“HIS WIFE HAS MADE HERSELF READY” – Ron McGatlin
“Let us be glad and rejoice and give Him glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and His wife has made herself ready.” Revelation 19:7.
The great holy love consummation of God and creation is upon us. The coming together as one with Spirit God in and among His chosen Bride/Wife on earth and in heaven.
God’s counter part must be a crystal-clear perfectly clean receptor and reproducer of the life of God from heaven on earth.
The great mystery question of mankind is, “What must I do?” (Acts 16:30).
All religion is an attempt to answer that basic question.
At the root of all of natural fallen mankind’s deepest thinking and intellectual searching is a futile attempt to find the way to satisfy the innate obsession to experience the mystery lack within the heart of man.
How then is it that “His wife has made herself ready?”
THE MYSTERY OF MARRIAGE
Falling in love with God
Spirit God, Christ Jesus the Word, knocks on the door of the spirit of a human being with pure holy LOVE from God.
The spirit of man in the natural human being may sense the goodness of love from Spirit God and bring awareness of it forth into the mind of the person. Also, the natural senses may see the goodness of God in nature and the greatness of God in all creation.
The natural person may be especially touched by acts of love and kindness from redeemed Spirit led people of God. A spoken or read word from God may confirm the love and goodness of God to the heart of the person.
This is all the work of God without any of the person’s own works.
The heart of a human being is drawn by the Spirit of God to respond to the love of God by falling in love with Him.
After the love for God grows in the heart of a person through a season of courtship or Spirit maturation, the marriage involves a total YES response to God’s pure holy love and provision.
On God’s part, His love is always YES and Amen. (2 Corinthians 1:20).
In expressing and demonstrating our total love for Him by yielding our all to Him, we become a part of the collective Bride or Wife of God in Christ Jesus by the Holy Spirit. We are intimately connected with God through Christ Jesus by the Holy Spirit.
The mystery is Christ in us bringing forth the will and purpose of the Father, to be fruitful and multiply to fill the earth with the kingdom of heaven. (Colossians 1:26-27) (Genesis 1:28).
NATURAL MARRIAGE THE PATTERN OF SPIRIT MARRIAGE
God created Adam in His image and likeness from the dust of the earth. God breathed His breath of life into him and he became a living being. Adam, had no mate, no counterpart or wife. God formed a mate for Adam from a part of Adam. (Genesis 2:7, 21).
God also had no mate and is forming His mate from a part of Himself in His Bride or Wife on earth. God breathed His Spirit life into Adam and he became a living being. Redeemed, restored and fully matured with Christ in us by the Holy Spirit God makes us into His Bride/Wife from Himself and for Himself. (Revelation 21:9).
The natural is a picture or replica of the Spirit that gives us the opportunity to see a replica of Spirit things in the natural with our natural eyes. (Romans 1:20).
God established the pattern of natural marriage and family in the natural to show us the Spirit marriage and family.
God’s pattern for life, love and marriage is written in the Bible starting in Genesis. God’s pattern is the only pattern that works to bring divine order of abundant life on earth in human beings.
”Therefore, a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.” Geneses 2:24-25.
God’s family pattern starts with a FATHER AND A MOTHER. A man leaves his “father and mother” to be JOINED TO HIS WIFE and they BECOME ONE flesh.
The man is no longer tied to his mother’s apron strings or under his father’s control. Together husband and wife form a new family, a new institution. The wife looks first to her husband for love and guidance and not to her father or some other person. The husband looks only to his wife to meet his intimate needs and desires.
They are to be intimate with each other. Everything is to be open and nothing covered between them. Naked but not ashamed each knowing all about the other. There is to be no hidden agenda or secrets between them.
In the Spirit marriage of God and His Bride, we leave our old fallen life and become one with God in intimate relationship with nothing held back. We are naked with God, knowing Him deeply as he knows us. He is in our hearts and we are in His heart.
We leave all previous allegiances to other gods or idols of our past life. We are set free from all bondages or addictions. We are cleansed of past corruption and made clean and pure as a place for God’s habitation.
The Bible gives us many instructions regarding natural marriage and family that all replicate in figurative or symbolic form the Spirit family and marriage of God in heaven and on earth.
For example, Ephesians Chapter 5 gives a lot of God’s patterns for natural and Spirit marriage. Love is the dominant factor and characteristic in marriage. Unconditional “agape” love is required first of the husband/father for the wife.
“Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her.” Ephesians 5:25.
Wives are to reflect the “agape” love of husband back to him in great respect and honor.
In the natural marriage both husband/father and wife/mother must be in love with God to receive the pure holy agape love from God for one another. Direct communion with God through Christ by the Holy Spirit is the only source of pure holy unconditional love.
In the Spirit marriage of God and His Bride/Wife on earth, the agape unconditional intense deep love from the Father is always there for us. It is our response as Bride/Wife of God on earth to receive and reflect His love in our hearts back to Him fully and openly without reservation or hindrance.
THE CONSUMMATION OF LOVE
The highest and greatest part of life on earth as the Wife of God is coming together as His family in His presence in us and with us in unrestrained worship and praise.
The union of pure holy love in full out praise and worship is the consummation of love and oneness with God from heaven on earth in us and with us. God literally abides in His praises. We are enraptured in His love as we are lifted or caught up in the Spirit to glorious heights as one with God. There is no greater love and no greater life, no greater joy than being fully consummated in love with God. God is a consuming fire of pure holy love.
The ecstasy of the natural replica of romantic love between a bridegroom and bride is perhaps the most exciting natural love known to mankind. The natural love of a mother for her newborn baby or a father’s love for the family is perhaps the deepest natural love. However, all natural love replicas pale in the all-consuming reality of full out Spirit love of becoming one with God in His perfect love.
THE PURPOSE OF GATHERING
The first and predominant reason and purpose for coming together is to be loved on by God and to love God in praising and worshiping Him. The assembling of His Bride/Wife provides the opportunity as His collective mate to love on God and be loved on by Him as one corporate body.
In the manifest presence of God in Christ with holy angels, disciples are made as people are drawn into the love of God and the gifts of God are poured out with love on the people. The word of God is alive. Hearts and lives are cleansed and changed by the pure holy love of God.
Love permeates the gathering filling us with His love for God and for one another. We become as one with Christ Jesus, Father God and one another in the Holy Spirit.
We are experiencing in this day fulfillments of the prayer that Jesus prayed in John 17.
“I do not pray for these alone, but also for those who will believe in Me through their word; 21 that they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me. 22 And the glory which You gave Me I have given them, that they may be one just as We are one: 23 I in them, and You in Me; that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that You have sent Me, and have loved them as You have loved Me. 26 And I have declared to them Your name, and will declare it, that the love with which You loved Me may be in them, and I in them.” John 17:20-23,26.
Love never fails,
And His kingdom never ends.
Ron McGatlin
openheaven.com
basileia@earthlink.net