The Testimony of the Betrothed                              Perth Prayer (PP) July 2 2014

Background

1. A few weeks ago I was praying in the middle of the night on the Island of Patmos and the Lord began to share with me the depth of his passion as the Bridegroom of the Church. Shortly after, at breakfast with my wife Donna I suddenly sensed how the whole of creation from beginning to end is one vast bridal chamber where the Bride of Christ is being prepared for her eternal marriage to Jesus. In the End marital bliss will fill the universe forever.
2. Long ago Isaiah had prophesied of such an all-encompassing marriage, “when the Lord shall have washed away the filth of the daughters of Zion…. the LORD will create over the whole site of Mount Zion and over her assemblies a cloud by day, and smoke and the shining of a flaming fire by night; for over all the glory there will be a canopy..” (Isaiah 4:4-5 ESV). The Hebrew word for “canopy” (huppa) is the term for bridal chamber.
3. The ultimate purpose of everything that has ever happened in your life is to prepare you to marry Jesus. All testimony by the Church in Perth, and particularly in Perth Prayer, exists to instruct the Church as Christ’s Bride how best to “make herself ready” for “the marriage supper of the Lamb” (Rev 19:7, 9, 10).
4. If everything that has ever happened is part of the process of preparing the Bride to marry Jesus this must be true of my own life.
5. Born in Melbourne, raised in Adelaide, an underachiever academically, highly emotionally disturbed and immediately attracted to alcohol as a teenager, I went through an existential crisis at university. Suffering from chronic depression and severe paranoia, I couldn’t walk down a street for fear of people,. Such intense suffering prepared me for conversion through the reading of a Bible that landed on our kitchen table one day in the midst of a stack of novels.
6. After encounters with demons and a powerful infilling of the Holy Spirit that had me crying in tears of joy for hours I decided that I must become one of the 144,000 in Revelation who have not “defiled themselves with women, for they are virgins” (Rev 14:3-4). The thought of being completely free from emotional entanglements was immensely appealing, but the Spirit soon rebuked me about my arrogance. Little did I know what lay around the corner.
7. Along to the university Christian fellowship came this sweet 17 year old girl and I hated what started to happen to me. I went through a crisis of attraction; the feeling of a level of intimacy so powerful as to be uncontrollable was sheer terror so that I did my best to sabotage our engagement. I have very unfond memories of how I tried my hardest to break things off with Donna by being particularly nasty towards her. When she refused to be put off I knew I was really loved.
8. This is not a 40 year old story about a man and a woman, it is an image for the Church in Perth today for the inner meaning of every marriage is the “great mystery” of the spiritual union between Christ and the Church (Eph 5:32).

A Crisis of Attraction

1.  Imagine a bride at the altar and running through her mind is the question, “I know he is committed to me but does he find me attractive?” This would be a prospective marriage with a crisis at its foundation.

2. YET this is exactly the spiritual crisis we are immersed in today; Revelation tells us that “his Bride has made herself ready; 8 it was granted her to clothe herself with fine linen, bright and pure”—for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints.” (19:7-8). A church that knows it is superlatively attractive to Jesus will zealously prepare herself for eternity through prayer, scripture, witness and sacrificial service. To reverse this, the poverty in discipleship of the church in Perth is a crisis in attractiveness between the Bride and the Bridegroom (cf. Rev 3:17).

3. The Lord wants to turn our minds around and teach us about being attractive to Jesus.

Holiness Attracts

1. Some years ago I was in Jerusalem at the site of Christ’s crucifixion. People from all over the world were there on pilgrimage, Filipinos singing in Tagalog, Germans praying the Lord’s Prayer in their tongue, the atmosphere was very intense. As I gazed at a painting of the crucifixion of Jesus I was overcome by an unexpected witness, it was quite clear to me that the Father was saying, “This is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.”
2. What attracts the Father to the blood of Jesus is the power of his death to cleanse us from sin, free us from judgement and release us into the most intimate fellowship with God and each another (Rom 3:25; Heb 10:22; 1 John 1:7). Where the power of the blood of Jesus is at work the result is a beautiful holy life (1 Chron 16:29; Pss. 29:2; 96:9).
3. Everything that has ever happened in your life is for your beautification that you may be a part of the holy, radiant, blameless Bride fit to marry the beautiful Lamb of God (Ps 45; Isa 60:7, 13; Eph 5:25-27 cf. Esther 2:9, 12).
4. In Revelation Jesus is “the holy…Lamb of God” (3:8; Rev 5:6 etc.) his followers ““are the ones coming out of the great suffering. They have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.”” (Rev 7:14 cf. 3:4b-5a, 18).
5. Those who wash their robes in the blood of Christ are increasing drawn into an exquisite intimacy of attraction with their Saviour.
6. As the blood of Christ testifies to his suffering love (1:5; 5:9; 12:11) the people of God become increasingly holy by refusing to compromise their testimony to Jesus no matter what the cost (3:4). This purity of holy love is exactly what Jesus finds so attractive in his Bride (cf. John 10:17).
7. The only way we can we sustain an unfailing testimony to Jesus in the midst of the whorish Babylonian culture that surrounds us in this city is to completely lose control of our lives (Rev 17-18).

Out of Control

1. This is the sort of wild love referred to by Paul, “For the love of Christ leaves us no choice, because…one has died for all, therefore all have died; and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised.” (2 Corinthians 5:14-15)
2. The average human being hates to be out of control, and deep down the thought of a level of intimacy so powerful as to be uncontrollable is sheer terror. Our characteristic response to fear is to control and cover up.
3. Years ago in prayer I saw a person covered with layer upon layer of clothing.  It was the Church in Perth covering her shame with religious piety, traditions, money, the spirit of performance, and other dead works (Heb 9:14).
4. The Lord wants to strip us of everything which is not of him so that we may be clothed with Christ alone and experience his ravishing love (Rom 13:12-14; Gal 3:27; Eph 4:22-23; Col 3:9-10 cf. Gen 2:25 cf. Song of Solomon).
5. Clothed by Christ we are totally unashamed (Heb 2:11; 11:16) we know we are completely secure in this eternal marriage are happy to be out of control. This becomes our prophetic testimony (Rev 19:10).

Undress

1. Satan hates this level of intimacy for through it we conquer him “by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they loved not their lives even unto death.” (Rev 12:11).
2. Out praying the other morning I felt so proud of Jesus that I could not imagine compromising my testimony, no matter what the cost.
3.  The hard truth is that we are most intensely aware of Jesus intimate attraction to us when we are subject to the same lies, abuse, accusation, betrayal and attempts at shaming as he was (Heb 12:2). Our response to such persecutions must be to share in the centre of the beauty of the cross, we must forgive (Luke 23:34; Mark 11:25).
4. This is the true prophetic destiny of the Church in Perth. Bathing in the forgiveness of Christ and distributing forgiving love everywhere. This is the vision of beauty that God desires.
5. Walking in our bridal destiny will release a form of testimony that has the power to dissolve our culture’s pre-conceived ideas about controlling organised religion. At the very end of scripture we read, “The Spirit and the Bride say, “Come.” And let the one who hears say, “Come.”” (Rev 22:17). Mission is nothing less than inviting others to a marriage banquet that goes on forever (cf. Matt 22:1-14).