One Of The Battles In A War Of Many Fronts

Posted on November 25, 2025 by LovingLikeGod.com

divided house” This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh. For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would. But if ye be led of the Spirit, ye are not under the law,” Galatians 5:16-18.

In this context we are touching on one of the battle fronts in this war between flesh and Spirit. Certainly this is an important part of the war, but not the front I have in mind for present exploration. Rather what I am thinking about and wanting to address in this post is the war that goes on between flesh and blood family members and the presence of the Spirit in our lives.

“Suppose ye that I am come to give peace on earth? I tell you, Nay; but rather division: For from henceforth there shall be five in one house divided, three against two, and two against three. The father shall be divided against the son, and the son against the father; the mother against the daughter, and the daughter against the mother; the mother in law against her daughter in law, and the daughter in law against her mother in law,” Luke 12:51-53.

This is the war that we have in view in this post.

Interesting that Jesus begins His answer with “For from henceforth…” This suggests a point of demarcation between how things once were in flesh and blood families, and how things are about to be in families. The last thing that Jesus said before this, as recorded by Luke was:

“But I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how am I straitened till it be accomplished!”, Luke 12:50.

This suggests the possibility that what Jesus is looking at here in His Baptism of sorts has consequences that might also impact our lives, and especially our family lives once we have undergone the fall-out from His baptism, in our case, the baptism of The Holy Spirit. The baptism changes our position or location, certainly our priorities where relationships are concerned. Baptized in the Spirit we find ourselves in a new love, with new and different people, and this is very threatening to those we have been associated with to date, especially our own flesh and blood.

This is much like what happened in the heart of Cain when Abel came along and displaced Cain from his central place in the lives of his parents. This kind of displacement can and most often does cause a relational war. Flesh and blood relationship is no longer our highest priority, and unless the flesh and blood people in our lives come under the influence of the same Spirit with some understanding of the magnitude of the difference that makes relationally, as likely as not they will make war on our new lives and relationships in Christ.

Make no mistake, this is a real war. It is very painful all around, because it is born out of woundedness, resentment and not love. It is the number one killer of spiritual relationships. Flesh and blood will put up with this intrusion provided it is limited to flesh and blood marriage, and that, likely as not, for the sake of the perpetuation of the flesh and blood family.

Spiritual relationships, however, are not bound by or to the flesh. They may be reproductive in the Spirit, but that reproduction has to do with the family of God, not the family of the flesh.

This front in the war between flesh and Spirit is one of the most telling, where our ability to move forward in Christ is concerned, because moving forward in Christ is first and ultimately about Spiritual relationships first with Him, and ultimately including each other. This transition in relationship begins in this present age where the war is still going on. It is little wonder that Jesus addressed this reality early rather than late, because it is such a big obstacle to receiving Him and Him in each other.

The Holy Spirit changes our relational priorities, if only we are strong enough in The Spirit to Let Him have His way with us.

Please note, this is not a call not to take care our own, where flesh and blood is concerned, but only to be aware that in Christ we have a new “our own,” and taking care of them is also a priority of the highest order.

Love!

  • By Jay Ferris, originally published March 2013.
Posted in J.Ferris: Reposts with Notes, J.Ferris: Warfare against Intimacy and Conversation | 1 Comment

A Problematic Chapter from Song of Songs

Posted on November 18, 2025 by LovingLikeGod.com

seed1
He says:

5:1 I am come into my garden, my sister, my spouse: I have gathered my myrrh with my spice; I have eaten my honeycomb with my honey; I have drunk my wine with my milk: eat, O friends; drink, yea, drink abundantly, O beloved.

She says:

5:2 I sleep, but my heart waketh: it is the voice of my beloved that knocketh, saying,

He says:

Open to me, my sister, my love, my dove, my undefiled: for my head is filled with dew, and my locks with the drops of the night.

