Friday morning I woke up early. I got out of bed, grabbed a coffee and settled myself in my favorite chair in the chapel (my husband’s name for our study) and stuck the earphones of my iPod in my ears. As I sipped my coffee, I studied a recent photo of my sons and I, sitting on a shelve on the wall. It was taken at my youngest’s wedding and in the photo I am flanked by my boys, both of them leaning in to kiss me on my cheeks. With a sense of deep gratitude and awe I meditated on the gift of our love for one another. It was then that I felt Holy Spirit starting to speak to my heart, reminding me that Father is even more capable of loving me than I am of loving those young men and suddenly His love exploded in the room, into something almost tangible and awe-inspiring.
My gaze shifted to a large-than-life painting of Jesus, wearing a crown of thorns, hanging directly in front of me. It was in this atmosphere of the Father’s love and acceptance, meditating on Jesus on the cross, that Holy Spirit started to speak and I grabbed my journal. What I wrote that morning I want to share with you verbatim, unedited and unadulterated in a hope that I will not muddy the clean, fresh water of Holy Spirit for you.
“Beyond the battered, bruised and bleeding Jesus, there is a Victorious King. The cross was about shame, pain and humiliation – the place where Jesus took it all. There was no glory in it. It was on the other side of the Cross that the glory was manifested. The glory of the Cross is not in the bruising, it is in what the bruising paid for. Many people are still stuck at the cross and carry their own bruising as a badge of honor, making it their identity. Jesus never did this! He endured the cross so that He again could take up His rightful place in Heaven; take up residence at the Father’s right hand as Victor. You (the bride of Christ) are now seated in heavenly places – that is your rightful place, yet you glory in your suffering. There is a place beyond the suffering, prepared for those who are prepared to step beyond the cross and to those desperate to enter through the door opened by Jesus enduring the cross.
Jesus gloried in the suffering – it was His way back into the throne room. You indentify with His suffering in your suffering, as a way for yourself to also enter the throne room. Jesus is no longer the suffering Bridegroom; He is the Victorious Bridegroom and He is returning for a victorious bride, not a suffering, bleeding and bruised reed.”
The next portion of what Holy Spirit shared with me came in the form of a prayer. I prayed this as I wrote it, and I am praying it as I write it now. Will you pray it with me?
“Jesus, You are my Bridegroom, the Lover of my soul. Forgive me for thinking and believing the lie that my wounds, my suffering, were glorious in any way. Forgive me for not seeing that my unhealed wounds dishonor you – it says that that You are not able and that is a lie! Now, because of my love for You, I repent of; and renounce, any wound, any pain, any suffering in my soul, my body and my spirit that testifies against Your ability to save me, to heal me and to transform me. I confess, declare and decree that there is life beyond my cross, as there was for You, beyond Your cross. Where You are Jesus, there I also want to be. Thank you that Your blood cleanses me, so that I am able to enter into that place. I realize the veil is there because I put it there. You ripped the veil when Your flesh was ripped. Now I ask that You will again rip my veil and take me beyond.”
And He raised us up together with Him and made us sit down together [giving us joint seating with Him] in the heavenly sphere [by virtue of our being] in Christ Jesus (the Messiah, the Anointed One). Ephesians 2:6 (AMP)