Man, how prophetic generation alpha. Let's go. We're continuing our series called identity. And over the last couple months, we've been diving into what is our identity in Jesus?
Now that he died, he rose again, he ascended into heaven. And what does that mean about who I am? And so we've talked about our worth and our value. According to what Jesus has said about us, we've talked about he's forgiven us and he's justified us and he's made us righteous.
We talked about how he's made a covenant with us. And then over the last month, how many of you guys have been here for the body message and soul messages? We've had three weeks on the soul and just learning and understanding that we are a spirit. We have a soul and we live in a body.
And we need to understand how our born-again spirit is meant to interact with our soul and our body. So if you've missed this last month, I want to encourage you to go back and listen to every, one of the messages that gives so much insight into how you're built, how you interact internally with yourself. And so the rest of the series, we're gonna be in about this series for another month here. And I felt the invitation from the Lord for us to dive into our eternal identities.
Eternal identities. And those three eternal identities is that we will always be royal sons, we will always be royal priests, and we will always be a royal bride. And tonight I want to talk about our bridal identity in Jesus. So you can turn in your Bibles to Revelation 22, Revelation 22 verse 17.
This is the final prayer and the final prophecy in the Bible. The final prophecy and the final prayer in the Bible is Revelation 22, 17. It says this, the spirit and the bride, say come. Say this after me, the spirit and the bride, say come.
Let's say it again, the spirit and the bride, say come. This is a prophetic picture. This is a prophetic picture of what's gonna happen in the future. And what's gonna happen is there is going to be a global alignment with the Holy Spirit.
So now the church and the spirit are saying the same thing. They're in agreement and how does the spirit speak? He speaks through the bride. So what's happening is we, John is getting a picture a couple thousand years into the future and there's one defining thing about the end times church and that is they all have a revelation of the bridegroom.
They're not marked or known for the way that they have a revelation of God as Lord or of master or even of King of Kings. Their one primary ache in their hearts is an ache of love as a bride. And this isn't just a Western thing. And this isn't just a charismatic thing or a house of prayer thing or if you were part of the IHOP thing.
This is the marking of God on a whole people. We're talking hundreds of millions, maybe a billion people that are gonna have the same longing in their heart, the same revelation, Jesus is the bridegroom and I'm a bride. It's the ache of the end times church, the end times people. And I don't know, he might tear you.
Maybe it's 10 years, maybe it's 20, maybe it's 50. It might be my kids that see him. It might be my grandkids that see him. Maybe it's my great-grandkids.
But I know that there's gonna be 200 nations. Every tribe needs to hear the word of the Lord and hear the gospel. And it says in the book of Revelation that every tribe, every tongue and every nation. There's gonna be remnants from every people group.
I'm talking about the North Koreans and the Somalians and the South Africans, even the Brits. I'm talking about the Canadians, the Mexican church, the Brazilian church, and they're all going to have the same prayer and the same cry on the inside of them. Come home. Come back.
I want you. That's what they're gonna say. It's gonna be the revelation of bridegroom, we must have you back. And there's this prayer, so it's a prophecy of what's gonna happen, but it's a prayer for the modern church.
I just, the distracted modern church with all of their electronics, all of the technology, all of the artificial intelligence, and there's just gonna be this longing from the modern church. It's a longing of love, it's simple. But isn't this beautiful that, that's actually hard to even picture. There's so many things that have divided us.
So many reasons for us not to be on the same page, but in that day. I mean, this is the miracle of the ages, that there's literally unity and agreement. And everyone is saying the same thing. Why?
Because we all have the same Holy Spirit on the inside. I don't care where you're from, what your story is, what your socioeconomic situation is, same spirit's gonna say the same thing at the end. And we look at this, and I believe that this is the Christendo of history. The Christendo of history is going to actually be mirroring the beginning of the story.
The Father in the Garden. He's shaping Adam. He's shaping Eve. I just love that he's going, you need a suitable partner.
