Song of Solomon Prayer as Communion — Paul Washer

Prayer as Communion and the Atoning Work of Christ

Song of Solomon, chapter four. I want to talk to you about prayer as something more than intercession. Even something more than getting grace. But prayer as communion,. Song of Solomon, chapter four. Verse seven.

You are altogether beautiful, my darling. There is no blemish in you. Do you know why you can come into the courts of God? There's only one reason. The blood of the lamb, the lamb. Went to the tree and became accursed of God and his father turned away and all the wrath of almighty God that should have fallen down on your head throughout all of eternity fell down on the lamb.

And when the lamb died. He satisfied justice and appeased the wrath of God, he paid for every one of your sins, past, present and future, they were all imputed to him and he took them away, he paid for them.

And now, therefore, there is no condemnation like Esther, who wanted so much to walk into the throne room, but she had to do so with fear, because if the king did not extend the scepter, she would die.

In Christ to the believer, the scepter is always extended, always. He always sees you as you are altogether beautiful, my darling, and there's no blemish in you. And I want you to understand something, the justification that will really, really help you.

You see, you've got to understand this. If there was just. One blemish in you, you would go to hell. You see, God doesn't see you as sinful enough to go to hell. And then a little bit better, so sinful enough, but still you can be kept and better than that so that you can come a little closer and not quite as many sins so you can get a little closer and not quite as many sins so you can get a little closer.

You go to hell if you have one blemish in you, which also must show you that if you are invited into the throne room of God, it's because there are no blemishes in you that you are altogether lovely, altogether perfect.

And that's why you can come to him even on that day when you commit sins in the dullness of your heart does not even allow you to see those sins. You are still forgiven and can still come. Yes, there is a need to deal with that sin, but what I want you to see is this because of Christ, you are altogether beautiful.

There is no blemish in you. And if there were one blemish in you, you could not come. That should give you great encouragement. When God looks down at you, you know, we have this almost mechanical view, you know, this legal view, and it is a legal thing, justification.

But we almost have this thing of God because of what Jesus did, he must accept me now. And it is not because of what Jesus did. God looks at you and says, you're altogether beautiful, my darling, and there is no blemish in you.

Do you see the passion? Can you see the love that's there? Can you see the desire and the wanting? You see, you can't because you've never seen it in anything else. We live in a conditional world. You meet all the conditions, you get in, you fail at some of the conditions, you're out.

But Christ has met all the conditions. And therefore, when God looks at you, he says, you're altogether beautiful, my darling, and he must see you that way or you go to hell. But he does see you that way because of Christ and he always sees you that way.

His disposition toward you does not change. That is so wonderful what Christ has done for us. You are altogether beautiful, my darling, and there is no blemish in you. That should be the greatest encouragement for you to pray.

That should be the greatest encouragement for you to ask God, examine me, O Lord, show me my ways. That should be the greatest encouragement for you to confess your sin because it is not a judge who comes to you and a judge will never come to you again.

Only a father, only a father. I believe it was Brother Mike Morrow that was telling me about this, that that you're not just justified, you're adopted. You know, when someone goes before a judge and a judge acquits him, the judge then doesn't invite him to go home with him.

God's not only justified you, he's adopted you and he looks at you with such love, with such endearment. With such joy at what he has made possible. That because of the power of the blood of the lamb, when he looks at you, you're altogether beautiful.

And there is no blemish. Then he says in verse eight, come. Come with me from Lebanon, my bride, may you come with me from Lebanon, journey down from the summit of a manor, from the summit of Seneir and Hermon, from the den of lions, from the mountains of leopards.

Believing the Audacious Love of God

Come. God is always calling his people to come. And Satan is always telling them you can't go. Look at you. I mean, how can you go? He knows what you've done. He knows your sins. He knows how vile you are.

He knows the dullness of your heart. Don't go to him. But those are the words of the liar and the deceiver. And oftentimes you believe him because it is so hard to believe God with regard to his love, because his love is so great.

It's like I'm fond of telling people this, who doubt the love of God. I always my charismatic friends, they're always telling me that the greatest act of faith is being able to raise the dead. I tell them for Baptists, that's nothing.

We do that every Sunday. They said to raise the dead that man, anybody who can really raise the dead, they've got so much faith. I said, no, that's not the greatest act of faith. Do you want to know what the greatest act of faith is?