She Says:

5:3-8 I have put off my coat; how shall I put it on? I have washed my feet; how shall I defile them? My beloved put in his hand by the hole of the door, and my bowels were moved for him. I rose up to open to my beloved; and my hands dropped with myrrh, and my fingers with sweet smelling myrrh, upon the handles of the lock. I opened to my beloved; but my beloved had withdrawn himself, and was gone: my soul failed when he spake: I sought him, but I could not find him; I called him, but he gave me no answer. The watchmen that went about the city found me, they smote me, they wounded me; the keepers of the walls took away my veil from me. I charge you, O daughters of Jerusalem, if ye find my beloved, that ye tell him, that I am sick of love.

They said:

5:9 What is thy beloved more than another beloved, O thou fairest among women? What is thy beloved more than another beloved, that thou dost so charge us?

She Says:

5:10-16 My beloved is white and ruddy, the chiefest among ten thousand.

His head is as the most fine gold, his locks are bushy, and black as a raven. His eyes are as the eyes of doves by the rivers of waters, washed with milk, and fitly set. His cheeks are as a bed of spices, as sweet flowers: his lips like lilies, dropping sweet smelling myrrh. His hands are as gold rings set with the beryl: his belly is as bright ivory overlaid with sapphires. His legs are as pillars of marble, set upon sockets of fine gold: his countenance is as Lebanon, excellent as the cedars. His mouth is most sweet: yea, he is altogether lovely. This is my beloved, and this is my friend, O daughters of Jerusalem.

What makes this chapter such a problem is the lack of patience in the lover at the door. There are certainly a number of problems to be found here, but His very quick abandonment when she does not open to Him in a more timely manner seems to most of us to be the most problematic of them all.

Looking at this chapter of the Song, from the vantage point of seeing in it a type of Christ as the lover of our souls, it seems to make of Him a most impatient lover or perhaps even a lover with ego problems when she doesn’t respond to His expressed desire to enter her chambers as quickly as He would like.

Several years ago now as I was looking to better understand male and female as the image of God, I tried to reduce and simplify the terms of the equation, and this brought me to see the difference between what each of them represents as the female being an “egg layer,” and the male being a “fertilizer.”  I began to explore the difference between the two from that vantage point.

The other night as I found myself putting this chapter of Song of Songs together from that perspective I could see in a moment a normal contrast in urgency between an egg layer, and a fertilizer.

Fasten you seat belt.

Suddenly I was forced to explore the difference between a human male or “fertilizer,” and God the Father as a “fertilizer.”

Not long after studying the Scriptures we find that the Eternal Father has only one begotten Son – Jesus. We don’t have to go too much beyond that discovery when we come to appreciate that this only begotten Eternal Son is also presented to us as a single SEED. (Galatians is particularly clear about this:

“Brothers and sisters, let me take an example from everyday life. Just as no one can set aside or add to a human covenant that has been duly established, so it is in this case. The promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. Scripture does not say “and to seeds,” meaning many people, but “and to your seed,” meaning one person, who is Christ. What I mean is this: The law, introduced 430 years later, does not set aside the covenant previously established by God and thus do away with the promise.” Galatians 3:15-17 NIV

And:

“A seed shall serve him; it shall be accounted to the Lord for a generation.” Psalm 22:30 KJV

“Now there were some Greeks among those who went up to worship at the festival.  They came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, with a request. ‘Sir,’ they said, ‘we would like to see Jesus.’  Philip went to tell Andrew; Andrew and Philip in turn told Jesus.  Jesus replied, ‘The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.  Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.’”  John 12:20-24  NIV

By citing the above passages I am hoping to show that before there could be an “only begotten Son of God”, there had to first be an only Seed of God. “not seed as meaning many seeds, but Seed as being one, even Christ.

A Father who had been waiting since eternity past to enter into an act of love with a woman he had been looking for since the foundation of the world, showed up at her bedchamber. This was not going to be any ordinary act of love, not even a repeatable act of love. You see, this happened in the fullness of time, and by the passion of a Father who had only One Seed to sow. This was going to be an all or nothing act of love. It was going to give her everything He ever had, and it was going to take much more than a moment in time.

There was no time here for hesitation or worthless agendas. It happened when the bedchamber was still full of the law, and not yet the Love of God.  When she hesitated she was beat up in the streets by the lawyers, the “watchmen” of her day.