You need a suitable partner. And I just picture the Father saying that to Jesus the Son. You need a suitable partner. You wanna know what I'm gonna do, son?
With you, we're gonna team up, and we are going to create. Everything was created through the Son, right? So the Son and the Father are shaping humans with the capacity to actually be the forever bride of the Son of God. He's going, I'm gonna shape them with an intellect so that they can interact with my son for eternity as a partner and a bride, and they're gonna reign together.
I'm gonna give them emotional capacity. I'm gonna give them intellectual capacity, even physical capacity to interact with me. Oh, the ache of the Father. Can you imagine the joy in his heart when he sees Adam, me, Eve for the first time?
And then I was just out of wedding last night. And this Father of the bride, the bride and the Father and the Mother of the bride and the groom and they're all weeping. And I just picture, they're smiling and weeping, all at the same time. And I just picture the Father at the end of the story.
Oh, what moves in his heart? When all billion have the same cry. I want you back. I want you back.
It's not right. I wanna see you. I know you in part. I just see a damn picture of you and I must have you with me.
It's the cry that God is actually depositing into the church in this hour, I believe it. Even if it's a hundred years from now, the return of Jesus, he's starting in the last 50 years. He's going, this is what I'm doing. This is what I'm doing in the earth.
It's not a charismatic issue of theology. No, no, no, no. It's all over the Bible. Literally 27 times in the New Testament, Jesus has revealed as the bridegroom.
The last three days of Jesus' life, he reveals himself five times as the bridegroom. If you're preparing to leave and you've got 72 hours with your followers and your friends and you're gonna entrust the whole kingdom, like how the world will know God and you're gonna spend three days, you have three days left and you're gonna reveal yourself as a bridegroom five times in three days. Jesus was very specific because he's going, this will be your identity. You must know me this way.
You must know me this way. In Jewish culture, what would happen is a Jewish man, he would, there'd be a woman that would catch his eye and he'd go, hey, I wanna marry her. I wanna, she's gonna be my wife, right? And so she would provide, or he would provide this thing called a katuba.
Everybody say katuba. It's a bride price, okay? So it's like this covenantal offering given to the bride's parents. And oftentimes what this groom would do is he would try to shoot for as high of price as possible to pay for the bride.
So she would have the revelation of her value and her worth to him. And so whatever Max he could do, he would try to reach that to communicate the value that he's putting on her as a bride. Jesus, what does he do? He goes, I purchase a revelation that says that Jesus purchased men for God.
Says in 1 Corinthians 6, that he purchased us at a high price. Jesus the groom, he's going, I'm putting on your life, the highest price. I'm paying the highest bride price. You're worth it and you value, you don't fully understand.
You don't fully understand the worth that you are to the Lord. Just even as an individual in what God thinks of you and what moves in his heart. Then what happens? What happens is the Jewish groom, before he leaves that father's house, he provides the bride with this thing called the cup of the covenant.
And so he offers her this cup of the covenant. And if she takes the cup and drinks the wine, then it's her acceptance to the proposal. And she receives the cup of the covenant and drinks of the cup of the covenant. How many of you guys remember Passover meal?
And Jesus says, take this cup and drink. Jesus the bride groom at the Passover. Then what happens is the groom in Jewish culture, what he'd do is he'd give the bride a gift. And this gift, because he was leaving, this gift was meant to remind her of his emotions, remind her of him, remind her that he's coming back.
Jesus, John 14, John 16, what does he say? He says, I am going to send a gift, the gift of the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit is gonna do what? Remind you, remind you of what I've said, remind you of what I'm doing, what I'm saying.
How many of you know that this healing that we just witnessed or heard about? Or if somebody gets healed, let's say you have a broken arm. Holy Spirit heals your broken arm through a person laying hands on you. That healing is actually meant to anchor your love for the bridegroom, that Jesus is gonna come back in the future and that he's gonna give you a new body with an arm that will never break.
