COMMUNION WITH GOD: RENEWING EXPECTATION
I. TRINITARIAN LOVE SHARED WITH THE WEAK ONES OF THE EARTH
A. God the Father, Love Eternal, gave all of Himself to the Son, filling Him with all of His fullness and finding great
pleasure in such an extravagance (Colossians 1:19). He withheld nothing, giving all things into the hands of the Son and
putting all things under His feet, dwelling with all the fullness of the Godhead in Him bodily (Ephesians 1:22; Colossians 2:9).
This is love.
B. Jesus, the Beloved Son of God, Love Incarnate, loved and does love His Father in so great an extravagance—who
being in the form of God, did not consider it something to be grasped to be equal with God, but emptied Himself of such
privileges and took the form of a bondservant to the very point of death (Philippians 2:7, 8). He withheld utterly nothing
from His Father in the offering of the whole of Himself, delighting to do His Father’s will as His sustaining motivation and
desire even unto death, entrusting Himself into His Father’s hands on the cross (Psalms 40:7,8; John 4:34; Luke 23:46).
C. This same love has been given and poured out by God unto me. The love, with which the Father has loved the
Son, wholly and freely without restraint, is the love that has pursued me wholly (John 15:9, 17:23). Love Himself has
emptied Himself and given everything, sparing nothing.
1. The Father gave of His only, the Son of His love, the only begotten. He drew out of the bowels of His eternal being
and spared not that which He held most precious, most costly, most beloved. In the giving of His only Son, He gave all
without reserve (Romans 8:32; John 3:16).
2. Christ, the Son, poured Himself out in love unto me, giving Himself up for me utterly, not just in the giving of His
physical life unto death, but in the free offering of all of His excellencies, His beauties, His preciousness and His own
righteousness, indeed the essence of His whole being, He has entrusted to me, pouring into me the very Spirit by which
He breathes (Galatians 1:4, 2:20; Ephesians 5:25; Titus 2:14). This offering of His all has become our reference point for
love, it is the way in which we know and recognize its face and its manifestation (1 John 3:16, 4:9). In the pouring out of
His soul unto death, love was given an eternal depiction, as if God the Father, who is Love, were to say for all eternity,
“look upon this rendering of my affections and therein come to recognize the face of My love and the beauty therein.”
D. At the Last Supper, on Jesus’ last evening with His disciples (John 13-17), Jesus prepared them for the pressures
of disappointment, persecution, and temptation that were soon to come. The very night they would all deny Him
(Matthew 26:31), Jesus affirmed His love—not to mature apostles—but to weak yet sincere believers.
E. The measure of the Father's loving affection of Jesus is the standard of the Son's affection for us. Jesus declared,
"as the Father loved Me, I also have loved you” (John 15:9). The measure of the Father's loving affection of Jesus is equal
to the Father's affection for us. The Father loves the Church as He loves Jesus (John 17:23). The measure of the
Father's loving affection of Jesus will be the quality of affection imparted to the church. Jesus prayed that we would love
Him like the Father loved Him (John 17:26).
II. COMMUNION WITH GOD – THE DIVINE PLAN FROM BEFORE TIME
Jesus replied, "If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. My Father will love him, and we will come to
him and make our home with him. John 14:23
Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat
with him, and he with me. Revelation 3:20
And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. 1 John 1:3
A. That man would know and experience communion with God is a reality that existed as a desire and purpose in God’s
heart, long before time began. Somewhere in the depths of God’s being, He has reserved room for this ordained desire to
dwell with man. The Creator desires to bring the created into the communion shared between Father Son and Holy Spirit.
His determined desire is to bring us into the fullness of His embrace, the plentitude of love within the Godhead.
B. History began in a garden and will end with a wedding and then forever and ever we will be the eternal Spouse of
God. We will rule and reign with Him in holy love without fractions forever and ever. The fullness of love is our destination.
“In the unspeakable outflowingness of the divine plan, man has been destined not to a stand off or at-a-distance
knowledge and love of the Lord God but to an intimately personal entrance into the inner Trinitarian life itself. This
statement sounds sober enough but it is actually staggering. Were a man able to grasp the blinding splendor of the divine
life in its infinity, he would back away aghast at the condescension of his God in inviting him to share in it….The
redemption effected by the Word incarnate was aimed at the reintroduction of humankind into the bosom of the Trinity’s
inner knowing, loving, delighting.”
“God draws near to us in such a way as to draw us near to Himself within the circle of His knowing of
Himself.”
C. The supreme purpose of God, to bring forth a bride from humanity and to dwell in communion and union with her,
was undermined and estranged by sin and the fall of Adam. In Jesus’ death and resurrection, we have been reconciled
back to God, brought near to stand in grace before God.