It was neither a time to hesitate where her part in the act of intimacy was concerned, nor was it a time for her to get up and run from the scene of love, because He was going to impregnate her with so much more than she had ever heard about, dreamed or imagined. It would be millennia before all the DNA of His Love for her would finally be where he intended, and she would have to learn how to rest in the impartation of it all. It wasn’t enough for Him to rest in this transaction of love. She would have to learn to rest in its impartation too.

This was not to be a fleeting flirtation, this was to be a forever fixation.

I’m sure there’s a lot more to say about this, but I think this says at least part of what came to mind in thinking about how touchy he seemed to be when she hesitated. Of all the times throughout history when an overture to love was tuning up this was not the time to hesitate. Today is the day to enter His rest!

“Wherefore (as the Holy Ghost saith, To day if ye will hear his voice, Harden not your hearts, as in the provocation, in the day of temptation in the wilderness: When your fathers tempted me, proved me, and saw my works forty years. Wherefore I was grieved with that generation, and said, They do alway err in their heart; and they have not known my ways. So I sware in my wrath, They shall not enter into my rest.) Take heed, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief, in departing from the living God. But exhort one another daily, while it is called To day; lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin. For we are made partakers of Christ, if we hold the beginning of our confidence stedfast unto the end; While it is said, To day if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts, as in the provocation. For some, when they had heard, did provoke: howbeit not all that came out of Egypt by Moses. But with whom was he grieved forty years? was it not with them that had sinned, whose carcases fell in the wilderness? And to whom sware he that they should not enter into his rest, but to them that believed not? So we see that they could not enter in because of unbelief.” Hebrews 3:7-19 KJV

Love!

  • By Jay Ferris, originally published February 2013
Posted in J.Ferris: Reposts with Notes, The Song of Songs | Leave a comment

Another Look at “First Love”

Posted on November 11, 2025 by LovingLikeGod.com

Another Look at "First Love"

Revelation 2:4

“Love” is such an easy word to throw around. This is true whether we are speaking of the Love of Christ for us, our “first Love” experience with Him, or whether we are speaking of love in the flesh.

Clearly time has a way of changing the power, intensity, and passion of love. This includes both our relationship with Christ, and with those whom He has made ours in Him.

But after due consideration I must say that there is a difference in the staying power of new love in Christ (the real, palpable, and redefined kind that was first introduced by the cross of Christ) and the pre-cross kind of love that seems to be the best that most of us are able to do.

This to say that in either case, we have our part to play in the maintenance of Love no matter what its source, the passion of the Christ or the lust of the flesh. Blowing one another off is not an option, no matter who we are talking about or struggling with.

The most familiar, and most practiced kind of love between humans of opposite genders is an image of something wholly other. It was an image of another love, albeit a weakened and more problematic one, even after she was removed from bodily inclusion in the man.

Please note that we haven’t yet complicated anything here by the inclusion of a time element – “first love” – later love – lost love, etc. There are plenty of places we can go in the Scripture to look for things that make love more problematic with time:

”Let thy fountain be blessed: and rejoice with the wife of thy youth. Let her be as the loving hind and pleasant roe; let her breasts satisfy thee at all times; and be thou ravished always with her love. And why wilt thou, my son, be ravished with a strange woman, and embrace the bosom of a stranger?” Proverbs 5:18-20 KJV

The Bible does not mince words, and there is hardly need for a relational ombudsman to mince them either.

To this point all I have tried to do is make the point that there is a difference between the Love of Christ, and the Love between a man and a woman, and that time takes its toll on both. There is reason however, for greater vitality in the Love of Christ than there is in the best of love that was known before the Cross of Christ.

My hope is that it is not yet too late to have a redeeming conversation about the difference that the cross makes as well as the difference in the passion that the Cross of Christ is able to maintain no matter the relationship when its origin is sourced and rooted in Him.

For the next little while I would like to risk encouraging such a conversation to the end that the passion of the saints for one another might have a redemptive impact on the world around us, rather than just being an expansion of the relational scrap heap with which we are already surrounded by in both religion and other failures of the flesh.

Love!

  • By Jay Ferris, originally posted January 2013.
Posted in J.Ferris: Reposts with Notes | Leave a comment