Bible Minute Lesson 4

God’s View of Romance    

Does anyone in this group consider herself romantic? Anyone long to be loved and cherished? Anyone want connection with someone very, very special? 

If you saw the movie Moulin Rouge, with Ewan McGregor and Nicole Kidman, you may remember the song Ewan McGregor’s character kept singing with the line: The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return. Is it true? You tell me. It may be the greatest thing we’ll ever learn, but does anyone else also find it the most difficult? Yikes. 

And whether the relationship is with our friends, our kids, our husbands or with God Himself, we just seem to keep learning how to love and how to receive love, don’t we? This week’s lesson will concentrate on a place in Scripture where God reveals some of His perspective on romantic love. If you are married, ask the Holy Spirit to reveal His truth to you in your very particular context, with your particular spouse. If you are single, there is something for you as well, but to be honest, you will have to dig a little deeper and lean into God a little harder to find it.

Here’s the text:

 

All night long on my bed
            I looked for the one my heart loves;
            I looked for him but did not find him.
² I will get up now and go about the city,
            through its streets and squares;
I will search for the one my heart loves.
            so I looked for him but did not find him.
³ The watchmen found me
            as they made their rounds in the city.
            “Have you seen the one my heart loves?”
⁴ Scarcely had I passed them
            when I found the one my heart loves.
I held him and would not let him go
            till I had brought him to my mother’s house,
            to the room of the one who conceived me.
⁵ Daughters of Jerusalem, I charge you
            by the gazelles and by the does of the field:
Do not arouse or awaken love until it so desires.
                                                                        (Song of Songs 3:1-5)

    
As my husband and I have been in a “recalibrating” season as of late, I am particularly sensitive to this topic right now. In other words, if I have to learn these hard lessons about connecting in marriage, you’re going to get a piece of it, too! (“Recalibrating”, for those of you in calmer seasons currently, is my euphemism for “we’re fighting a lot”.) Anyway, I see a couple of concepts in here that we can use to extrapolate greater truths. Intensity and Timing. Look at how many times in these verses the woman (for this is the female lover speaking) uses the phrase “the one my heart loves”. I count four times in 5 verses. Wow. She must have some strong feelings for her lover. What does that mean? And why does this kind of emotion matter to God that He would allow this kind of romance in His Word? I think one answer may be that God wants us to connect with Him in such a way that we learn more and more to trust Him with both those concepts in our relationships – intensity and timing. 

If you’ve been in a whirlwind of emotions romantically, you know that the intensity can feel as if you have no control. I can’t stop thinking about him. My heart is pounding. I’m breathing faster. I get excited when he calls. That season is exhilarating, and I believe God revels in it just like we do. This book of the Bible seems to be evidence of that! But any of us in long-term romantic relationships knows that this intensity ebbs and flows. That is natural and God is present in both seasons – the ebb and the flow. He is our constant. He is, above everyone else, “the one my heart loves”.  And the intensity of the relationship must be tempered by the right timing. (No, this is not just another don’t-have-sex-until-you-get-married talk!) If any married women reading this have experienced a perfectly matched libido to your husband’s, please let me know. With every woman – every woman – I’ve talked to about this area of marriage, there are times (sometimes many, many times) when one spouse is more interested in intimate connection than the other. Sound familiar? And so, even for us old married folks, there is wisdom in the phrase, “do not arouse or awaken love until it so desires”. Just because you’re married doesn’t mean everyone is always in the mood!     

So as I experience intensity of emotion with my beloved, I can thank God and ask Him for His timing in how to proceed. As I experience a lack of affection or emotion toward my spouse, I can ask God to re-create the intensity that allows me to hold him and not let him go. That may refer to faithfulness, kindness toward him, or a variety of other applications that God may make clear to you this week. And if I am hoping that having someone romantically in my life or that the “one” in my life will behave a certain way will fill some void, I can go to God and ask Him to remind me that He alone is truly “the one my heart loves”. He will, in some personal and unique way, hold us and not let us go. 

So, what’s the take-away? Here are some questions we can ponder this week:

1.     Do I trust God’s will and purpose for my life in the intensity and timing of my relationships?

2.     What do I see God doing in me or teaching me in these areas?

3.     If you have found and committed to “the one your heart loves”, do you hold him in your heart and in your arms, and refuse to let him go?

4.     If you are still waiting for “the one”, do you trust God to not arouse or awaken love until He so desires? 

    
I encourage you to seek the answers to these questions as earnestly and as completely as you feel you are able this week. And more importantly, use the topic and the questions to seek the One your heart loves, because He is absolutely crazy about you!