See that broken arm can get healed and he can get broken again, but Jesus is coming back and he's gonna give you a resurrected body that will never have an arm that can break. And that healing is actually all the signs and wonders, all the miracles, it's actually all pointing. The power of the Spirit is pointing to the day of the groom, the day of the return of the bridegroom and it's to anchor us to Jesus as the lover. Jesus is the one that will bring redemption and restoration to relationship.
Then what happens is the bridegroom goes and what does he do? He starts a building project. In Jewish culture, what would happen is this Jewish man, he would go, this Jewish groom, he would go back to his dad's house and he would start building an addition on his dad's house because he needed to build a place for his bride and him to dwell together. What do we remember?
What does Jesus say? He says, don't worry, I'm leaving, but I'm going somewhere. I'm going to prepare a place for you. What does he say after that?
He says, for in my father's house, there's many rooms. How many of you know that Jesus uses really amazing resources to build? When you get a picture of heaven, what do you see? He's using sapphires, he's using emeralds.
His supplies, his building supplies didn't get purchased at Home Depot. Listen, his building supplies are literally diamonds and pearls and he's building a dwelling place for him and his bride. What can house? What can house a bride that has infinite worth?
You look at the New Jerusalem and you get a taste of what he thinks your value is. He's like, what can frame her? What can frame where our love is actually going to exist for years, decades, centuries. Then what happens is the bride, you know, it's the question of what is the bride doing though?
Turn in your Bible to Revelation 19, just one page back. What is the bride up to? The groom is doing a building project, right? What is the bride doing?
Look at Revelation 19, verse seven. Let us rejoice and exalt and give him the glory for the marriage. Look at that, the marriage of the lamb has come. And what has his bride been up to?
She's been making herself ready. And it was granted to her to clothe herself with fine linen, bright and pure. She's wearing a dress. She's wearing a wedding dress.
She's prepared herself and she's prepared a dress. She's clothed herself in a dress. In Jewish culture, what would happen is the groom would leave. The bride is left with a gift and then she starts working on sewing her dress.
And we see that at the end of the story, that the bride of Christ, that the global bride is gonna be adorned in a dress. And every thread was an act of love, of good deeds. How many of you know that God isn't coming back for a bunch of servants and slaves and minions to do his business? How many of you know that it's actually a bride that's been encountering the heart of the bridegroom in love and is love sick in her heart?
And all of a sudden her love just starts spilling over all over the place with good deeds and good works? How many of you know that that Jewish bride isn't in resentment and bitterness that she's sewing that dress? Oh, what she's, she's not in apathy. She's sewing the dress.
How long is he gonna be? Man, I'm getting tired of him. He's taking a long time. No, every thread is a thread of love.
It's not a thread of I have to or I should. It's a thread of love. Oh, I love this man. I'm gonna give him everything.
I'm gonna give him my every day. I'm not just gonna give him Sundays. Can you imagine? Jesus, Jesus, listen, Jesus is not picturing.
I don't wanna go there. I wanna move on, okay. Then what happens is this in Jewish culture? What happens is this?
The bridegroom has been working on this building project, right? Jesus says, no one knows the day of my coming. Who knows? Only the father.
Do you remember that? Matthew 24. Only the father knows when I'm gonna come back. Why?
Because in Jewish culture, do you know who the building inspector was? The dad. Yeah. So the groom is working on this building project, working on the addition, and then the father actually comes and is like, son, come on, we gotta, this wall is crooked.
You gotta redo this thing, right? But then finally, the building inspector father says, go get her, it's time. And the heart of the bridegroom thrills within him, and he says, hey, guys, it's time. And he grabs his friends, right?
Let's turn to Matthew 24. Oh, I wanna look at Matthew 24, this is fun. Matthew 24, and we're gonna look at verse 29. Matthew 24, verse 29, actually let's look at verse 27.
For as the lightning comes from the east. Are you there, say amen if you're there. All right, Matthew 24, verse 27. As the lightning comes from the east, and shines as far as the west.
