I was saved in 1995 after a number of weeks of my mom, Dottie Bell, reading Paul’s letters to me night after night. Though I had heard the Gospel in the 1970’s in my middle and upper school years and even heard Billy Graham preach at a stadium a couple of nights in my hometown of Raleigh, NC; the seeds of those Charismatic Renewal years did not take root until I had learned the hard way how bankrupt secular humanism and the values of “the ME generation” and yuppie culture were in terms of answers and what works in reality given that there is a spiritual realm, the demonic is set against the human race, and there does exist a Holy Creator who loves us and whom we must answer to. I was radically saved in my mid-30’s as those words of the great apostle, a learned man who also got radically saved, rang so very true in contrast to the ideas and learning offered by those who knew not God in the great colleges and universities I had attended. The section of the Word of God that most penetrated my heart, striking me as an unquestionably Divine design, was the blueprint for marriage revealed to Paul.
Here it is from Eph. 5 in the J.B. PHILLIPS version, a deeper translation in places:
Christ and the Church the pattern relationship for husband and wife
22-24 You wives must learn to adapt yourselves to your husbands, as you submit yourselves to the Lord, for the husband is the “head” of the wife in the same way that Christ is head of the Church and saviour of the body. The willing subjection of the Church to Christ should be reproduced in the submission of wives to their husbands.
25-27 But, remember, this means that the husband must give his wife the same sort of love that Christ gave to the Church, when he sacrificed himself for her. Christ gave himself to make her holy, having cleansed her through the baptism of his Word—to make her an altogether glorious Church in his eyes. She is to be free from spots, wrinkles or any other disfigurement—a Church holy and perfect.
28-33 Men ought to give their wives the love they naturally have for their own bodies. The love a man gives his wife is the extending of his love for himself to enfold her. Nobody ever hates or neglects his own body; he feeds and looks after it. And that is what Christ does for his body, the Church. And we are all members of that body, we are his flesh and blood! ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’. The marriage relationship is doubtless a great mystery, but I am speaking of something deeper still—the marriage of Christ and his Church. In practice what I have said amounts to this: let every one of you who is a husband love his wife as he loves himself; let the wife reverence her husband.
It’s revelatory to read it in The Message, too, as this contemporary version captures the husband, Yeshua Hammaschiach, laying His very life down and living to bring forth His wife, the church in radiant glory. I knew from three-plus decades of experiencing humankind on the earth, that only by supernatural ability could this beautiful picture happen. As the whole of chapter 5 is so well-worded for the bringing forth of the victorious, overcoming church, and as that is the consecration I have said yes to in this “Jesus is an Intimacy Junkie Prophetic” call, below is the entire chapter. Note the beautiful behavior of the husband in the Word of God below:
Wake Up from Your Sleep
Watch what God does, and then you do it, like children who learn proper behavior from their parents. Mostly what God does is love you. Keep company with Him and learn a life of love. Observe how Christ loved us. His love was not cautious but extravagant. He didn’t love in order to get something from us but to give everything of Himself to us. Love like that.
Don’t allow love to turn into lust, setting off a downhill slide into sexual promiscuity, filthy practices, or bullying greed. Though some tongues just love the taste of gossip, those who follow Jesus have better uses for language than that. Don’t talk dirty or silly. That kind of talk doesn’t fit our style. Thanksgiving is our dialect.
You can be sure that using people or religion or things just for what you can get out of them—the usual variations on idolatry—will get you nowhere, and certainly nowhere near the kingdom of Christ, the kingdom of God.
Don’t let yourselves get taken in by religious smooth talk. God gets furious with people who are full of religious sales talk but want nothing to do with Him. Don’t even hang around people like that.
You groped your way through that murk once, but no longer. You’re out in the open now. The bright light of Christ makes your way plain. So no more stumbling around. Get on with it! The good, the right, the true—these are the actions appropriate for daylight hours. Figure out what will please Christ, and then do it.
Don’t waste your time on useless work, mere busywork, the barren pursuits of darkness. Expose these things for the sham they are. It’s a scandal when people waste their lives on things they must do in the darkness where no one will see. Rip the cover off those frauds and see how they look in the light of Christ.
Wake up from your sleep, climb out of your coffins; Christ will show you the light!
So watch your step. Use your head. Make the most of every chance you get. These are desperate times!
Don’t live carelessly, unthinkingly. Make sure you understand what the Master wants. Don’t drink too much wine. That cheapens your life. Drink the Spirit of God, huge drafts of Him. Sing hymns instead of drinking songs! Sing songs from your heart to Christ. Sing praises over everything, any excuse for a song to God the Father in the name of our Master, Jesus Christ.
Relationships
Out of respect for Christ, be courteously reverent to one another.
Wives, understand and support your husbands in ways that show your support for Christ. The husband provides leadership to his wife the way Christ does to His church, not by domineering but by cherishing. So just as the church submits to Christ as He exercises such leadership, wives should likewise submit to their husbands.
Husbands, go all out in your love for your wives, exactly as Christ did for the church—a love marked by giving, not getting. Christ’s love makes the church whole. His words evoke her beauty. Everything He does and says is designed to bring the best out of her, dressing her in dazzling white silk, radiant with holiness. And that is how husbands ought to love their wives. They’re really doing themselves a favor—since they’re already “one” in marriage.
No one abuses his own body, does he? No, he feeds and pampers it. That’s how Christ treats us, the church, since we are part of His Body. And this is why a man leaves father and mother and cherishes his wife. No longer two, they become “one flesh.” This is a huge mystery, and I don’t pretend to understand it all. What is clearest to me is the way Christ treats the church. And this provides a good picture of how each husband is to treat his wife, loving himself in loving her, and how each wife is to honor her husband.
This description of marriage was the seed from the Word that produced faith in the Lord and His goodness and a heart open to the greatness of His salvation plan. I was born again shortly after the night my mom read the verses above to me.
I have been a runner after the Lord and been a part of His Body in the major streams that are true and rich in the Word and the flow of the Spirit for decades. Where there has been demonic pollution or the missing of the Word rightly divided, the Lord has called me to labor as an intercessor behind the scenes as well as in corporate settings. He has given me His heart for His people; He has worked this into me through my years of inner healing and significant soul restoration and rebuilding as well as by my receiving targeted deliverance. The testimony of Jesus that is the spirit of prophecy according to Rev. 19:10 that flows through me grows ever purer as I am one to pay attention to what comes out of my heart. I have gone deep with Galatians 2:20, and said yes to the James 5:16 admonition to “Confess your faults one to another, and pray for one another that ye (a corporate ye here) may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.” Andrew Murray’s book, The Power of the Blood of Jesus, has instructed me on the purification that’s ours by way of the blood. We believers have what Mark Hankins wrote about in his great work, The Bloodline of a Champion. Thus, I know myself to be “white as snow” as per Isaiah 1:18. The Lord has wrought a new creation heart within my soul and spirit after His image. By going after union with the Beloved since 1995, I have a heart given me by God to serve the Body by releasing His words on this blog to “build up the Body in Love” that the Bride/Sonship company will come forth to lead us all to receive the Lord returning in full IN us and THROUGH us, bringing heaven’s realities to the seven mountains and cities on earth as well as His coming FOR us as our KING. [See Eph. 4:16.] The Lord has encouraged me to go after Isaiah realities now. The wedding supper of the Lamb is coming if we will say “yes” to radical obedience in aligning ourselves with His heart and mind and thus “hasten” His coming. [See 2 Peter 3:12.]
Call on me as the Holy Spirit leads you. Agape—
Katherine
Jesus is an Intimacy Junkie Prophetic Ministry 