Jesus is inviting us into deeper intimacy with himself. What does that look like? How does that impact our understanding of worship? In this continuation of a conversation with Zach Neese, Gina & Zach explore the mystery and tension in intimate relationship with a Holy God.
Click below to listen starting at 5:38 to follow along.
The Fragrance of Intimacy
Zach:
Did you hear the whole “perfume conversation”?
Gina:
Yes! That’s the next thing I wrote, “Worship is the perfuming of the bride, so the groom can come back” see, it’s right here! You can even see it in my really sloppy writing.
Zach:
I love to tell this story. I was newly saved when I started pursuing my, now wife’s, heart. I didn’t know what I was doing. I was trying to be like Jesus to her. So for one of her birthdays, I took a bunch of Scriptures out of the Song of Songs and cut them out, and I attached to them two gifts that were associated with that Scripture.
Which, by the way, the Song of Songs… I’m not even sure you should read that… (laughs) that’s like a pretty serious “Christian adult book”, but I didn’t know any better. So I read it, and I’m trying to find all these gifts. For one of them, I needed some perfume.
I don’t know anything about perfume. Everything to me just smells like funky flower water or something. So I had one of my friends come help me. We were in a store, and I was going around smelling perfumes, and they all smelled too alcoholy or, or too much like soap or whatever.
And my friend finds this perfume and hands it to me and says, what about this? And I popped the cap off of this stuff, and I inhaled. I’ve never experienced anything like that before or since, it was like an olfactory opiate or something. Afterwards I started to see spots. I’m serious. I wasn’t saved my whole life, so I know something about being inebriated.
I’ve never smelled anything in my life that made me feel like I’ve got a heavy buzz. It was worse than that. My knees started getting weak. I started getting dizzy, and I was like, “Yeah, that’s the stuff.” So that stuff drives me crazy, makes me dizzy, makes me see spots, and makes my knees weak. And I gave it to the woman who drives me crazy, makes me dizzy, makes my knees weak.
This was probably a terrible idea, because as soon as she got this perfume and she realized what it did to me, she wore it all the time. She put it on everything. If we got in the car to go on a date, her car smelled like this stuff. I would come over and hang out with her family. I’d spend the night, she’d give me her room and her room smelled like that stuff.
I tell you, she put it on our pillows and all our stuff. I think she was putting it on the doorframes, like everywhere smelled like this perfume. I was already in love with her, and I was already very attracted to her, and I was already being pushed in my self-control as a Christian man with a woman that I love very much, and wanted to be with.
So she puts this stuff everywhere. So I had to go have a conversation with her dad and say, “Mr. Cathers, I think we need to abbreviate this engagement. I want my wife, you know?” And so then I realized the Bible has a metaphor like that.
The Bible, especially in the tabernacle, the priest would burn incense on the altar of incense. The Bible says, “That’s the place where I’m gonna meet with my priest and speak to them. I speak to my priest in that place.” That’s the same incense that they would put in the Holy of Holies to prepare the atmosphere for the glory of God. So that they could crawl in under the veil, apply the blood of the covenant, to the Mercy Seat, and the glory of the Lord would show up.
So incense prepares the atmosphere for this move, for this power, the glory of God. In fact, there’s all kinds of references to it, and I dare you to go look into it. The end-times prophecies are full of it, and Revelations full of it. In fact, before the first trumpet is blown, there’s an angel that fills a sensor with incense and throws it to the earth.
It’s something that rises to heaven when you burn it, and it’s mixed with prayer. I think it’s worship, I don’t think it’s music, but I think it’s a type of worship that feels like intercession. I think it’s a type of worship that connects heaven and earth.
Gina:
Okay, let’s just kind of run with this analogy like that. Perfume, not coupled with the reciprocal intimacy of your wife, like her love and her presence. Something would be wrong, something would be missing, right? So the mixing of the incense with the prayers is the relational piece of it.
I think as you’re talking, one of the things that I think we wrestle with in the church… Well, first of all, the word intimacy has been so hijacked by the world. There’s a lot of people who are fearful of the word intimacy, especially when you start saying intimacy with God. That knowing and being known.