So will the coming of Jesus be. Wherever the corpses there, the vultures gather, there's a whole revelation on that, I'm not gonna get into it, okay? Verse 29, immediately after the tribulation of those days, the sun will be darkened and the moon will not give its light and the stars will fall from heaven and the powers of the heavens will be shaken. And then will appear in the heavens, the sign of the Son of Man.
And then all the tribes will mourn and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and glory, and he will send out his angels with a loud trumpet call and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to another. What would happen in just culture is the bridegroom's friends, one of his friends would have a shofar and he would be blowing the trumpet in the streets for the procession and they would be shouting, the bridegroom is coming, the bridegroom is coming. And there'd be a trumpet sounding. Do you see that Jesus is revealing the end of the story and he's going, I'm a bridegroom and I'm gonna get my bride.
And I just picture, it's in the night. It's in the night and it's very dark. It's the darkest hour in history. Look at that, there's no sun, there's no stars.
Can you imagine how cold the earth is without a sun and without star shining? It's the coldest, it's the darkest moment in history. And have you ever seen a lightning strike before? Like been close to one.
That blue, white, intense light. And it says that against the backdrop of pure darkness, the coming of the sun of man is like a lightning strike moving across the sky. It's the bridegroom. Here he comes, here he comes.
Here he comes, the bridegroom is coming. And then what happens is there's a consummation of the marriage in Jewish culture and then there's a wedding feast. And we just read about that in Revelation 19 that there's this wedding feast. But I just picture Jesus and I'm going, man, his cry from John 17 is actually reciprocated in us.
That's what's happening. John 17, he's like, make them one. Do you remember that? Make them unified and one.
And then what he says is, I want them father to be with me where I am. And what happens at the end of the story is that all of a sudden the global bride all unifies and then reciprocates the longing that Jesus had as he was sweating blood in a garden. And they go, he wanted to be with us where he is. And here we are on earth and we're saying, we want you.
We're saying, I want you to be here. And so he says, I'm bringing heaven to earth. I'm bringing my dwelling place and I'm gonna make it one with your dwelling place and it's gonna be a new heavens. It's gonna be a new earth.
It's gonna be the overlap of heaven and earth and we're gonna dwell together. We're gonna be with each other. I'm gonna answer, whatever goes up, it must come down. Jesus is the bridegroom king.
How many of you know that if you've got a king and you're relating with a king, you enter into his presence with like an honor, right? An honor and respect and reverence. And you kind of, there's a fear about it. There's a trembling when you enter into the throne room of a king.
But Jesus reveals himself as a bridegroom king. Which means you're the queen. And what a queen does is she knows the inner workings of what's going on behind the scenes with the king. She knows his personality.
She knows his emotions. She knows what he's like and what he prefers. She knows what he desires. She knows what is concerning him and what brings him joy.
And Jesus at the end of the story is going, I want a bride that knows me. I want a bride that knows the intricacies of my personality. I want a bride that actually, when I'm riding on the clouds, that she says, I know him. That the end of the story is, I always know this is what you would be like in person because I've been dwelling with you in secret when nobody's watching, because we've been having conversations.
Do you think Jesus when he's riding on the clouds, when he's sweating blood in the garden, is thinking about haze machines and lights for 45 minutes on a Sunday? Do you think that he's thinking about a five minute KTS worship song or a secular song, trying to engage the room so that they listen to a message? Do you think that he's dreaming of us religiously saying that we're Christians? But in the everyday, there's a dullness.
But when the shakings happen, we're more consumed with the shaking than what he's feeling. We're more consumed with the news than consumed with what he's saying and seeing. I believe that, listen, it says in the end of the age that many hearts will grow cold, and I'm telling you this, it's not gonna be the news and what news says, and you figuring out where there's inconsistencies in news articles and figuring out what's wrong with the leadership of this country or that country, it's not gonna maintain a warm heart of love on fire. Do you know what's gonna make your heart cold?
Is looking to the world and pointing your finger at the world and trying to stay woke? Do you know woke isn't gonna keep you hot in love with Jesus? Do you know that your political stance and who you align with is gonna mean nothing on the day of the Lord? Do you know that how many likes you have?