I'm going to tell you, the greatest act of faith for the Christian is to look in the mirror of God's word and see all their failings and then to believe by faith that God loves them as much as he says he does.

That is faith, because you have to believe something you've never even seen anywhere else in the world. No one is like God and no one's love is like God's love. When he tells you to come, don't you know, the one who just spoke the word knows everything about you.

He knows everything. You've done everything you're going to do. So if he says come, then the invitation is come. So many believers are constantly staying away from God, or you've done this, haven't you?

You've really blown it. You've really sinned. You're convicted about it. And that's good. You confess it. That's good. And then you realize that you need to stay away from God for several days until you win enough brownie points to get back.

That's a lie. He says, come when the most beautiful things in my life was when one day in Peru on the third floor of a house in Mia Flores. I came to believe that God really loved me, all my spot, all my blemishes.

All the things I've done that before him, they were removed in Jesus Christ and that he could only love me and would only love me and never stop loving me. And that I did not know enough, I did not know as much about myself as he knew.

And yet he still loves me. Jude says this to keep yourself in the love of God. Now, many preachers will turn that around and turn it in legalism. You need to keep loving God. That's not what it means.

I don't know anything about plants, but if you told me you had a dying plant and I said, well, let me take a look at it and I went to your house, you took me to the inner room in the closet of the inner room, which is pitch dark.

And you open the door and there was the plant. I would say to you, well, I don't know much about plants, but I can tell you this. You need to keep that thing out in the sunshine, because the further you get that thing away from the sunshine, the more it's going to wilt.

I'll tell you that, believer. That's a problem. You need to keep yourself in the love of God. Now, how do you do that by faith? How do you do that? The word of God. One of the things that would one of the things that would probably help most people in this room right now is to find every verse in the Bible that talks about God's immeasurable, unconditional love, memorize it, meditate on it until you believe it.

Keep yourself in the wreckedness, keep recognizing, keep believing that God loves you as much as he says he does, and you'll not fear to come into his presence. He says, come with me. But also look what he says, journey down, journey down.

Coming Down From Pride and Worldly Vanity

We're so full of pride. We're so full of vanity. We're always walking in high places where we don't belong. Vanity fair is where our flesh wants to live, mesmerized by trinkets and things that sparkle and make noise, mesmerized with things that don't matter, worried about clothing and little.

Signs on them. Worried about the kind of car you drive, worried about whether or not your kid gets to enough soccer games during the week. You spend every bit of your life on that which does not matter, and you end up ruined and broken and distraught and weary.

And God is saying, come by for me. Come, come down, come down from those places that cannot feed you, come down from those places that can do you no good and come down from those dangerous haunts. Look what he says.

He says from den of lions and mountains of leopards. Come down. Those are dangerous places. Dangerous fear is a good thing. You should fear what this world can do to you. You should fear what sin can do to you.

You should fear what self can do to you down, get away from it and get away from people who are mesmerized by it. You say, well, I want to be with them to save them. Save your own self now. Get away. Walk with people.

People who have eyes that are not evil, that are not full of darkness, people who are always directing you towards eternal things. The problem is that's the way the church is supposed to be, but because gospel is so weak and no church discipline is practiced, the church is filled up with wicked people who love wicked things.

And it's hard to find anyone in the church who will direct you towards something eternal. It's almost as though in Wesleyan Whitfield's day when you got to go within the church and make a holy club from those things.

Don't you know that inside you and your flesh, your flesh has the keenest ability to make an idol out of absolutely anything. Your flesh can take the Bible and use it and create an idol out of knowledge, create an idol out of ministry, create an idol out almost anything, even that which is good and holy and right.

He says, come down. And look at this in verse nine, you have made my heart beat faster, my sister, my bride, you have made my heart beat faster with a single glance of your eyes. Now, if that won't get you praying, I don't know what will.

What does that tell me? Go like this and you can hear the divine heart beat faster. With a single glance of my eyes. Guys, you remember when those of you who are married, your spouse, before you married her, she just kind of cut her eyes over at you while you're sitting there in church from across the room and you felt like you're just going to faint right over.

Remember that? Well, you ought to remember what's wrong with you, you ought to still have it. Amen. She looks at you, you know, it was the power of that, it's spoken of as a dangerous thing when it's a foreign woman, but when it's the woman God has for you and she cuts those eyes at you and your heart falls out on the floor and rolls down to the aisle, down to the front of the church.

