CHAPTER EIGHT

“I’M NOT GOING ANYWHERE”

Song of Solomon chapter 8 is probably the most difficult of the chapters in the book. It sets a vision for us of a life well lived, a picture of that final season when we can look back and almost hear in our ears the Savior saying from the finish line, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”

From our earthly perspective, life seems long and difficult. Assuming we live that long, what will it take to get to the days of great age and smile in deep satisfaction?

I have had for quite some time a vision of how I would like my life to look when I am eighty years old. Maybe I won’t get that far, but I still have this mental picture. I’m sitting on the back porch with my wife, drinking our coffee, and I’m hanging out with my friends Bleaker and Doug and Josh and Bryan. We’re reflecting back on our ministry life together and just marveling at what God has done through a group of morons like us. We tell story after story of his faithfulness. “Do you remember when God did that? Do you remember how he rescued us that time? Do you remember when he did that amazing thing?”

And then I get to play with my grandbabies. I get to watch them run and play and sing and dance, and my wrinkly face is just smiling.

Then, with whatever strength I have left, I get up to go and preach.

I look forward to preaching in my eighties because you can get away with stuff that you simply cannot get away with when you’re in your thirties or forties. When you’re in your thirties and forties, people are always like, “We ought to talk to him about that.” When you’re in your eighties, people are just like, “Well, you know, he’s eighty.” I figure that if I get to that point, having served faithfully for so long, I’ll be afforded some crazy.

All kidding aside, I just want to get there. I have in my head and in my heart a great desire to reach those moments. I want to get to the point where my war, if you will, is over, and although I’m still in the fight, there are younger, stronger guys on the front lines whom I can applaud and encourage and build up.

Now, I have learned in the last few years that the likelihood of me getting to eighty is not so great. I’ve had a significant succession of clean scans after my battle with brain cancer, but it’s not so likely I will get to my eighties. But I know the God whom I serve. I’ll trust him with my days, knowing nothing ever surprises him. I’m not even promised tomorrow. It doesn’t have to be cancer that takes me out.

Yet the thought of finishing well still drives me. I just want to get to the end of my race. If that’s in two years from a brain tumor or in a car wreck next week or at peace in my sleep when I’m eighty-five, I want to run my race well. I want to get to the end and know that as best as I could, by the grace of God, I gave myself to him. I want to be able to say that I tried to lie low, exalt Christ, and walk in humility.

I want my life to speak a humility that says, “Christ is the ultimate treasure. Christ is the one who should be exalted. Christ should be the one you applaud and love. And I did nothing but what he asked of me.”

That’s how I want to finish up.

And I hold this vision out before me, illuminated by the light of my seventeen years with Lauren, praying for many more. I am not perfect. I won’t fulfill this vision perfectly. All the time, I find so much new sin in me of which I need to repent. When I look back, I see so much I regret, some sins long repented of that still haunt me today. But I know that God is faithful and that he will get the glory.

From what we know from the context of the greater biblical story line, Solomon’s story eventually took a turn toward some really sinful stupidity. But that does not negate the wisdom he has for us. There is still much to learn from him in this inspired Word of God. We trust that the Holy Spirit worked through this man, and I trust that the Holy Spirit will work through me.

So this is what we see in our last chapter together: how we can finish well. And the first thing to remember in setting a vision for finishing life well is that even as you slow down in so many ways, you don’t stop moving forward.

Still Pursuing

Let’s revisit Song of Solomon 8:1–3 and get that glimpse back into the romantic life of Solomon and his wife:

Oh that you were like a brother to me

who nursed at my mother’s breasts!

If I found you outside, I would kiss you,

and none would despise me.

I would lead you and bring you

into the house of my mother—

she who used to teach me.

I would give you spiced wine to drink,

the juice of my pomegranate.

His left hand is under my head,

and his right hand embraces me!

One of the things we see in our aged couple, despite all their history together and familiarity with each other, is that they still pursued one another. Looking over these few verses, we see things like the following:

“I find you.”

“I kiss you.”

“I lead you.”

“I bring you.”

They may have moved more slowly, but their love didn’t slow. They staunchly refused to give into becoming civil roommates. Notice, too, how they demonstrated their love, first in public (in the streets) and then in private (in the house). Their love was not a show. They didn’t hold hands in public to keep up appearances and then go cold behind closed doors. Neither did they reserve all their affection for the private moments.