How many followers you have? All of the successes, your bank account means nothing on the day of the Lord. Do you know what means something on the day of the Lord? A tender heart of love?
There's a flame of love on the inside, and there's a longing and there's an ache for him. And I want him back. I'm not content with just the normal. I'm not content with just the status quo and being an average person.
I want love on my heart. And it's the cry of the bride. When you get love sick, it messes you up. Everything gets disoriented.
And all of a sudden the world just continues and it's like you're on a different wavelength. I heard Corey Russell say, it's like for so many years, the bridegroom has been on FM and the church has been on AM. And I believe God is actually inviting us into being in the same frequency and alignment. And we're gonna line up with him in what he wants.
This is what he wants. Jesus, you know, the devil doesn't mind. The devil doesn't mind if you serve for years. He doesn't mind if you serve radically.
He doesn't mind if you're a really good person. He doesn't mind if you show up to church. If you do all the religious things, he doesn't care. But when you start having love, start billowing out of the interior of your belly, and you start having a hunger to know him.
And you start going, I want to love you with all of my heart, all of my soul and all of my mind. That's a problem to the enemy. He doesn't like lifestyles of love. It's an all-out attack on the lifestyle of love.
And that's why we feel dull most of the time. That's why we feel bored because there's this current, that he's, it's an overwhelming current to desensitize love on the inside for him. Desensitize, film, just throw something in to the, it's just like he's going, if I can just trip him up. If I can just fill the airways with noise, it would distract them enough to be distracted from love.
And they'll just do the outside thing. They'll do what they should, but they won't know me. But when you know him, there's an ache. And you don't feel it all the time.
You don't feel it all the time. I'm not saying, don't feel condemned, stop it. Don't feel shame or guilt. But just have this provoked jealousy of I know that there's more.
And Jesus knows there's more. You know, Jesus, he's going, hey, father, as you've loved me, I love them. And he says, abide in my love. Jesus is saying, hey, I want you to crock pot love for 80 years.
I want, I want there to be a simmering bubbling of love for 80 years, 90 years. I want that love to balloon in every circumstance. I want it to expand. I want it to get so invasive.
I want it to be like a weed, like ferns. I want it to just keep on growing. Some of you, oh geez, you remember that. I want it to just keep on growing, keep on sprouting up.
And you try to, it's just like whack-a-mole love. It's just like the enemy tries to hit that one. And all of a sudden, when the difficulty hits that one, then all of a sudden there's four other elements of your love that start expanding in every season. And he's going, this is what I'm dreaming of.
I'm dreaming of the love that's the bounce back type of love. It's faith that just bounces back because there's an ache. Because I've been ruined. I think some of us need to get wounded with love.
Ruined with love. Where it's like I've been ruined and I can't get fixed. No doctor can fix the wound of love. It's like the side of Jesus.
It's like the scars of Jesus have marked me so much I've just been wounded and now I'm scarred. And there's nothing that can be done. I've just been ruined by him. I want to be ruined by the Lord.
I want to be ruined by the bridegroom and have so much love sickness. This is what I want. I don't feel this. 99% of the time I don't feel love sickness.
But I know it's on the way. I know it's growing. I know some of you feel the same way. But there's an ache on the inside and it's growing.
It's going to grow to like 2%. And then it's going to grow to 5% of the time I feel it. I feel the ache of love. And it's going to keep on growing.
And then I'm going to look at my kids. It's going to be 25. And they're going to have 50% of the time. There's going to be love on the inside for the Lord.
There's going to be a come Lord Jesus on the inside of them. And I'm going to have gray hair. And all of a sudden my tender heart is going to start matching what's inside my kids. And there's going to be a unity with all my German brothers and sisters.
And they're going to be experiencing the same thing. And then the Germans and the Iranians and the Ukrainians and the Russians. They're all unified with one cry. I want you.
Come home. I need you. I want to see you. Jesus, he says in Ephesians 3, 18, 3, 19, the apostle Paul just gives language to the heart of Jesus.