Man, that's a good thing, power of it, God loves us so much, just a glance of our eyes upward in prayer, his heart beats faster, his heart beats faster. I'll never forget after my little boy Ian was born, I had a very difficult childhood to say the least.

And but when my little boy was born, I'll never forget he was old enough, finally got to the point where he could smile and hug and lift his arms up in the air and I'll never forget he was laying there on our bed upstairs and I walked around the corner and came into the room and when he saw me, you got to understand, my boy could have a heart attack, he gets so excited looking at a blank wall that he he looked at me and the moment he looked at me, he went, there was not one.

Doubt in that little boy's mind that his father was going to run over there, grab him, pick him up and hug him. There was not one doubt. I mean, you talk about self-esteem or self, he had no doubt that he was loved.

He knew he just had to cut those eyes at me and I was a goner. Oh, gosh, I hope my wife doesn't give birth to a girl, I'll be dead. But what I want you to see is how do you think those things happen? Do you think that they come out of creation or they're birthed out of human nature?

Why do those things even exist in creation? Have you ever wondered about that? God put them there. And why did he put them there? To tell you about him. How can you love a child? How could you dare think that you love a child more than God loves you?

Can't even begin to look upward. He said, oh, brother Paul, you don't understand, son, you don't understand how powerful is the blood of Jesus Christ. It's one glance to the fear of the Lord. You have to understand this.

A little boy can fear his father because one day he runs to his father with a picture he drew and says, look, dad, and his dad grabs the picture and says, oh, that's absolutely wonderful. And the little boy goes on, plays, everything's happy.

Next day, the little boy comes, same dad, same different picture, gives it to his dad. His dad's in a terrible mood. He grabs the picture, slaps the boy around and sends him across the room. The little boy trembles.

Why? He fears his dad. Why? Because of the inconsistencies in his father's character. That doesn't happen with your heavenly father. His character is set in perfection. Because of the work of Christ, he cannot love you more, will not love you less.

One glance of your eyes, you've got him. You've got him, you've got him. One glance of your eyes and his heart beats faster, look what he says, you have made my heart beat faster. My sister, my bride, you have made my heart beat faster with a single glance of your eyes.

Now, look at this with a single strand of your necklace. Let me ask you this. Where did she get the necklace? She got it from him. You see, all that beauty you've got. It's a gift. You see, your elder brother, he's not like Joseph, he's one greater than Joseph.

Joseph had a coat of many colors that he would not share with his brothers. But our Joseph, our Jesus has a coat of many colors, a righteousness upon him that it is his own by his own doing and he gives it to you.

You see, he looks down at you and sees no spot, no blemish. He sees these beautiful adornments hanging all off of you. They're the very things he gave you. It's what grace is all about. And it's so wonderful, so wonderful.

He has saved you and not only cleaned you. He's dressed you up with his own grace, and every time he looks at you, this is what he sees. He said, Brother Paul, now hold on for a second, what about all the sin?

The Church as Christ’s Sanctified Bride

You know, Brother Paul, there's just as much, you know, adultery in the church as outside of the church. And there's just as much lying and cheating and stealing and fornication and pornography and everything in the church as outside of the church, because that's what our evangelical leaders tell us.

That's a lie. That is a lie. There is not as much pornography, fornication, adultery, lying, cheating and immorality in church as outside of the church. Your problem is you don't know what the church is.

The church is not made up of all the people who are going to gather together tomorrow morning. No, the church is not perfect, but she is being perfected and sanctified. He who began a good work in her will finish it.

And he guards her zealously in the spirit that is within her, guards her zealously, and he disciplines her zealously because he loves her zealously. I'll tell you what, a lot of men are going to have to answer for what they've called the Church of Jesus Christ.

So they've looked at a bunch of unconverted, lost, carnal people who happen to be members of the church and identified them with the church and in so blaspheme their God by talking so harshly against his bride, his bride's beautiful.

She's not perfect, but she's broken and she's walking and she's growing and she's changing and he's making something of her. So he says, how beautiful. Is your love in verse 10, how beautiful is your love, my sister, my bride?

How much better is your love than wine? Now, I want you to look at something. I find it very hard sometimes when everyone is singing, oh, how I love Jesus. I find it very hard to sing along. I do. I look at my love and I don't see a whole lot worth singing about, to be honest with you.

I look at a heart that's sometimes cold, I'd rather sing, oh, how Jesus loves me than oh, how I love Jesus. And in a sense, that's very, very good. But we have to be very careful here because look what it says.

