Man's Chief End

Welcome to my blog – thank you for stopping by!  I’ve never done this before and I’m only doing it now after friends encouraged me to share more widely of the life-changing journey I’ve been on with God over the past couple of years.

It’s not as if my journey only began a couple of years ago – I’ve been a committed Christian for 40 years and a church minister for 36 of those years.  But a couple of years ago I began an odyssey into the Song of Songs that has utterly revolutionised my relationship with God.  The Westminster Shorter Catechism drawn up in 1647 asked the question: “What is the chief end of man?” – and came up with the answer: “Man’s chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever”.  All I can say is, I am enjoying God like I never imagined possible!

It began with awakening - through the passion of Song of Songs - to God’s intense love for me and His deep desire for intimate relationship with me.  And the amazing insights offered by Psalm 119, Jesus’ mind-blowing revelations in John chapters 14-16 and Paul’s letters to the Ephesians and Colossians, have helped me understand so much more of the inner workings of how to walk in intimacy with Him.

Over the course of this blog I hope to share some of the highlights and insights, disappointments and delights of the journey so far.  No journey is straightforward (especially not if you drive in London or on British motorways) so be warned, my posts may seem random and disconnected at times, but I’m hoping the destination will become clearer the longer we journey!

Before bringing this introduction to an end, I want to mention why I’ve called it “Seal of Fire”.  In Song of Songs, the Bride goes on a roller-coaster ride in her relationship with the Groom – not that dissimilar to the believer’s journey with the Lord or the church’s journey with Jesus.  There are times of self-recrimination, lapses into worldliness, seasons of spiritual slothfulness! But through it all, the Groom’s love for His Bride is unremitting, unrelenting, unconditional, unquestionable and unstoppable.  The ultimate goal is to reach the place where we are surrendered to His love, as passionate for Him as He is for us, where His love is like a seal of fire upon our entire being. 
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Song of Songs 8:6-7 in The Passion Translation has the Groom saying to His Bride (the Lord saying to the believer, Jesus saying to His church): “Fasten me upon your heart as a seal of fire forevermore.  This living, consuming flame will seal you as my prisoner of love.  My passion is stronger than the chains of death and the grave, all consuming as the very flashes of fire from the burning heart of God.  Place this fierce, unrelenting fire over your entire being.  Rivers of pain and persecution will never extinguish this flame.  Endless floods will be unable to quench this raging fire that burns within you.  Everything will be consumed, it will stop at nothing as you yield everything to this furious fire until it won’t even seem to you like a sacrifice anymore.”