The following is a revelation I received around New Years. I was going through my e-mail folder today, and found this e-mail dated Dec 30th/03. The following changed my life, and I had shared it with a professor at FIRE School who taught on praying in tongues and divine healing. He had made a suggestion to take a book of the Bible and study it every day for a month, and just go over it over and over again and meditate on it, as well as studying with commentaries, concordances, dictionaries, etc...
Well, I had been reading it over and over again, listening to audio Bible mp3s of it on my laptop over and over again on the Song of Solomon. The point of this is that while you're doing that, your prayer life--specifically the praying in tongues part--will work together with your reading and go deeper into an understanding of what the Word says. I had been reading Song of Solomon for over 25 days, every day, sometimes more than once a day, and marking my Bible up, taking notes in a journal, and so on. And what I'm about to share came suddenly while I was in a conversation with a backslidden friend on MSN. I edited and changed it so it would flow better as a blog/journal entry type of reading, rather than an e-mail (for example, all "me" and "you" references removed so it's easier for other readers of this teaching to benefit from it)
First, I need to qualify what happened. I was on the internet that night trying to encourage a backslidden friend to come back to God his Lover and Savior, using the stuff I'd been getting revelation from the Song of Solomon about. Check out the following passage.
"My dove, in the clefts of the rock, in the hiding places on the mountainside, show me your face, let me hear your VOICE; for your VOICE IS SWEET, and your face is lovely. Catch for us the foxes, the little foxes that ruin the vineyards, our vineyards that are in bloom."Song of Solomon 2:14-15(NIV)
Man, you have no idea how deep that passage is just from reading it at a first glance. After reading it like twenty times, God was showing me things, like going to the hiding place (place of privacy, intimacy with Him) and letting him hear our voice, hence re-enforcing that you can't only think your prayer, but He wants/needs to hear it out of our mouths. Well, I looked up the Hebrew for the word "ruin" for where it says that the little foxes ruin the vineyard, and you know what the real word is? Châbal: A primitive root; to wind tightly (as a rope), that is, to bind; specifically by a pledge; figuratively to pervert, destroy; also to writhe in pain (especially of parturition). To bind. The King James says spoil, which shows the same concept. So did you catch that? Key words in that definition include to bind, pervert and destroy, withhold. Wow.
The foxes represent or are symbolic of the devil or demons. Anyway, I knew other passages of Scripture that talked about vineyards, but I didn't REALIZE I knew what other passages of Scripture said regarding vineyards. Like, duh, what are vineyards for? Grapes-WINE!!!! Here are some other passages talking about the vineyard God plants.
Luke 13:6-9- Where Jesus talks of a man planting a vineyard, and expecting fruit to grow, and how after three years of not seeing any fruit he cuts it down because the owner is fed up with it not bearing any fruit. We can tell this is referring to the believer or the church of believers, because the vine dresser acts as a type of intercessor, like Jesus or a shepherd of sheep, pleading with the owner not to cut it down. This passage is rich on its own for tons of other topics. See as well,Isa 3:14where God enters into judgement with the leaders of Judah and Jerusalem for not tending his vineyard (his people), and two chapters later, in 5:1-7 the song of the vineyard where God prophetically sings about what He expected of his vineyard.
Matthew 20- the parable of the vineyard workers and some working only the last hour and being paid as ones that worked all day.Psalm 80:15, Deut 24:21are other good references. Anyway, the vineyard is a type or a symbol of the Church in the NT, Israel in the OT and just in general the people of God. The devil is always seeking to destroy us in anyway he can.
Ephesians 5:18,be not drunk on wine but be filled with the Spirit, and we know one symbol for the Holy Spirit is NEW WINE (fresh just picked grapes), and the passage here in SoS talks about how the foxes ruin the vineyards that are in bloom (young, tender or sensitive)!!!! Man!
So I didn't put two and two together until the very moment I was trying to woo this friend with the heart of God towards him, that God was calling him through this passage to the hiding place in the rock (Jesus) and wanted to see his face and hear his voice, indicating prayer and definitely indicating intimacy. So put these two verses together, and you see that going and being alone with God and praying, you'll wind up "catching those foxes" that ruin the Spirit's work in your life because you're bound to them instead of walking in freedom. And he says in v. 14 that he loves the sound of our voice, so what better thing to be offering up with our voices than tongues since according toRomans 8:26we don't know what we ought to be praying? When I told my friend Matt that I never ever noticed what it was saying about the vineyard and wine, and as a Holy Spirit symbol, he told me "I'm sure the praying in tongues a lot helps." Then it dawned on me just what it is to walk in that revelation knowledge from praying in tongues that causes the Holy Spirit to just enlighten us to things in God's word that we never noticed before. So praying in tongues to build yourselves up in the inner man helps keep those foxes from spoiling the vine (the Holy Spirit's producing wine in our lives). Ain't that wild?
This goes along with Jude 20 also. Jude was writing to the church to contend for the faith because FALSE DOCTRINE (foxes) had gotten into the church and rendered it powerless. So the remedy to that is verse 20, praying in the Holy Ghost. Praying in the Spirit is our inoculation against false doctrine (the foxes) because it is how the Holy Spirit teaches us. That goes right along with what I saw in the Song of Solomon.
So the application of this teaching? Pray a whole lot in tongues. Not only will it help with your understanding and revelation of the Word of God, but it will help crucify your flesh and overcome the foxes that are holding us back. So pray in tongues a lot. If you don't and have never received the baptism in the Holy Spirit and would like to, then just let me know because it's one of my favorite things to talk about.