How beautiful is your love, my sister, my bride? Brother Mike again this morning was talking to me about the how the high priest sanctifies our holy things. Jesus shared that with me this morning. Fits right in here.

Our priest, our mediator, our intercessor, our Christ, our captain. The man before God for us. Seems that he sanctifies and makes holy all our offerings to God. Even that love that is so dull and so impure and it passes through him.

It is lovely. Don't you see saints what he's done for you? He's done so much, he's done it all. He's he doeth all things well. He's left not one part out. So he says. How much better is your love than wine and the fragrance of your oils than all kinds of spices?

Sexual Purity and the Church’s Exclusivity

I want to drop down. I'd like to preach through all of this. But look at verse 12, a lot of garden locked is my sister, my bride, a garden locked, a spring sealed up. Now, what does this mean? She's chase.

She's a garden locked up. I tell young ladies that I that I teach when I'm teaching university students and such, I said, this is the text for you and for young men, it's the same. You should be a garden locked up.

Young people, they've got the idea that they're sexually pure if they've never had intercourse, if they've had everything else, no, to be chases, to be a garden locked up, no one's touched the fruit, much less tasted it.

No one's even looked at it. It's a garden shut up. And in the same way, the Church of Jesus Christ, we should be a garden shut up, a garden locked up, close our doors to all other lovers. They only want to hurt us anyways.

They only want to tear at us like wolves and lions. And for those of you who are pastors out there, let me let let me tell you something. Learn this. Your number one job as a pastor. God has entrusted his bride to you.

You protect her. You protect her. That's what's wrong with church growth. That's what's wrong with dropping the bar to get as many people in as possible. That's what's wrong with not practicing church discipline.

Your main job is to protect the bride of Jesus Christ and to present her before him, a pure and a chaste virgin. You can't make a bride. He makes it. So stop trying to make one and start doing your work of protecting her and feeding her and guarding her and loving her and presenting her one day before him.

But look at this. This is the way we're supposed to be. Church, you have been invited to have communion with the living God. Why would you seek to other things? Why would you seek to give your wares to other things, to give your very being to other things, close yourself off from everything else and give yourself to him, to Christ alone, to God alone?

It's wonderful. Give me give me a young man who is shut up. So many men, so many young men, they're all about fellowship and group hugs and getting together and singing Kumbaya and trying to look radical.

Give me a man who break away from all of them, shut himself up to God. I have a friend of mine who was talking to Leonard Ravenhill one day and he told Brother Ravenhill, he says, Brother Paul Washer, a dear friend of mine is really going through some struggles and some terrible times.

And Leonard Ravenhill sent me a little track. It's got written on Brother Paul and the track is Others Can, But You Cannot. And what it says is simply this, OK, let everybody else go walk through the mall all day long.

Let everybody else watch television, let everybody else go to some silly Christian concert, God's Not In. Let everybody else go on Christian retreats and ski trips, but if you really want to be God's man, they can, but you cannot.

When I was called into the ministry, I went and told my pastor. In Texas and a very, very, very, very used man of God, and he looked at me and the first thing he said is, boy, can you be alone? And I thought he meant that if I preach the truth, I would be alone.

That's not what he meant. What he meant was, can you break away from the rest of these boys and go seek God? Can you shut yourself up to him? We can spend time learning how to crochet. We can spend time sitting in a tree stand.

You can spend time on a golf course. You can spend time fellowshipping and eating doughnuts and doing everything. But why is it so hard to spend time to shut yourself up to the one who loves you most?

It does show that although we have been thoroughly redeemed, there is an aspect of us called the flesh that has not been redeemed. Now, I want to skip through that and I just want to go quickly to 16.

Offering Ourselves to the Beloved

The bride is speaking and she says, Awake, O North Wind, and come, Wind of the South. Make my garden breathe out fragrance. Let its spices be wafted abroad. May my beloved come into his garden and eat its hoist fruit.

Now, here's a young lady who has done all this work, all this preparation, and there's only one reason for it. Her only desire is that the wind will come and blow the fragrance of what she's done to the one that she's loved and that he getting a whiff of that fragrance would come in and take from her the gift she has prepared.

It's her greatest desire. I remember when I was like this, I remember first saved. Hopefully you remember the same. The only thing you wanted was his eye. The only thing you wanted was his attention. You pray, read the word, be half crazy most of the time.