Whenever you see an elderly couple out at the park or in a restaurant together, and they’re tender with each other, holding hands or talking sweetly, aren’t you moved by that? Maybe he opens the door for her or helps her out of the car. Maybe she wipes food off his chin or helps him order because he can’t see or hear very well. They are affectionate with each other in a sweet way, so that you see how in sync they are, how the rhythms of their life have led to this great romantic togetherness in their old age. That’s very moving.

The human soul is a deep thing, and in different seasons the heart will manifest in different ways.

Regardless of our life stage, regardless of where we are in our marriage, there’s still a pursuit. Don’t let your mind in this moment drift to autopilot. Don’t think, Well, I’ll worry about that when I’m in my eighties.

No, this is how you get to your eighties. This is how you invest in that beautiful future. Keep pursuing. Don’t stop.

Continue to pursue your spouse’s heart. Continue to press the gospel into his or her spirit. Continue to want more.

When you get there, you may be ready for retirement from so many things, but you should never retire from romancing your spouse. Don’t work toward the day to quit. Work toward the day you die.

This is how true longevity occurs. We will never arrive at a place where we can say, “I know you now,” because it simply wouldn’t be true. Each day we are called to know and pursue our spouse more deeply.

Still Staying

Now we move forward in the Song:

Set me as a seal upon your heart,

as a seal upon your arm,

for love is strong as death,

jealousy is fierce as the grave.

Its flashes are flashes of fire,

the very flame of the LORD.

Many waters cannot quench love,

neither can floods drown it.

If a man offered for love

all the wealth of his house,

he would be utterly despised. (vv. 6–7)

For the record, the word for “love” in this passage is that word ahava. It’s the clinging love, the “I’m not going anywhere” love.

Ahava is as strong as death. Its flashes are fiery, sourced in the consuming fire that is God. All the oceans covering the earth cannot drown ahava. It is worth more than all the treasures of the world.

If we’re going to be faithful to the end, we will often have to lean into the covenant that we made with our spouse and with the Lord. We will need to access again and again, by God’s grace, this devoted ahava, which says, “It’s not an option for me to go anywhere because Jesus would not abandon his bride.”

I have been physically fit my entire life. I am tall and lean and have always been strong for a man as lean as I am. I have been told I have a powerful presence. I like to have fun, I like to goof around, and I have been blessed with what seems to be a boundless amount of energy. These were things that attracted Lauren to me. She often described me as our family’s “recreation coordinator.”

But then I got sick.

And all of that strength and vitality, in a matter of months, simply vanished. The ability to be playful, the ability to be creative, the ability to goof off were gone. Not only that, but my ability to really take care of myself, to do fairly simple tasks, vanished. I couldn’t even take a shower by myself, and the kind of accompaniment I needed there was not sexy, all right? I lost the ability to even stand.

I lost so much of my ability to, in a way, be myself. There was no way I could romance my wife. My desire for sexual intimacy was gone. For a while I began to wonder what the brain surgeries had done to me. I wondered if, should I ever get over this cancer stuff, I would always be unable to do some of the things I enjoyed so much. Maybe I was going to be broken this way for a long time.

Lauren saw me at my worst. I wasn’t in that kind of depressive “I hate everyone” mentality, but I was at my worst in terms of being very weak, unattractive, unstable, unable to get myself to the toilet so I could vomit and lie on the cool tile of the floor. I was a mess. And in those moments, I praised God for ahava love. As I look back, I still praise God for ahava love.

I praise God that this flighty kind of Cupidian, Valentine-y, emotive love isn’t what we’re hoping will hold us all together! Praise God that the love we trust to keep us from falling apart is ahava. Praise God that as miserable and messy as I was, my wife was a regular reminder of God’s grace to me. She didn’t turn and run. She stayed with me, helping me, loving me, and carrying me. Lauren demonstrated her love toward me in this: that she lived into an ahava love even when I could not reciprocate.

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The first seven years of our marriage were very difficult. My heart grew dark on multiple occasions. I remember one occasion in particular because it marked a real turn in our marriage. I had said some very cruel things to Lauren that day. I was frustrated; I was angry. I thought she was selfish and self-absorbed, and I told her so. I admit with shame that I wanted to wound her.

I was in the kitchen, and she was around the corner, sitting in a chair in the other room. I was being a terrible person, just hateful, and I threw some words out there that I knew would cut deep. I didn’t even regret that I said them; I wanted to hurt her.

This venom came out of my mouth, and I was fuming. I’m not a yeller, but as some of you probably know, I do have a pretty loud voice, so I don’t often even need to yell. I just put the words out there and hoped they really stung. I was in that kitchen acting like a big baby, clanging dishes around.

