This Romance

  The word woo has been going around in the circle of Believers I run with, and I find it to be a well used and useful word.  We talk a lot about the Lord wooing us into a relationship with him.  This is a fine word to use for how the lord pursues us, because the primary definition of woo is similar to court, as in pursuing for marriage.  If Jesus is the bridegroom and we (the Church) are his bride, than it is fitting that he woos us, because he is after our hearts and affection.  He is after our love.

   Two of the words used in the scriptures that are translated as "know" are yada, which is Hebrew, and ginosko, which is Greek.  Both words mean knowing by perceiving and express understanding, and both are also used as Jewish idioms for sexual knowledge.  I'm sure this is not accidental.  An example of this usage is when Jesus says, "And this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent" (John 17:3, ESV).  Without knowing the meaing of the word being translated here as "know," this passage could simply be interpreted as a call to salvation.  Without a suspicion that what Jesus really wants is a personal romance with each one of us, we would look at this and conclude that Jesus is just reiterating how we can be saved.

  Jesus is wooing us here, did you see it?  He is promising us something great big right here in this simple passage, and he's not promising that we'll one day experience it after we're dead and gone from planet Earth, he is telling us we can have it now.  This is eternal life, he says, to know God in an intimate way, the way that a husband and wife know one another.

  I think we flinch a little at the thought of knowing God as is implied here.  We have such distorted concepts of sexual love that we would never go so far as to imply sexual love with God.  There are a slew of issues we would run into if we implied this kind of relationship with God, and yet here it is in the Bible.  John must have meant to use the Greek ginosko in this passage, he must have meant to imply what the Jewish Christians of the day would have understood.  I think it's important that we start to consider romance with God.  He is wooing us, courting us; he wants to know us deeply and intimately, not sexually as we might imagine, but as deep as that.  He wants to be  a lover to each one of us.

God is passionate about us.  Our Lord is so passionate about us that He created us, knowing full well what would happen to humanity, and knowing full well what it would cost Him to rescue us finally from our sins.  He is passionate about us.  You will never find a lover who loves with the fervor and depth of God.  The Father doesn't date.  He doesn't do crushes.  He doesn't do infatuation.  He is a passionate lover of each one of us and He wants to woo us into His heart, into that deep relationship with him where all the good things are waiting: power, peace, healing, love, rest.  Dont' believe for a second that the Lord isn't in love with you, or that He is angry like a spurned lover.  His love is beyond petty anger, and His wrath was already poured out in full on Jesus.  He is as patient as he is passionate, and that is why He goes through the trouble of wooing us.

This romance with God is everything you could ever want if you'll only go after it.  God is love.  Because He is love, He loves like no other.  He loves with perfect love, and just know that you will never be romanced like you will in the arms of the Father.  He is wooing us, but just as if He were an earthly lover, we will never know how He's wooing us if we ignore Him.  Or if we put up walls between Him and us.  Or if we're so busy we can't spare the attention to recognize his courting for what it is.  The beauty of His wooing is that He doesn't stop; even as we spurn His advances, He never stops, because He loves us and wants us.