Overzealous, wild, no theology, no anything, but the only thing you wanted, you go out soul winning, knocking on doors, read your Bible, stand upside down on your head and quote the Westminster Confession.

Anything it would take. Just, oh, Lord, look at me. Oh, Lord, be with me. Lord, do anything to have you. Lord, just come into this room. Don't leave me this way. Take my life, but give me your presence.

Is he looking, is he looking, do you remember when you were that way? And then it says in verse one of chapter five, I have come into my garden, my sister, my bride, I have gathered my mirth along with my balsam.

I have eaten my honeycomb and my honey. I have drunk my wine and my milk. You know, it's so wonderful. This king has has no need of a garden of a little girl. He has 10 ,000 men working around the clock to make him gardens, hanging gardens, flower gardens, vegetable gardens, every kind of garden you could possibly imagine.

He's the king, but this king. Comes to Zion riding on the foal of a donkey. This king is a humble king. This king is a loving king and this king gives her the very desire of her heart, her greatest desire, her heart's desire is that he simply take from her what she offers.

And he does. I've come into my garden, he says. My sister, my bride. We're always saying I want to be his. He says, you're mine. I want to give him this, he says, I'll take it. The boldness of his love is just unbelievable.

He says. All of it, I've come into my garden, I've gathered my mirth, my balsam, eaten honeycomb, honey, drunk wine, milk, everything you offer me, I give it to you. This is so amazing. I'm never going to be Charles Spurgeon.

I'm never going to be George Mueller. I'm never going to be anything but just who I am. Some guy who's going to live and die in that sitting. You know what? It doesn't matter. You don't have to be John Piper.

You don't have to be Jonathan Edwards to be in the inner circle, because if you're in Christ, you're in the inner circle. We live in a world where Christianity has such a pecking order, it's unbelievable.

It doesn't exist in the kingdom of heaven. All your life, you've been shut out. You have this place. You don't have enough money to go. There's places you don't have enough brains to go. There's places you're not good looking enough to go.

Trust me, there are places all over where you're shut out. There's inner circles you can't be a part of. You walk by them. You see them. You drop your head. You keep walking. Some of you, you go to pastors conferences and you see quite clearly pastors.

They don't have signs. Pastors of churches of over 5000, please stand over here and talk. Pastors of churches from 2500 to 5000, you're assigned this section from from 2000 on down. You must go here, guys, with 50 to 100.

The bathroom is right around the corner, pecking orders. And what's amazing, the guy with 50 in his church has never asked to preach in a conference unless, of course, it's a heart cry conference because that pecking order doesn't exist.

It doesn't exist. He's not saying, well, why should I? I mean, I've got Spurgeon over here and I've got this over here and that over here. Why? What? I need you. He doesn't need anybody. He never says he does, but he loves you.

He loves you. You say, but I've done so much. You don't even know half the much you've done. He loves you. I love that passage of bruised reed. He'll not break. Smoldering wick, he'll not throw out, make a reed breaks in your hand.

It's a delicate thing. It's got a flaw. Throw it out. There's all kinds of cane everywhere. Don't work with that thing. Throw it away. Jesus doesn't. You're breaking his hands. People look, say worthless.

No music's coming out of that. He says, just watch me. Mends you back up and plays the most beautiful music you could ever imagine out of the most broken reed. Smoldering wick, a little boy and the lights would all go out, I storm, we'd have all these kerosene lamps.

And since we didn't use them very often, we would always forget. You don't want to let one of those things run out of oil because once they run out of oil, the wick starts burning. Stinkiest thing you've ever smelt in your life.

Open up the window, throw it out. Jesus doesn't. You grieve the Holy Spirit. You stink. Make a mess of everything. You don't want to do anything. Everyone stands there and says, throw him out. Christ takes the lamp, holds it to his chest, cleans away the wick, fills it with oil, sets it on fire.

Spiritual Refreshment and the Believer’s Response

You've got a God, you have a savior. So he says, I come. What's amazing here is what's been happening to me these last few days. It says, eat, friends, drink and imbibe deeply, old lovers. I've heard men, very imperfect men, get up in this pulpit and preach something of the anointing of the Holy Spirit upon their lives.

And I've just eaten along with them. It's amazing when someone falls in love with Jesus Christ, it just sets a banquet table for everyone else around them. Do you ever notice that? Just everybody, let's eat, let's just eat, it's an absolutely wonderful thing.

