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Revelation 19:7-9: Let us rejoice and be glad and give glory to Him, for the marriage of the Lamb has come and His bride has made herself ready.
If you've been married for more than five years, you can anticipate what your spouse is going to say or do next. You can finish his sentences; you know what story or joke is going to come next; you could order a meal without consulting her; you know how he will react to something. This doesn't always happen, of course. Some people can be married for decades and never get to know their spouses. But if the husband and wife are paying a bit of attention, marriage produces something like a brain-meld.
This seems natural. Of course husbands and wives learn to think together and speak together and act together. After all, they spend their lives together. They talk about things, and listen to each other. They eat their meals together, and they share experiences together. They have common memories because they have lived a common life. Natural as it is, it is also deeply mysterious, even bizarre that two quite different people can come to have what seems to be a single mind.
This is the kind of intimacy we should strive for in our prayers. We should be striving to know our Husband so intimately that you can finish His sentences, anticipate His next move, do and say what He would do and say, ask Him to do what you already know He's going to do.
How does this happen? How can we pursue this kind of familiarity with Jesus, our husband? There is a mystical intimacy here, but in many ways it's just like a marriage. How do we develop intimacy with our Lord? Pay attention to what He says and does, so that you can learn His preferences, His tastes, His desires. Don't just listen and forget, but obey Him. Talk to Him, sing to Him, sing with Him. Eat and drink with Him at this table, the marriage supper of the Lamb.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Sunday, August 13, 2006 at 07:36 AM
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