The names that the Bible gives the people of God are always relational in nature. We are called the church, which
means a gathering of the called-out ones.
We are called the family of God. We are called the body of Christ. We are also called the bride of Christ.
Revelation 19:7
Let us rejoice and be glad and give Him glory!
For the wedding of the Lamb has come, and His bride has made herself ready.
So, if we as the people of God are the bride
of Christ, then the bridegroom is Jesus.
The Jewish wedding began with the groom going
to the home of the bride.
Jesus, as our groom, made a trip from heaven
to our home on the earth. He had to go one step further by also becoming a
human.
Philippians 2:6-7
Who, being in very nature God, did not
consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made Himself nothing,
taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.
Jesus (the groom) loves His bride (us) so much
that He gave up the glories of heaven and became a human being and traveled to
our home to be united with us.
Raise
the Roof and Remove the Walls is receiving
Jesus as our bridegroom as He comes to us.
We as the bride cannot travel to Jesus our
groom. We have to wait and be ready when He comes for us. We can never reach
God by our own effort. We can only be united with Him through Jesus.
This all occurs because of God’s grace.
I have had many people kid me about marrying way
above me. I cannot argue with that. When we unite ourselves with God through
Jesus, we truly marry above ourselves. It is only because the groom invites us
to be united with Him and the Father that we can.
John 6:44 says that no one comes to Jesus
unless the Father draws the person to Him.
Paul reminds us in Ephesians 2:8-9 that it is
by grace that we are saved.
Raise
the Roof and Remove the Walls is acknowledging
that it is the grace of God that draws us and unites us to Jesus.
What does the bride do when the groom comes?
She opens her house to the groom.
When Jesus comes and invites us into
relationship with Him, what are we to do? We open our lives to Him. We make Him
the sole love of our lives. We love Jesus because He first loved us.
To the church at Ephesus Jesus writes that
they had left their first love. They had abandoned their passionate devotion to
Jesus.
Raise
the Roof and Remove the Walls is living with a
passionate devotion to Jesus.
When the groom comes to the bride and she lets
him in, what do they do? They get married.
What does it mean to marry Jesus?
It means joining every part of your life and
being – your deepest parts, your heart, your soul, your wounds, your longings,
your desires, everything - to God. He is the only person who can make you
complete. Only then can your deepest needs and longings be fulfilled.
The best picture of that is found in Psalm
42:1-2. It says, “As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for
you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and
appear before God?”
Raise
the Roof and Remove the Walls is making Jesus
the One you look to for fulfilling your life.
I love this picture of Jesus as the groom and
us, His people, as the bride. I know how I love my wife and desire to meet her
needs and fill her life with joy. I also know how much she loves me and desires
to meet my needs and fill my life with joy. If we are who are fallible humans
can do that, then God who is prefect can love me with a perfect love that casts
out all fear.
With Jesus as Our Bridegroom Raising the Roof
and Removing the Walls,
Joe
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