Who is this, coming up from the wilderness leaning on her Beloved?
The Unrecognizable Bride
Part 3 of: The Spotless Bride
By:  Tiffany Lewis

            Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall.
            Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
            All the king’s horses and all the king’s men
            Couldn’t put Humpty together again.

They can’t put us back together again but there is One who can.  However, we will look different afterwards.  We are created in His image yet we spend a lifetime creating our own.  The Lord is alluring us into the wilderness to be shattered of every wrong motive, every ace we hold in our pocket and to break us of our own self-image.  A metamorphosis occurs when we meet with God in the wilderness.   We experience the power of His Love and emerge as a bride leaning on Him alone with a new image, the image of Jesus. 

The apostle Paul had a type of wilderness experience too.  While on the road to Damascus he had a great fall and underwent an identity change. (Acts 9:1-10)  He went from Saul a murder of the saints of God to Paul, bondservant, a love slave of Jesus Christ.  If anyone could have confidence in their image, it was Saul.  He was a Hebrew of Hebrews, basically the best of the best.  His resume, the reputation and image that he had, was outstanding, flawless.  Yet Paul counted it all now as rubbish compared to the possession of the priceless privilege of knowing Christ Jesus and of progressively becoming more deeply and intimately acquainted with Him.  (Phil. 3 AMP)

The wall Humpty is sitting on represents our own power and achievements that we often find ourselves sitting/leaning on.  We become identified by our wall of accomplishments.  We begin this tiresome cycle as children when we call to our parents “look at me daddy, I’m sitting on the wall.  I got up here all by myself.  Aren’t you so proud of me?”  This thinking becomes exasperated with the ‘king of the mountain game’ as we learn to maintain the kingly status we have earned.   

All that we think makes us identifiable and acceptable gets broken off of us in the fall/wilderness.  Everything I thought I was, is now gone.  So how will they recognize the unrecognizable bride now?  Jesus says they will know us by our love.  Not just our love for Him but our love for one another.  (Jn 13:35)   It’s easy to love God.  Jesus is saying there will be another type of love they will recognize us with.  Oh boy, now that’s a toughie.  God’s kind of love has the power to see through hard, calloused skin to the heart that lies within; mine doesn’t.  It’s easier just to be recognized by the words that are coming out of my mouth and the plaques hanging on my ‘wall’.

Song 8:5-6 reveals to us the transformation.  We see the unrecognizable bride emerging from the wilderness leaning on her Beloved, not sitting on her wall.  She is filled with a love that is so overwhelmingly intense all she says is “set me as a seal upon first, Your heart, and second, Your arm”.  (Italics mine)

• In the bible, the arm represents power.
• A seal is signet ring that served as a stamp of indisputable authenticity.  A piece of wax that was melted, pushed down, and then marked with the ring leaving the imprint behind on the wax validating the authenticity of the items within. 

Before the wilderness you don’t even want to lean, you’re walking out in your own strength and power. You’re self absorbed, self-centered and have your own agenda.   After this encounter we no longer want Him to seal “our arm”, our strength, our agenda, our heart motivated plans.  We want only to be a seal onHis plans, His agenda, on His heart.  It’s the Power of His true love for us while in our shattered state that causes this change of identity.

Face to face with God in the wilderness He tenderly picks us up from the fall.  Our identity has been melted, pushed down, squished, stripped down and broken open.   His love heals us and His love fills us.  Coming out of the wilderness we are hopelessly in love with Him and so full of the power of His Love that it’s going to spill out of us whether it’s our motive or not.  We will now finally be able to respond to His command, which is to love one another in the way that He loves us.  (Jn. 13:34) 

This is how Paul was recognized now.  Paul had to be blinded to see who he really was and after that he didn’t want to be recognized as Saul anymore.  Melted, bruised, beaten down, and imprinted with King Jesus’ signet, the only identity he wanted was to be found and known as in Him.  Not wanting any self-achieved righteousness he tossed all his knowledge, skill, strength and credentials that he had as Saul so that he could know this Love that died for him and the power of His resurrection.  God didn’t want to scrap the knowledge and experience he had, He just wanted to redirect the focus off self and onto Jesus. 

I am sorry to say, but the wilderness is not a one-time experience.  It’s a dying that we will experience every day only as we choose to decrease so that He may increase.  He will take the pieces of our shattered image and put us back together in the image of Jesus.  We will emerge in the image of His love.  We will be free from striving and we will be an earthen vessel in which His Love can move in us, to us and then through us.

“WHO is this, coming out of the wilderness leaning on her beloved?”  They ask. (Song. 8:5) 

# 8 is the Hebrew number for new beginnings.
# 5 is the Hebrew number for Grace.

Though we may have had a wrong motive or two, though we have leaned on our own understanding now and again, it’ okay, there is no shame, God gives us the grace to begin again, and again, and again…with Him.

Today is a new day and His Grace is sufficient for me. (2Cor. 12:9)