He says, I want to know the height. I want to know the depth. I want to know the length and the width of the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge. Do you know what that is?
I want to know. In other words, I want to experience every facet of love. I want to experience your affections. And I believe that's what Jesus purchased.
He purchased for us to experience and encounter his affections. Ephesians 5 says that Jesus, he cherishes us as his bride. That's what it says in Ephesians 5. That he cherishes us.
When's the last time that you felt cherished by God? When's the last time that you were in a time by yourself or corporately and you just became aware your affections are towards me? You really do cherish me. When's the last time that you got a glimpse of his cherishing facial expression?
Isaiah 62, Isaiah 62 is this prophetic picture of the end of the story where we're going to have the revelation. God's going to say, you're my bride. And then we're going to say, in that day, we're going to say, and he's my husband. It's the Hosea 2.
It's Isaiah 62. Isaiah 62, Jesus says, hebsaba, my delight is in you. You're no longer forsaken. Your name is hebsaba, which means I like you.
I really, really like you. Man, have you gotten a revelation on how much God likes you? How much the bridegroom likes you? Oh my goodness, if we could just picture all of the hearts, all of the likes coming from the throne room of heaven, all of the taps of love, every single morning, he's just like, his bride, so unaware, so unaware.
We're like this, and he's like this. We're like this, our Bible sitting there, and he's over here going like this, saying, I love you. Oh, I like you. Oh, I cherish you.
I delight in you. The question is, what will sustain us in the end? What's going to sustain you when all the hearts around you are starting to grow cold and offended? When you have every reason to be offended, every reason to grow bitter because of what they did and what they said or what happened, every reason to grow cold.
And I want to just draw us to the reality that your destiny is to love. Your destiny is to have a heart of love. Jesus purchased this for you. He's given us as his bride access to the greatest gift that any bridegroom has ever given to a bride in history, his spirit, and his spirit has for the last 2000 years been saying come.
His spirit since the beginning, if you read the Epistles, if you read the early church authors, some of us think it's foolish, but I think it's wisdom. They thought he was returning in their lifetime. I don't want to go up on some mountain, listen, and then just wait. But I want to wait in my heart like Jesus asked his disciples to do in the garden.
I want to waiting and attending to his heart like a waiter or a waitress tends to a table. I want to tend it to the Lord in the waiting. And I want the wait to not develop apathy, but I want it to develop love sickness. And God is saying, I'm going to do it in you.
And I've been saying come for 2000 years, the spirit's been saying it. And all of a sudden we're getting ramped into the story. I believe this little community in the Twin Cities is giving birth to a cry that might culminate 20, 30, 40 years, 100 years. I want us as parents and as singles, as couples, as empty nesters, as widows, as divorces.
I want us all to begin to carry what we were destined to carry. And we were all destined to carry an ache for the bridegroom. I want you back. I love you.
And when you come back, I'm going to know you. When you come back and when I see you, it's going to make all make sense to all the things that you said to me when I was 33, when I was 35, when I was 42, and I was in the fetal position on the bed. And I felt like there was no hope. And that was the end of the story.
When I was 63, and I was burying my spouse, when I was 75 and I was alone. And there was an ache. And I got to the rocking chair with love in my heart. And then all the lights turned out.
And all the lights of the heavens turned out. And there was a lightning strike of the Son of Man. And he was coming. And I saw him.
It all made sense. Why would I sing to an invisible God? Why would I wake up at five again and again and again? The foolishness of love.
Reading a Bible. Reading words on a page. Half of them I don't even understand. And I just keep on pressing in.
I'm going to see you face to face. I'm going to see him. Listen, I'm going to see him. And I'm going to look at him.
And when I see him, it's all going to make sense. This is the dream of the Father in the beginning. A suitable partner. This is what the Son wants.
We're not sinners. Listen, this is the identity statement. We're not sinners struggling to love. But we're lovers of God.
This is sometimes struggle with sin. This is your identity. You are the bride. You are part of the bride.
