Awaken Love: The 2023 Prayer Pledge // Day 16

For your Maker is your husband, the Lord of hosts is his name; the Holy One of Israel is your Redeemer, the God of the whole earth he is called… For the mountains may depart and the hills be removed, but my steadfast love shall not depart from you, and my covenant of peace shall not be removed, says the Lord, who has compassion on you. // Isaiah 54:5, 10

Friend. Redeemer. Lord. Creator. Almighty. Savior. These are all titles of God that we are familiar with, and often use to address God. However, the title of husband is not one we hear in worship songs or devotions, and might even make us squirm a little bit. Yet scripture is permeated with spousal imagery and marriage feasts, covenants and poetry. 

To see God as a friend makes His love accessible. To address Him as Redeemer allows us to receive His love as a free gift. We become secure in His love when we acknowledge Him as Lord. We are humbled by His love as Creator. We are awed by the depth of the love of the Almighty, and find freedom in the love of our Savior. Yet our Maker is our Husband, and that’s a spousal love. It’s not a love of One above us in power and authority, or a love of a parent or caregiver, but of a Love that pursues, desires, and knows.  

C.S. Lewis sums up this kind of spousal love of the Lord best in his book The Four Loves: 

This “marriage is most like a crucifixion; whose wife receives most and gives least, is most unworthy of Him, is—in her own mere nature—least lovable. [She] has no beauty but what the Bridegroom gives her; He does not find, but makes her, lovely” (105-106).

Sister, He does not wait until you are lovely to have you as His bride. He makes you lovely in the mess, in the crosses, in the transformation. God is our Maker and He loves a process. You only have to watch a seedling growing or a nest of sparrow eggs hatching to know this, and “you are worth so much more than many sparrows” (Matthew 10:31).  He does not wait until you are perfect; He is in love with you-in-process. 

He does, however, wait for your yes.    

Saint Gemma Galgani gave her yes to the Lord to be His, even while life looked very different than what she first imagined her yes to be like. She vulnerably opened her heart in the midst of her suffering and let her Maker in to transform her personal crucifixion into resurrection glory. His steadfast love is doing the same in us.    

{formbuilder:MTAxMDA1}

Closing Prayer // 

My Maker, my Husband and Spouse, You make all things beautiful in their time. I trust the process you are working in my heart, and I open my heart, with my hurt, my shame, my joys and my treasures, to Your Heart. I give you permission to make my heart one with Yours. 

Reflection Questions //

What area in your life are you most afraid to open to Divine Intimacy? 

When was a time in your life where His “steadfast love did not depart from you”?