But now in Christ we have boldness and access with confidence to God. Ephesians 3: 12
Through him we have access by one Spirit unto the Father." Ephesians 2: 18
“I was bought by the blood of Jesus Christ, the Second Person of the Trinity—you were bought by the blood of the Second
Person of the Trinity—to participate with Him in His communion with the First and Third Persons of the Trinity.”
“By nature, since the entrance of sin, no man has any communion with God. He is light, we darkness; and what
communion has light with darkness? He is life, we are dead, - he is love, and we are enmity; and what agreement can
there be between us? Men in such a condition have neither Christ, nor hope, nor God in the world, Eph. 2: 12; "being
alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them,"… Whilst there is this distance between God and
man, there is no walking together for them in any fellowship or communion...The manifestation of grace and pardoning
mercy, which is the only door of entrance into any such communion, is not committed unto any but unto him atoned in
whom it is, by whom that grace and mercy was purchased, through whom it is dispensed, who reveals it from the bosom
of the Father.”
D. The Basis of our Relationship with God is LOVE. Communion with God is God’s communication of Himself—the
communication of love—to us, and our loving response offered back to Him, a returning of love that is acceptable before
God. Love is revealed in expression. Communion with God is the continual expression and experience of mutual affection
between God and the human heart. Not only do we receive His love but we experience the absolute delight of loving Him
in return. The glory of our existence is in this divine exchange. The reward of our lives now and for all eternity is to love
Him and to receive His love.
“We love Him because He first loved us.” (1 John 4:19)
“Of all the movements, sensations and feelings of the soul, love is the only one in which the creature can respond to the
Creator and make some sort of similar return however unequal though it be. For when God loves, all he desires is to be
loved in return; the sole purpose of his love is to be loved, in the knowledge that those who love him are made happy by
their love of him. The Bridegroom’s love, or rather the love which is the Bridegroom, asks in return nothing but faithful
love. Let the beloved, then, love in return. Should not a bride love, and above all, Love’s bride? Could it be that Love not
be loved?”
III. THE EXPERIENCE OF DIVINE LOVE AS PORTRAYED IN THE SONG OF SOLOMON
A. Experiencing and receiving God’s love is critical and necessary for any degree of movement and growth in our
spiritual lives.
1. We are on a journey as our intimacy with God progresses and deepens. It is a journey ordained from everlasting that
culminates in a Wedding, a venture that brings us wholly into the possession of our Lord’s embrace.
“Let us be glad and rejoice and give Him glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come and His bride has made
herself ready.” Revelation 19:7
2. The Song of Solomon, rich in revelation about this progression of intimacy with God, is more concentrated in its
unfolding of these realities than any other portion of the Word. With great detail and depth, it opens to us the profound
emotions of God’s heart and the pleasures that continuously course through His Person, as well as revealing the process
of growth in the believer’s heart as they respond to such extravagance.
3. The first portion of the Song depicts the believer’s heart being awakened to the beauty and affections of God,
receiving His love amidst weakness and being set on a course of pursuing His love wholly, recognizing Him to be the only
true satisfaction of the soul.
4. Lovers far outwork workers. Our way forward in abandonment is to go deep in the love and personal affections of
Jesus. These foundational realities will serve as our anchor and our fuel for the duration of the journey. We will give all
because we have experienced and known the One who has given all to us. We will love because He first loved—awakening
and expanding my cold heart to the fierceness and depths of His affections.
5. The heart must be established in love, founded in God’s extravagant desire, and rooted in the plentitude of His
affection. This is the foundation that must be built and preserved for both the enabling of the very first step and the
empowering of every degree of movement in love and abandonment throughout the whole journey.
B. The Bride’s Communion with Jesus
“I sat down in His shade with great delight and His fruit was so sweet to my taste.” Song of Solomon 2:3
1. She has found the secret of a satisfied life. No longer grasping after the wind for things that do not remain and no
longer striving in works to gain His approval, she receives the eternal pleasure of the free gift of Love offered to her. She
rests in His shade.
2. She loves feeling beautiful and desired by Him. This new paradigm changes everything in terms of her approach to
Him and her response to her own times of weakness and failure. She also delights in the revelation of His beauty to her.
She is beginning to behold in God the satisfaction to all of her innate longings. She now sees Him as the God who’s love
is better than wine (all other pleasures) and whose nearness is more satisfying than anything. This causes her to order
her days in pursuit of such beauty and love.
3. Out of the experience of God's enjoyment of us, our own enjoyment of God is awakened and strengthened. Out of
the overflow of His affections for us, we discover our own heart responding in sincere enjoyment and desire for Him—a
glorious and precious exchange.
