Thank God it’s Friday!
by Parris Bailey Sustained by Love:
“Stay me with flagons, comfort me with apples: for I am sick of love.” SOS 2:5
Rutherford said this, “I thirst for my Lord and this is joy; a joy which no man taketh from me. Even if I may not come at him, yet shall I be full of consolation, for it is heaven to thirst after him, and surely he will never deny a poor soul liberty to admire him, and adore him, and thirst after him.” As for myself, I would grow more and more insatiable after my divine Lord, and when I have much of him I would still cry for more; and then for more, and still for more. My heart shall not be content till he is all in all to me, and I am altogether lost in him. O to be enlarged in soul so as to take deeper draughts of his sweet love, for our heart cannot have enough.”
“His flagons stay me for awhile with the assurance of his affection but they only impel me onward with the more unconquerable desire that I may know him. I must know him; I cannot live without knowing him. His goodness makes me thirst, and pant, and faint, and even die, that I may know him. He is all in all to me, and I am altogether lost in him. A man must have more, and when he hath more he is under a still greater necessity to receive more, and so on, his appetite for ever growing by that which it feeds upon, till he is filled with all the fulness of God. “I thirst,” – ay, this is my soul’s word with her Lord” (Maria Wright)
She wants to enlarge her capacity to drink greater draughts of the wine of the Kingdom.
Luther says: “When I get hold of a promise,” says he, “I look upon it as I would a fruit tree. I think – there hang the fruits above my head, and if I would get them I must shake the tree to and fro.” So I take a promise and meditate upon it; I shake it to and fro, and sometimes the mellow fruit fans into my hand, at other times the fruit is less ready to fall, but I never leave off till I get it. I shake, shake all the day long; I turn the text over and over again, and at last the pomegranate droppeth down, and my soul is comforted with apples, for it was sick of love. Do that, Christian. Deal much with the promises; have much commerce with these powders of the merchant: there is a rich perfume in every promise of God; taken; it is an alabaster box, break it by meditation, and the sweet scent of faith shall be shed abroad in your house.”
To them that believe He is precious. Our heart cry is bring me more of the fruit from this divine Apple Tree, that I may eat to the full and be refreshed to endure greater revelations. Sustain me O Lord. We ask for flagons, which is the largest vessel that can hold his love. “Open thy mouth and I will fill it.”