Ownership

Posted on December 2, 2025 by LovingLikeGod.com

marthaandmaryJust a word about ownership: In the hope of keeping this brief, I will leave out the address of the various passages covered. I have touched upon them in other contexts for over a year now.

It says of the believers in the early church, right after and as a consequence of Pentecost that there was not a needy person among them, and this, the fruit of no one thinking that anything they had was their own any longer. They had all things in common. In the wake of the Baptism of The Holy Spirit, there was a radical change of mind where ownership was concerned. Before the Baptism there was a sense of ownership. People were taken up with owning things, now they owned nothing in this sense any longer.

One could conclude that this was the end of ownership, except that Jesus made a promise, that in exchange for allowing Him to change their relational priorities, and their ownership priorities, He would give them, and us, “100 times relationships and 100 times houses” as well, Mark 10: 29-30. These relationships would best be described as family relationships.

In the fulfillment of this promise, we would now own 100 times the houses we might have owned in the past.

There are those who have come to be with us in the distress of these days in our war with cancer – “Crebbs.” Some of them are people whom The Lord has given to us, and we to them. They now own our home as part of the fulfillment of the promise. That’s the deal. On the one hand, they have lost all sense of ownership in the ways they used to think and possess, and yet they now own 100 times what they did before.

It’s a different kind of ownership, however. My wife and I own our home, yet not in the sense that this once was true. Now we are servants living in our home, and when others whom the Lord has made ours show up, they are also servants in our home. This old house is no longer occupied by owners, but by servants. The difference in attitude is wonderful. All the negative things that go along with feelings of ownership have now given way to feelings of servanthood. Those who come as servants share the load that once we bore alone. It is no longer we the owners, and they the guests, we all share in the responsibility of the service of the household.

It is said that Jesus went to visit His friends in Martha’s house. That was back in the days when those who followed Jesus still owned things. The attitude this generates, and the problems this creates are clearly seen in the difference between the attitudes of Martha, and Mary, her sister. Martha was the owner, and Mary was a sister living in Martha’s house. Mary was a sister, not a servant. That left all the weight of servant hood on Martha, with very little of the felt need to serve on Mary. Even back in those days, Jesus says of Mary that she had chosen the better part. What’s wrong with this picture? The fact is there are hosting responsibilities that go along with ownership.

The fact is there are things that go with ownership that can, and often are very onerous. This very burdensome aspect of ownership has been done away in Christ, when the house has many “owners,” owners in the form of servants of the household.

This difference in attitude, and responsibility is very big and very important! This is another point of the warfare associated with these wonderful and new relationships that are ours in Christ. This is not some new and irresponsible variety of relationships, it has responsibilities, and clearly defined roles that go along in the wonder of it all. This was never meant to be some gathering of irresponsible “warm fuzzies,” sitting around and singing verse after verse of Kumbaya, no, this is a new and clearly defined way of living in and by the Spirit. Not to share the responsibilities that go along with it is to contribute to the warfare against the saints, not the fellowship of the saints.

So let us be done with the old attitudes of ownership and hospitality, and embrace the new as co-heirs of this amazing and passionate new way of living.

Love!

  • By Jay Ferris, originally posted March 2013.
Posted in J.Ferris: Top Posts | Leave a comment

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