“He brought me to the banqueting house, and His banner over me was love.” Song of Solomon 2:4
4. The Lord brings us to the “celebration of His love” in the wine house. The total fulfillment of this is at the marriage
table in Revelation 19:7. He brings us to this place and as we feast on His devotion towards us, our hearts cry, “His banner
over me is love,” which means that everything He does and every way that He leads me flows from love.
C. The lovesick God causes lovesickness to arise within the young bride
“Sustain me...Refresh me...For I am lovesick. His left hand is under my head, His right hand embraces me.”
Song of Solomon 2:5, 6
1. She is captivated by who He is. She has been wounded by the arrow of His love and finds her only consolation in
the greater tasting of it…each taste making her more lovesick than before. She cries out for deeper intimacy. He is
causing her to be overcome with love to prepare her for all that lies ahead. He is “ruining” her heart for this highest
pleasure that she may never again successfully return to secondary loves or pleasures.
2. She experiences the embrace of God when she says, “His left hand is under my head. His right hand embraces
me.” The Lord is answering her prayer that He would sustain her and refresh her with more of Himself. The left hand
speaks of the invisible activity of the Lord, the things that she cannot see manifestly. The right hand speaks of the things
that she can see, the manifest activity of God.
D. There are two general parts of communion with God. It is first the longing for the embrace, which is spiritual hunger
for more of God. The second part is the manifest embrace which is the manifest release of feelings for God. This is the
fulfillment to the longing’s ache. Longing has made room in our hearts for this second part of God’s greatest gift to the
human heart: the manifest experience of divine love and communion with Jesus.
Not when we are following the Lord afar off do we have such hunger and desire for Him as is characterized by being sick
from love. It is when we are drinking deep of the Wine of the Kingdom and feeding in fullness upon Him, that the yearnings
and cravings increase unto real soul-sickness for our Beloved
There is a way in which our Lord would have us sick from love for Him; and when we have this intense love and desire,
nothing can satisfy but to get closer to Him. It is then that He brings us into His Banqueting House, and He satisfies us with
such revelation of Himself and of His love as ravish our souls, and we cry with increasing desire and hunger: “Stay ye me
with flagons, refresh me with apples: for I am sick from love.” It is at this time, that our love is drawn out to Him as never
before. “As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God.”
The bride does not ask Him to withdraw the revelation of Himself and His love, but to strengthen her that she may endure,
not only these, but even greater revelations…It is as she partakes of the fruits of the Christ-life that she is strengthened
and drawn into a place of deeper revelation of her Lord and of His love for her.
IV. COMMUNION WITH GOD: CULTIVATED BY THE HOLY SPIRIT IN THE HEART
“For this reason I bow my knees to the Father…that He would grant you, according to the riches of His
glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in your
hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the
saints what is the width and length and depth and height – to know the love of Christ which passes
knowledge; that you may be filled with the fullness of God.” Ephesians 3:16 – 19
A. This passage is the clearest most definitive statement in the Word on communion with God in prayer. It is a
significant theological statement of how to cultivate intimacy with God and experience the deep things of God, presenting
the biblical pattern for pursuing God.
B. Strengthened with Might - When God reveals God to the inner man, our interior life is transformed and we walk in a
whole new way of living. This Divine might of God invigorates and empowers the inside of a human being. Within our
beings we experience being loved and returning love to our Beloved, a movement of love within.
“A man untaught and unstrengthened by the Spirit of God may talk about the love of Christ; he may write poetry about it,
he may go into rhapsodies over it—but it is only words, words, words. There is no real apprehension. But the Spirit of God
makes us strong to really apprehend it, in all its breadth, in all its length, in all its depth, in all its height.”
C. Through His Spirit in the inner man - We experience intimacy with God through fellowship with the Holy Spirit. One
of the mysteries of God is that this fiery lover, the Holy Spirit, consumes redeemed human beings and brings them into
union with God. It is the Holy Spirit that causes the Word of God to come to life on the inside of us. It is Him that takes the
written word and ignites it in our being as a living flame. He is the Spirit of the Living God—causing God to be to us a living
reality, a relationship filled with experiential encounters of love.
“…the love of God has been poured out into our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us” (Romans 5:5).
D. To know the love of Christ which passes knowledge – We have been given access into the experiential knowing of the
love of Christ—a true encounter with Love. This love surpasses knowledge and is beyond the intellect. Intimacy with Jesus
is beyond our comprehension.