But, then there’s that interesting juxtaposition between, how to have intimate knowing with a holy God. That’s what the Holy of Holies is. It’s that moment. I was praying earlier, before we even started, and I was reminded of one of my favorite moments in Revelation, when John sees Jesus in his glorified foreman on Earth.
John was like, “Oh, he’s my buddy. He loves me. Oh, we’re like this. Oh, I know him so well”, like the familiarity was so deep that he kind of loses sight of that holiness until he sees Jesus’ hair white as wool eyes, flame of fire. And he says, he falls as if he were dead, but then Jesus leaned down and touches his back and says, “Do not be afraid.”
And it’s that crazy tension between Holiness and intimate pursuit. It’s that: God walking with Adam and Eve in the cool of the garden and that constant intimate exchange. Then, to me, the most devastating verse in the Bible is when He says, “Where are you?” When they’re hiding. I don’t think it was a harsh “where are you?” It was like a soft, and broken “Where are you? What have you done?” Because of the separation that happened.
Sorry, I’m going off on a tangent.
Zach:
Yeah. Its, “Where’d your heart go from me?” I don’t think that’s a tangent, because I think that’s the whole point. That’s what the gospel is about. Jesus didn’t die on the cross so that we could have careers. Jesus died on the cross so that He could bring his Kingdom. He didn’t die on the cross so that I could have fans. He died on the cross so that He could have a family.
This is what the gospel is about. He wants to build his household. He wants his bride. He wants his sons and daughters drawn into a relationship with him. But there’s this thing about intimacy with God. I have to be reminded as soon as I get comfortable, that there’s more to see.
Because you’re talking about John, who walked with Jesus more intimately than any human being in his life, except his mother maybe, and then saw him at the cross, the only disciple that saw him crucified. He also saw him on the Mount of transfiguration. So he’d already seen Him glorified and he saw Him resurrected. He’d already seen all this stuff.
We get like, we’ve had all these revelations and we get comfortable in our theology of who God is. There’s always another glory. There’s always another aspect of the infinite God. So John sees Him again and his mind gets blown up again! And it’s not just a mind blow that’s like, “Wow, you’re amazing.” It’s a mind blow that has the fear of the Lord massaged into it that it knocks him on his face.
I think that’s when our intimacy is broken, if it doesn’t have the fear of the Lord in it. John has maybe the most intimate relationship with Jesus in the Bible. I think that’s why God was always showing him aspects of Himself that let him know that he’s even more deeply loved than he understood, but that Jesus is even holier than he understood, more worthy of righteous fear.
He’s growing in both of those at the same time. So that passage you were just talking about, the great commandment, “Love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, mind, soul and strength” we missed and we skipped the “Lord” part. We think that worship is love with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength, but it’s “love the Lord”.
If you have affection, without submission to the fear of God, that He is God, He is the Lord, then you’re missing an aspect of worship. Those are like the parallel paths of John’s walk with Jesus.
Gina:
Without that fear, you’re really creating God in your own image in a lot of ways. You start to cherry pick the things that you’re comfortable with, things that you’re not. That removes dependence, which is really what we’re called to in John 17. Intimacy and dependence, that “Father and son intimacies”, the Message Translation calls it, that Jesus demonstrated in His life.
Then we pull back and then we start becoming religious. We start coming into, “This is what you do. This is what you don’t do.” Then we start judging one another. Well, you’re not doing it enough or right. Or I start judging myself because I don’t see the fruit that I see in somebody else’s life. There’s no grace for the stages of spiritual, or relational growth. There’s no grace for stages of faith. And we lose sight of that altogether when we lose that fear.
Zach:
This is part of my problem with the whole worship movement right now, is that we’re kind of in love with the romantic aspect, and we’re in love with the musical aspects of worship. I don’t think we realize the historic ball we set rolling when we worship Jesus. I’m kind of a revival watcher, like bird watch or something. I’m always interested in what Jesus is doing, and I’m always interested in what He’s done in the past and where that’s moved us.
