LOVE IN THE GARDEN

By Clinton White

In the Song of Solomon it says, "Awake, O north wind; and come, thou south; blow upon my garden, that the spices thereof may flow out. Let my beloved come into his garden, and eat his pleasant fruits" (4:16). God is coming to His garden and He is looking for love. But will He find that love?

The Bible says, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind" and "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself"; and that "On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets" (Mat. 22:37-40). But the Bible also says that in the last days "because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold" (Mat. 24:12). This is not speaking of the individual who has never known Jesus Christ. He has never been in love with God so how could his love grow cold? It is speaking of Christians. Because iniquity shall abound--temptations are so easy at hand, the pressures and cares of this world are so violent, men race to and fro--the love of many Christians will grow cold.

God came to His garden once. The Bible teaches that "the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us" (John 1:14), and that "He came unto his own and his own received him not. But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God" (John 1:11, 12). He came to His garden seeking a relationship with His children. And what did He find? He found artificial flowers.

Men have indulged in the art of flower making for many years. Not just since the invention of plastic, but for centuries before that, they made imitation flowers with paper, with bits of bark and other things. Today the art of artificial flower making has progressed to the point that just by looking you cannot tell the difference between the man made and the real ones.

But what is the difference? The artificial ones have no life in them. And another big difference between an artificial flower and a real one is that the real flower comes to bloom, then goes to seed and it procreates. It causes other seeds, other flowers to grow. (The wind is sent from God to pollinate the flowers and spread them across the earth.)

When Jesus came, He spoke to a man called Nicodemus. Nicodemus was an artificial flower, for religion had made him externally look like a child of God. He was one of the biggest hybrid looking artificial flowers, probably an orchid, for he was a member of the Sanhedrin. He was a religious man and this is what religion does: it can make you appear outwardly to be a follower of the Lord Jesus Christ. Externally, Nicodemus and many others were religious people, but Jesus told them that they were "like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men's bones" (Mat. 23:27).

Jesus looked at a group of people who had been brought up in religion all of their lives; from their childhood, they had been taught the Scriptures. And Jesus said to them, "Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me. And ye will not come to me, that ye might have life" (John 5:39). He was telling them, "You have no life in you." Jesus looked at these people who had been religious all of their lives, and He saw them as artificial flowers. And He showed them how to become new. He put His hands on many of them and they became alive.

So many Christians tell me, "Oh, I want to be used of God; I want God to use me in a big way!" And, usually, as I dig underneath all of that, the reality of the reason they want to be used comes to the surface. What they really mean is, "I want to stand in front of people; I want to be seen and heard." They say, "Oh, I've got such a burden for souls!" And when you dig underneath that so called "burden for souls," you find that it is nothing but the sheer carnality of wanting to be a spiritual or religious hero.

God wants to use us. A woman called me and said, "Please pray for me. I want God to use me." And I asked her, "Do you have any children?" She said, "Yes." I said, "How do you use those children?" She responded, "Oh, I would never use my children!" I answered her, "Oh, yes you do. I have little children and I use them every day. And how do I use them? I pick them up and hold them close. I hug and kiss them, and their love comes to my heart and I am refreshed."

Now, how does God want to use us? God has created us for Himself that love might flow from our hearts, that when He comes to His garden He might find the flowers in bloom and the fragrance of love coming from the lives of His children. But . . . "because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold."

Let us face some realities. God looks upon the Church and He sees division and bitterness, narrowness and meanness. He hears sharp little tongues that spread petty gossip and speak of picayune things that have no place in love. Jesus Himself said, "In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also" (John 14:2, 3). He is coming to His garden again; but the Bible teaches, before the curtain goes down on time and space, that there will be holocausts, there will be famines, and there will be earthquakes. There will be realities that you and I do not want to face. We run away from these things, and sometimes God must use shocking, jarring realities to make us look at where we are and what we are doing, and to call us back into the sanity, reasonableness and wisdom of being in love with God.

Scientists are saying that there is a food shortage in this earth now, and that the food problem is so severe that a famine where millions of people will die is inevitable, and that there is absolutely nothing we can do about it. That is not some preacher standing up in the pulpit, telling you what he thinks is going to happen because of a vision he thinks he has seen. That is not somebody's interpretation of the Bible. Scientists are now telling us that this world as we know it will come to an end. You see, men will bring judgments upon themselves. The Bible teaches in 2nd Peter that, "the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up" (3:10). The Bible also teaches that there will be a war and one third of mankind will be destroyed.

You might say, "How could a God of love allow such things?" God is not doing this. God put a cross in the middle of time and said, "World, I love you. Come out of your hatreds; come out of your iniquities; stop devouring each other; wipe the blood off your teeth; get the blood off your hands; share your food; have an open heart." There would be no starvation if men were not so cruel and narrow. There would be no wars if men were not so filled with hatred and greed. There would be no divorces, there would be no broken homes if men were filled with the love of God. The gift of sex has its perfect place in marriage. It is a blessing, it is meant to be an enjoyment and a pleasure; but men abuse it and set the world on fire with disease, broken marriages and broken hearts. There would be no crimes and violence if men walked in the love of Jesus Christ. Don't you ever point the finger of condemnation and say, "How could a loving God do this?" I say, "How could He be so merciful as to forgive us for this?" Every gift God has given us we drag through the mud, we defile it. And even when He sent His Son, we dragged Him through the muck, dragged Him up a hill and nailed Him to a cross.