E. To know the love of Christ…that you may be filled with the fullness of God - We desire to live in the FULLNESS, the
fullest life in the Holy Spirit, of what God has ordained for the human heart in this age. What does the fullness of God
mean in the age of which God is ordained that we see dimly as in a mirror yet are being transformed from glory to glory
until we see His face? This realm of love will only be entered by lovers. A lover will search the depths, climb the heights
and cross the lengths in search of the One his soul loves.
V. GROWING IN COMMUNION WITH GOD
A. Growing in love and growing in holiness are two inseparable processes, each influencing and furthering the other.
1. Communion with God flows out of likeness to Him. God cannot commune with that which is unlike Him. Therefore,
it is as we are transformed, that we come into greater union with God.
For what fellowship has righteousness with lawlessness? And what communion has light with darkness?
2 Corinthians 6:14
“What life is to the body, that is righteousness to the spirit; and the greater measure of holiness it hath, the
more of life it hath, because it is in a greater nearness, and partakes more fully of the fountain of life…It is
(holiness) that fits us for communion with God…The creature must be stripped of his unrighteousness or
God of His purity before they can come together. Likeness is the ground of communion and of delight in it.”
2. This does not mean that we can know no communion with God until we are made perfectly holy. Communion with
God is a growing reality that matures in correspondence with our growth in holiness.
3. In the same way, it is the very experience of such pleasures in God that perpetrates and fuels our abandonment to
God. The two realities go hand in hand. We only grow in holiness in has much as our hearts are growing in love and we
only grow in the experience of love in as much as we are being changed and made holy unto the Lord.
4. In as much as we are transformed into His likeness, from glory to glory, our communion with Him expands. This is why
we can experience the early stages of communion with God, as seen in the beginning of Song of Solomon, while still being
significantly immature. In fact, it is the very tasting of these initial intimacies that ruins us to remain where we are. We cry out,
“Sustain me, refresh me, for I am lovesick!” Our souls demand a greater entrance into such glorious intimacy for which we
were created.
5. In as much as our hearts are expanded by love, we can respond wholeheartedly to God. A tenderized heart is the
heart that can move forward in God. When we see our dullness, our distance and our falling short, the answer is not to
somehow fight to go harder, but to go deeper in love. It is a heart renewed in the remembrance of God’s love and
affections that gives everything in abandonment. What fueled our fervency at the very beginning must fuel us once
again; we need a deeper revelation of His love and a greater exchange of communion.
B. Replacing a Theology of Barrenness with a Heart of Expectation
1. One critical aspect of communion with God is a continual renewal of our expectancy in experiencing this intimacy
with Him—a frequent realigning with the truth of His desire to give of Himself and His commitment to make Himself known to
our hearts.
2. We often treat the realm of true nearness to God as though it were so far off. We imagine Him to be so far from us,
not wanting to break in to our experience. We must be careful to not possess a theology of barrenness—to believe that
this distance we are experiencing is the way God desires it. We must know this about our God: He delights to be near to
us. He has come nearer to us than any man or angel would have thought conceivable in both the Incarnation and the
indwelling of His Spirit.
3. He is always nearer than we imagined and there is always greater nearness to be known. Knowing this keeps us
from falsely believing He is far when He is really near and causes us to continually cry out for greater experience of His
presence.
“God is in this place and I did not know it.” Genesis 28:16
4. By nature, we settle into degrees of dullness and distance and after a time lose our way in fervently pursuing
deeper experiences of the Lord’s presence and love. A heart that has lost its tenderness before God, settling for the
memory of deep experiences in God and not the continued encounters with His Holy Spirit, is a heart that no longer
expects, no longer hungers, and thus cannot be satisfied.
“For He satisfies the longing soul, and fills the hungry soul with goodness.” Psalms 107:9
“Blessed are you who hunger now, for you shall be filled…Woe to you who are full, for you shall hunger.”
Luke 6:21
5. A heart that views God as one who wants to withhold from us rather than to give freely and extravagantly of Himself
will only grow in doubt and distance toward Him. This paradigm shuts down our expectation for more of Him and stunts our
growth in intimacy.
6. The way that expectation is renewed is by gazing on the heart of God who desires to give freely of Himself to those
who love Him. A process of pursuit is required and there are definite delays in this process, yet we can be certain as we
behold Him from eternity, and even in our own experience, it is who He is to bring us near to Himself.
“If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who
is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him!” Matthew 7:11
7. The one who expects is the one who finds just as the one who hungers is the one who is satisfied. Eyes that are
searching are eyes that behold. If we find ourselves dulled in heart and distant from the God we love, we must return to
the remembrance of His love (Song of Solomon 1:4), gaze upon the extravagance of His nature and renew our hearts in
the gift of expectation for a greater entrance into His love.