By David Hobbs
God rarely corrects or rebukes me personally. Usually He’ll use a message in a sermon or a book that the Holy Spirit will work through to convict me of wrong doing. Other times He’ll let my own foolishness correct me (“thy backslidings shall reprove thee” [Jer. 2:19]), or use my wife, a brother, elder or pastor to speak into my life. Therefore the following caught me off guard:
I was on my book tour in the summer of 2009. I had gotten as far as the Denver area where I was staying with my cousin Colleen.
Now I’ve got to admit that I have a problem with being full of myself at times. It’s spawned a joke I have with my wife. When I come home, I announce dramatically, “Marcine, I’m home! You can relax now; everything’s going to be all right.” The idea behind it being: whatever I'm personally in charge of would be fine; it’s the things I’m not in charge of where the trouble comes from. The Lord has had to show me over the years that actually my biggest problems come from exactly those things I am in control of!
The idea that I had starting out on the tour was that the church was broken and part of my task was to fix it. I had to get the Bride ready to meet her Bridegroom in the very near future. Right now she was a mess, but if I could just get opportunity to speak into her life, I could bring some much-needed correction to her.
Thus I was caught off-guard, even startled, to hear the Lord’s voice speak suddenly to me one evening, “KEEP YOUR HANDS OFF MY WOMAN!”
At first I thought He must be joking, “Ha-ha, right, sure Lord” He wasn’t joking.
Then I thought He must be speaking in hyperbole, you know, like “if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out and cast it from thee”—exaggerating to make a point. He wasn’t speaking hyperbolically either.
The idea that I had starting out on the tour was that the church was broken and part of my task was to fix it. I had to get the Bride ready to meet her Bridegroom in the very near future. Right now she was a mess, but if I could just get opportunity to speak into her life, I could bring some much-needed correction to her.
Thus I was caught off-guard, even startled, to hear the Lord’s voice speak suddenly to me one evening, “KEEP YOUR HANDS OFF MY WOMAN!”
At first I thought He must be joking, “Ha-ha, right, sure Lord” He wasn’t joking.
Then I thought He must be speaking in hyperbole, you know, like “if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out and cast it from thee”—exaggerating to make a point. He wasn’t speaking hyperbolically either.
“KEEP YOUR HANDS OFF MY WOMAN!” There was nothing kidding about it, and nothing to indicate He was “just trying to get my attention.” He did not back off or soften in the slightest. And He was not smiling.
His use of the vernacular “my woman” was deliberate. It invoked images of a jealous red-neck who didn’t want any other man even talking to “his woman,” let alone trying any funny business.
But the more I thought about it, the more life-giving (instead of condemning) it became to me. I realized God doesn’t look at the church the way we do. To Him, the church is not this hopelessly dysfunctional entity we all shake our heads over. God looks at her with a passionate, all-consuming love that overlooks all her faults, and He has no doubt whatsoever of His own ability to fix them. He doesn’t need my help or anybody else’s to fix the church, and He doesn’t want anyone messing around with her, even while claiming to be trying to help her.
His use of the vernacular “my woman” was deliberate. It invoked images of a jealous red-neck who didn’t want any other man even talking to “his woman,” let alone trying any funny business.
But the more I thought about it, the more life-giving (instead of condemning) it became to me. I realized God doesn’t look at the church the way we do. To Him, the church is not this hopelessly dysfunctional entity we all shake our heads over. God looks at her with a passionate, all-consuming love that overlooks all her faults, and He has no doubt whatsoever of His own ability to fix them. He doesn’t need my help or anybody else’s to fix the church, and He doesn’t want anyone messing around with her, even while claiming to be trying to help her.
He doesn’t need our help. He doesn’t want our help. He doesn’t want the glory of preparing her for her Groom to go to anyone but Him. She is His. He purchased her with His own spilled blood. Mess with her at your peril! If it would be better for someone who caused one of His little ones to stumble to have a millstone tied around their neck and be thrown into the sea, what must the punishment be for someone who messes around with His bride—His woman! And though on the one hand I stood sternly rebuked; on the other hand--I’m also part of that bride He loves so much!
About a year later, back home in church we were singing a song I hadn’t heard before. But the lyrics were kind of an “in-your-face” to satan. The part I do remember was where it went, “surrender my bride!” Wow! Suddenly that whole story came back and I knew it was a prophetic “hot button” of the moment. I obtained permission from the pastor and addressed the church, telling them the story. Then I said “I believe this is the demand of the Spirit to satan, and now that we know the passionate, possessive love behind it, I think we should declare it to satan prophetically right now.” And we did. I led the whole church in a thunderous, anointed, prophetic demand to the satanic realm: “SURRENDER MY BRIDE! SURRENDER MY BRIDE! SURRENDER MY BRIDE!” The gates of hell were shaking that night! There was no place to hide. The Lion was roaring!
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