But the Lord, it's like the global bride. We are the bride together collectively. I just love this picture. It's the everyday way that we talk about.
Okay? There's this up revelation of he's the bride room. There's the interior work that God does of I'm the bride. The together global revelation of we want him back and he's the bride room.
And then what happens in Revelation 22? Did you catch it? I don't know if you read the verse after. But we start realizing that this come that we say, come home to the Lord actually billows out to the side and it turns into come, come, come, come, meet him.
You must know the lover of my soul. He loved me first. You must know this type of love. Hey, come, come.
You must know him. So many of us have been and I should share the gospel. I should preach. I should sow seeds of the gospel.
And we've got to get into I'm so in love with him. How many of you know that you can't if you're in love? It's just like you're posting pictures all the time. It's like this is my boo.
You're like you've got all of this stuff that you're going, I have to say it. I have to tell someone. Oh my goodness. You wouldn't believe.
I met someone. There's a wouldn't you wouldn't believe. I met someone that God's going to give the church. You wouldn't believe it.
You wouldn't believe it. He's the perfect match. He completes me. Oh, I just think about so much dysfunction where we associate ourselves.
How many of you have ever met a famous person or your friends with a famous person? And there's a dysfunction that you think something about yourself better because you're associated with a famous person. Listen, it's okay to do that with him. It's okay to have your identity all wrapped up into the man you know.
It's actually healthy. The one man that you can go, yeah, I know him. He likes me. He delights at me.
He cherishes me. I have to introduce him to you. Let's all stand where's the team you can come to the front. I believe the Holy Spirit is putting this longing and this revelation in our hearts.
And then he wants to brand us. He wants to literally brand us and ruin us and wound us with his love. That we would have the revelation. He's the bridegroom and I'm the bride.
This is just listen, this is a metaphor. Don't make it weird. See, it's not to get weird. Okay.
There's like 1% of you that are starting to get weird about this. Okay. 1% that are trying to like sexualize Jesus. Stop it.
Like it's not going on dates with Jesus. It's not this like romantic thing, but there's a, there's a, what God is doing in his wisdom is he's going, I have to reveal myself to them. So they know how they can relate with me. And so he gives us pictures of how we can relate with him and revelations about his identity so that we can actually go places in our relationship that we normally wouldn't go.
And the Lord is going, I want to literally brand you on the interior of your soul so that even in your mind, your mind thinks different. Your mind, all of a sudden there's a new neuro pathway. I'm a bride. Listen, ladies have been getting over that they're sons of God since they were born it, you know?
And so you can just come 50-50. You're the bride. All right? Let's go.
But I just, I see that the Lord is giving us this is, this is a tool I want to give to you. Everybody say he's giving me a tool. This is a bridal tool. This is a bridal identity tool that I want to give you for your prayer life.
And it's this one, this is these two questions. I want to see what you see and I want to feel what you feel. That's what the queen of a groom, the queen of a king gets access to. I want to see what you see and I want to feel what you feel.
You can just close it. Let's just all spread out. If you want to spread out so you can just get some space with the Lord. I want to see what you see.
I want to feel what you feel. Lord, our hearts want to stay red hot. Our hearts of love, we want to stay red hot in affection. Lord, I don't want a cold heart.
I don't want an apathetic love. I want you to brand me. I want an ache that can't be satisfied. I want to love sickness that has no remedy.
There's no fix for it. Only that you would come back. Put a cry on the inside of us. One that we can't even understand.
One that we can't even put into words. Lord, as creation groans for the sons of God to be revealed, Lord, all of creation is beckoning us to actually shout and cry for the ache of the bridegroom. All of creation since the garden, since the Father's desires were deterred for a moment. There's been an ache.
We join the ache of the ages. We join the hunger of the ages. You just close your eyes. Don't look at me.
Just begin to connect with him. Lord, make me hungry. Brand me with hunger. Brand me with your bridal identity.
Awaken my heart and love. I want to begin to understand how you like me. How you cherish me. I want to know the affections of the bridegroom.