I don’t think He ever keeps us stationary like we’re talking about, because we grow in intimacy, and we grow in understanding of His glory, and His glory grows on the Earth. So I feel like we’ve been in the middle of, and not been aware of, that we are in the middle of the greatest worship revival in the history of the world.
There’s never been a time in history when there’s been so much availability of worship, content, vehicles, and music. You can go to conferences for it, you can stream it, download it, purchase it, play it on your radio, or in the car. It’s just like my wife took that perfume, and she’s got in her car, she got in her bedroom, she’s putting on the doorframes. We have worship going on everywhere. We have worship in more buildings than we’ve ever had in America, in the history of our nation.
We don’t even realize what we’re doing to Christ. What if, what we’re doing to Christ is kind of like what my wife was doing to me. What if the Lord is bending down low and inhaling the fragrance of this incense, this perfume that’s coming up. What if this drives the heart of Jesus Christ crazy?
What if He’s setting up a meeting with His Father at this very moment going, “Dad, we’re going to have to abbreviate this engagement, because I want my bride.” I think every time you see incense in the Bible, it’s before the glory. If we’re in the middle of a moment like this, it is because the Father is perfuming the bride for the coming of His Son. That’s what I think is happening right now. I think that the bride is being perfumed, and the reason is to stir the Son to come back.
Gina:
Well, it’s interesting that you say that, because I think the last year and a half has been a purification of that perfume, of that offering.
Zach:
I would agree.
A Prepared and Purified Bride
Gina:
I think that the bride, especially in America, but also worldwide, because we’ve been in a pandemic, and things got shut down and everything… God, in his love, for the preparation, so that our lamp is full and not half empty, is sending a grand disruption to reseat and reorient us, so that the object of our affection is firmly planted in front of us.
Zach:
Yes, absolutely. Because here’s the problem. So, when I was in high school, I was dating this girl. I thought she was in love with me, but then I noticed that she would respond to anybody who flirted with her. She didn’t love me, she just loved love.
One of the areas that we’ve strayed in this whole movement is we’ve created fans of worship. Like, people who don’t love Jesus, they love worship. That’s not the same thing. It is time right now to fall in love with the groom who’s coming back. And that’s who He’s coming back for.
He’s coming back for a bride who is passionately head over heels, sold out for Him and His coming and His presence. Right? Not for a fan of a certain brand, worship, or music, or a denomination. All that stuff needs to be cleansed off. You were talking about the purification, all that stuff needs to be washed away.
Gina:
And you know what? I love that you said that you’re like a reformation or revival watcher, because I think that we decide what our definition of revival is, right? And so we’re like, “Oh, revival come.” And we have this image that it’s going to be stadiums filled with people and, you know, Hillsong worship or whatever the flavor they like that day, that’s going to be revival.
But revival is a conversation with the woman at the well, and her being seen for the first time, being loved and accepted for the first time, and her running to her town. It’s her repenting, repentance is not a bad word, it’s actually an invitation, it’s a gift, it’s beautiful. And then her, running and spreading that word to an entire town longing and desperate for the thing that she discovered. I think that God is going to redefine revival for us as we step into this grand reorientation.
Zach:
So, you know, Loisa is sitting over here. We were at this little campus, in north Fort Worth. I was there for seven years and I saw what I would say is revival. There was not a fire shooting through the roof, but we started in a school. The year we began meeting in that school, it was the worst school in the school district. Over the course of a school year, it became the best school in the school district with less crime, no teen pregnancy, no drugs.
They didn’t need any police presence, but they needed all of those things before. When the administrators were asked what happened, they said, “All we can think is there’s a church meeting in our school.” It changed the school, which changed the kids, which changed the families. That’s revival. That school had the Bible. We baptized 600 people one weekend, that’s revival.
There’s no fire shooting through the ceiling. If God wants to send fire through the ceiling, I’m a big fan of fire through the ceiling. I want to see all that cool stuff too, but what I really want is what the Father wants. The Father wants his sons and daughters, and He’s not willing to compromise on that. He’s not willing to build my career to compromise his kids.
Zach Neese is a pastor at Gateway Church in Dallas and author of How to Worship a King.
Check the rest of this conversation Used by God, How to Worship a King
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