The Lord is coming back. And yet He is here. He said, "Lo, I am with you alway" (Mat. 28:20) and "I will never leave thee nor forsake thee" (Heb. 13:5). But He is coming in another way. He is coming to His garden looking for love.

Men make artificial flowers. Men also tamper with God's flowers--the people who love God in this world. If a flower farmer wants to start a certain strain of flower, he protects it from being cross-pollinated by a bee, an insect or by the wind, so that he can bring forth the same strain of flower. Now, if the flower farmer finds one that was not protected and it did get cross-pollinated--it is not just the right size or exactly the same color as all the rest--he calls it (in the terminology of flower farmers) a rogue.

So what do we do in the church? We take God's flowers and we want to make them all the same size, all the same shapes, saying all the same words. God comes to us for love and He loves us for our individuality. He loves us for the way that He can make His light shine through each and every one of us. He does not want all of us thinking the same way and marching to the same drumbeat, and being the same person and using the same language. He wants us all to relate with Him as individuals, because He loves us as individuals.

There is a philosophy in the church that wants to make you like an artificial flower, that says, "No matter what grief or what tragedy, no matter what searing, hot, fiery trial you are going through, you are somehow less a Christian if you have not got that painted plastic smile smeared across your face. I tell you this: when the real flower stands in the field and the wind blows, it bends over; the bloom is wiped from its face. And when the fires of adversity fall into the life of a Christian, it is folly, it is foolish, irrational and impractical, and it is idealistic for you to tell him that he has got to have that plastic smile plastered across his face, day in and day out.

A Christian said to me, "Pray for me. I don't seem to have the joy that I used to have." When you know that millions of people are going to die, that one third of the people in this world are going to be eaten up by the fiery dragon of war; and when you know that millions are starving to death all over the world today, then you can understand why the Bible says that Jesus was "a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief" (Isa. 53:3). It is a wonder that Christians are not more heavy hearted. How in the world can you look out onto this mess and keep that plastic smile on your face?

God does bring us joy in the depths of our being, and many times we are able to rejoice and smile in the face of adversity, but don't you feel guilty or less a Christian if you are heavy hearted. You are out of your environment. You are a child of heaven, a pilgrim on this earth. You are heartsick. You look at this mess and you do not know what to do about it. How can you have that plastic smile on your face all the time?

Let me share a poem with you written by Robert Frost: "The rain to the wind said, 'You push and I'll pelt.' They so smote the garden bed that the flowers actually knelt, and lay lodged--though not dead. I know how the flowers felt."

When the winds of adversity and the rains of affliction come storming in upon your life, it is not lack of faith if you bend. It is not lack of faith if you are swept over and swept off your feet for a little while; but remember that poem: They "lay lodged, though not dead." And when the sun comes out again and the weight of that storm is taken off your shoulders, because--like real flowers--you have Life in you, you rise up and you can smile again. That is the difference: It is Life--Christ's Life! Some terrible blows may come your way and send you reeling and you may fall, but because you are real--you are not artificial--you will get up and you will stand again.

Let us look at this verse from the Song of Solomon again: "Awake, O north wind; and come, thou south; blow upon my garden, that the spices thereof may flow out. Let my beloved come into his garden and eat his pleasant fruits." When the Holy Spirit blows His wind upon our lives, if we are real and if our hearts are turned toward God, there is a fragrance of praise and thanksgiving that rises to Heaven. There is a billowing cloud of incense that rises to Heaven, no matter what persecution, what struggle, what striving we have been going through. The church needs to pull out its weeds and stop its pettiness and picayune involvements, and realize that it has the greatest call in the whole world: a call to be a lover of God.

Called to be a lover of God! Our feelings may have become hurt because someone said the wrong thing, or someone may have snubbed us, or maybe the pastor did not do exactly like we wanted. Let us throw those things away. Compare them beside the great calling of being a lover of God.

If you were a young girl and you were chosen to be the lover and wife of someone famous, like a rock star, your life would be raised to the seventh heaven. You would feel so proud. Why is it that you cannot be more proud that you have been singled out to be a lover of God, the Creator of the universe? I pray that God will blow on His garden and that the fragrant spices of prayer, praise, thanksgiving and gratitude will rise, and then we will see and know the love of God.

The Bible says, "By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples." By what? By this: "If ye have love one to another" (John 13:35). Love is not sentimental affection. Love in its most immature state is a little child having to have you lay hands on him all the time. But God has called you to another kind of love, a higher love, a love of the heart and soul. He has called you to a heavenly, spiritual love, not immature fleshly affection, but a love relationship with Him.