When Love Becomes Common

And then he says in verse two, we come down and we see something. I was asleep, but my heart was awake, a voice. My beloved was knocking open to me. My sister, my darling, my dove, my perfect one for my head is drenched with dew.

My locks with the damp of the night. Here comes here comes this wonderful lover. Here comes this wonderful spouse. Here comes the king. And something that only one thing I want to point out, even though there's seven lectures in this verse, there's only one thing I want to point out.

And it is this. He comes unannounced. He comes at a time not expected. And why would he do that? Because love is audacious. Is there an angel standing behind me singing? Whoever is in charge of. Please shut that guy off, he's still going.

You know, if we were in Peru, I'd just get a rock and my one chance to have an angel appear. Tom Clay's a really small guy. Is he hiding up there somewhere? Someone says, oh, brother, Paul, you shouldn't have done that.

God was working and he's heated. You know, now you listen. If God's working, he'll continue to work when I get back to this sermon. OK, someone told Spurgeon, you need to strike while the iron's hot. And Spurgeon said, well, if it's God heating up the iron, it'll stay hot.

That comes on again. I'm shooting somebody, Lord. Yeah, you can't have church without all this multimedia stuff. He shows up unannounced, completely unannounced. Why? Because love believes it can. You need to take Jesus at his word, but make no mistake, he's going to take you at yours.

I love you, Lord. You know what that means? He's just believing enough to say, OK, that means I can come by at two in the morning, knock on your door. That means, pastor, when you've got all kinds of stuff to do, he can come by.

And knock on your door and say, I'm here, Terry with me a while. That's what it means. Now, he comes by unannounced and she says, I've taken off my dress. How can I put it on again? I've washed my feet.

How can I dirty them again? Now, here was a girl who literally would go to the market 37 times a day for no reason at all for her mother, just to hope that she would bump into this guy. This was a girl who just would do absolutely anything to get his attention.

But here's what happens when you get someone's attention, when you've won someone's love, love often becomes quite common. I remember going through the Andes Mountains the first time in my life over the highest railroad pass in the world, and I'm sitting there marveling at all the beauty of the Andes Mountains and the old missionary Homer Crane is sitting there snoring.

I thought, how can he be so dull a heart not to see all this beauty of God's creation? A few years ago, I took a group of college students across that same place, and as they were oohing and aahing, I was snoring.

Why? Because when you see something over and over and over because of sin, it no longer is special. Husbands, this is a rebuke for us and our wives. It's not that her glance, that same glance that stopped your heart should stop your heart today.

It's not that her glance has changed. Your heart has changed. But we look at this and he says, she says, it seems like a drudgery now to love. It seems like a drudgery to love. Do you remember those times, Saint?

Do you remember those times when you would pray, when you would call people and they would pray with you? And you'd read your Bible and you'd want to walk in the truth. And if you had thought that you grieved the Holy Spirit, it would break your heart.

You'd cry out for God and you'd just do anything. You'd seek him, you'd plead for him. You want his presence and everything. But now he shows up at 10 o 'clock tonight and you go, Lord, I mean, what do you want?

I've been in a Bible conference for three days. Haven't I given you enough? Look how terrifyingly sad that is. Lord, I'm tired. I mean, and pastors are the worst. That's why pastors should not have televisions, because it's literally, Lord, I'm mentally and everything else.

I'm just totally and completely drained. I mean, you feel that nudge that the Lord says, slip away with me. I know it's Sunday night and I know you're drained. Slip away with me. And let me fill you and give you peace to that mind of yours that's so tired.

Oh, Lord, that'll never do. I mean, I mean, I should just sit here and just watch something for what really, please, Lord, I've paid my dues, haven't I? There was a time when, oh, it's so funny. You know, when you're a brand new Christian, I mean, everywhere you look, you see the face of Jesus.

Every I mean, eat too much pizza. You have a dream at night. You're trying to interpret the thing. It's Jesus. Everything is Jesus. You're just wanting to see Jesus. I mean, wind blows against the back of your neck.

You know, Jesus, you just make up things. All you want is just Jesus. Now, Jesus truly comes as a lover in your maturity and tugs on your heart and says, slip away with me. And you deny that it's him.

You don't want it to be him. Oh, that wasn't him. That wasn't his voice. That's just my imagination. There was a time that even if it was your imagination, you would have gone and prayed you to used it as an excuse.