures available only in relationship with Him. He taps us on the shoulder and whispers, “Turn around! Look at the superior pleasures, the beauty of My Son, the greatness of who you are in God—My chosen partner

who will rule and reign with Me forever and ever!” It is when we fix our eyes on these things, on the greater pleasures of God, that something happens in our hearts. The First Commandment shifts into first place and we begin to live for Him wholeheart- edly. The pleasures sin had to offer suddenly appear as they re- ally are: cold, hollow, and always demanding our time, attention and energy while butchering our hearts piece by piece. Covet- ousness, pornography and bitterness are not nearly as powerful when we’re brushing up against the superior pleasures of God and touching the vast enjoyment within His Person. When the scales are removed from our eyes, we realize just how much God has to offer. And that what He has to offer is precisely what we’ve been chasing after.

The master plan of God is an amazing thing. He created a Bride for His Son, watched her fall into imperfection, and then offered His Son to redeem the Bride for Himself. All along God rested, confident in knowing He had endowed the Bride with longings that she could not ignore. He knew the enemy would use those longings to manipulate Jesus’ Bride. Even this did not make God nervous. He knew what He had to offer. As she has run from place to place trying to fulfill her longings, God has remained confident she would only find fulfillment in returning to the identity and destiny for which she was created—to be the Bride of Christ. She will have to come home to a holy romance if she is ever to be truly happy.

To be clear, when I refer to holy romance, I’m not refer- ring to anything related to Jesus and sexuality. The concept of a holy romance is a truth contained in the Word of God: being delighted by God’s beauty, feeling the spiritual pleasures of the Word, feeling the Spirit resonating inside, and understanding what it means to be loved by God. It’s also called “the fullness of joy” (Psalm 16:11). Fullness of joy is a massive reality. It’s more than just feeling good about a circumstance and claiming a sense of victory, it’s a genuine way of life. Paul the Apostle spoke bril- liantly of this romance when he said, “For I reckon that the suf- ferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with

the glory which shall be revealed in us” (Romans 8:18). There was no exaggeration in that statement.

Paul was a man romanced by the Gospel. His heart was ex- hilarated. He was a lovesick man. In Philippians 3:8, he spoke about counting the cost. He was in essence saying, “Everything that I gave up, my entire career, all the family lineage I had go- ing for me—it is rubbish, it means nothing to me. Do not talk about me giving up stuff because it only tells me that you do not understand how to live. I did not give up anything, I brought nothing to the table, in light of what is truth.” Why did he say this? Because the reward of a lover is the power to love, and that’s exactly what he had. He was able to truly receive God’s love for him and in so receiving was empowered to love God back. A lover’s reward is love reciprocated. We know it is the desire of God to unlock the hearts of His people; He is going to bring us into the superior pleasures of the Gospel. He is going to cause us to know obedience rooted in lovesickness. My premise is that the Bridal Paradigm is the most powerful Gospel truth in terms of transforming the human heart and empowering it to love. The Bridal Paradigm has the most powerful impact on our emotional chemistry.

Friends, the Great Commission will not be fulfilled with- out martyrs. Many ministries in the coming hour, even in the Western Church, will be sufficiently anointed to equip “joyful martyrs.” There are more believers being martyred worldwide in this time than at any other time in history. Until now the West- ern Church has been largely exempt from this reality. That will soon change. The Apostle John had a vision that revealed the prominent role that martyrs will play in the last days.

When He opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain for the word of God and for the testimony which they held. And they cried with a loud voice, saying, “How long, O Lord, holy and true, un- til You judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth?” Then a white robe

was given to each of them; and it was said to them that they should rest a little while longer, until both the number of their fellow servants and their brethren, who would be killed as they were, was completed. (Revelation 6:9-11)

What will empower these martyrs? They will experience a deep spiritual intimacy with Jesus. This intimacy will be the result of feasting on the knowledge of the beauty and majesty of Jesus, the Bridegroom King. These martyrs will abundantly experience the superior pleasures of the Gospel in accordance with the Bridal Paradigm of the Kingdom. John described a vic- torious multitude of joyful, worshipping martyrs at the end of the age.

And I saw … those who have the victory over the beast … standing on the sea of glass, hav- ing harps of God. (Revelation 15:2)

The Book of Revelation encourages the Church to come home to her Husband. It affirms the legitimacy of the longings that the Bride has so long denied, and assures us that those long- ings are not at odds with how God created us.

As we explore these seven longings, imagine with me for a moment what it would be like to finally find the utter fulfillment of your deepest, most inescapable desires. Begin to imagine what it would be like to have these longings totally satisfied—if you woke up one day and found yourself completely whole and fully functioning in pure, unadulterated delight. If the burning longings that have haunted you for as long as you’ve been aware of them were fulfilled, if suddenly all your needs were met … who would you be? I’m trusting you’ll find out that you would be who you were created to be, a person rooted and grounded in the incomprehensible love of Christ, filled with holy passion for God, and deeply satisfied by His ardent passion for you.

CHAPTER ONE

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