I’ll never forget this: Lauren came around the corner. I was steeling myself for whatever she’d throw back at me and getting ready to fight back. But she just came up and grabbed me. Then she pulled me really close to her, and she began sobbing. She cried and cried and cried as she held me. She said, “I don’t know what happened to you, but I’m not going anywhere.”

Those were maybe the most powerful words I’d heard up to that point in our relationship. I was at my absolute worst, and she had every earthly reason to say, “Forget this. Forget you. I’m done.” But she didn’t.

“I’m not going anywhere.”

Can you believe that?

It broke me. It wounded me in the good way, in the right way. It startled me and helped me in a way I could never foresee or imagine.

“I’m not going anywhere,” she said.

And that’s when I said, “I’m going to get help.”

Do you see? That’s ahava. That kind of love isn’t “Oh, he’s strong. He’s funny. I love the way he does this or that.” That kind of love is “This is awful and it hurts a lot, but God is good and God is mighty, and by his power, I will endure and give grace.”

Ahava is faithful to the end because Christians are a people who lean into the covenant of grace. We’re people who say, “No, I won’t bail. I’ve given myself for better or for worse to this person.”

It doesn’t mean we don’t get help. It doesn’t mean we stay in abusive situations. It just means we’re faithful to the covenant we entered into with God and our spouse.

I think one of the bigger lies we tend to believe is that whomever we end up with is supposed to complete us. But the reality is, whomever you are married to is going to disappoint you. In fact, the person you’re married to will likely be responsible for your deepest hurts.

Even in the best of marriages, there will be hardships to overcome. There will be difficult days. There will be frustrating behavioral patterns. There will be crises that expose parts of the heart you didn’t know were there.

Solomon said, “Set me as a seal upon your heart.” Seal it. And then he went on to talk about the “violence” of ahava. He wasn’t talking about physical violence but a kind of resolute forcefulness, the same kind Jesus spoke of when he said, “The kingdom of heaven has suffered violence, and the violent take it by force” (Matt. 11:12). It’s the kind of forcefulness that says, “You’re not going to move me off this ground. You’re not going to push me off this stance. I will love. Against all odds, weathering all storms, I will stay.”

Here in Texas we get to enjoy a very weird sense of pride. The pride of place here is more than any state I’ve ever been in. It’s a “We’re bigger; we’re better; we should be our own country; we would do it better than anyone else” kind of thing. For instance, as far as I can tell, no other state has a proliferation of bumper stickers that say, “I wasn’t born here but got here as quick as I could.” That’s Texas.

Some of that is rooted in the legends and lore of our state. First of all, there have been six flags flying over the state of Texas. And I’m not talking about the amusement park. There have been six sovereign nations that ruled over us. One of those flags was our own: the Republic of Texas. And here we are. We’ve survived, endured.

Laid deep in the ethos of all Texans is the Battle of the Alamo. What happened there? Well, a group of men hopelessly out­numbered stood their ground and said, “Bring it.” Then they all died. I mean, that’s how the story ends. Everybody died. But they held their ground. They dug their boots into the ground and said, “If you’re going to take it, you’re going to have to take my life. We will purchase for our brothers, for our sisters, the opportunity to live to fight another day, so I’m digging in my boots. And if you’re going to try to get me out of here, you’re going to have to kill me.” So they did.

That’s a picture of ahava. Digging in the boots. Standing your ground. Saying, “Bring it.”

This is what you do on your wedding day. That’s the vow you make. “Till death do us part.”

Bring on the flood! Many waters will not quench ahava. It can’t be flooded.

Bring on poverty! Ahava is better than all the riches in the world.

Bring on death! Ahava will never die.

Prepare yourself now to lean into that covenant. Be prepared for dark days, dark months, dark years. It’s a broken world, and nobody gets out without bleeding. So in our minds and in our hearts, it’s a wise thing to know this life is going to be difficult.

Now, what does that mean for abandonment? What does that mean for physical abuse? What does that mean for serial, un­repentant adultery? Well, I think those are some unique categories. The Bible addresses them in different ways. Obviously, if you’ve been abandoned, your option to stay has been removed. There’s no one to stay with. Paul said, in so many words, that if this happens, you are free.1

If you are being physically abused, I would not counsel you to stay in the abuse. You should get out of that situation. Talk to the authorities; talk to your pastors; talk to your family. I don’t think divorce is always the necessary option, but I would not advise anyone being physically abused to “stick it out.” Bringing resolution and, if possible, repentance and restoration to such a toxic situation doesn’t work like that. You should remove yourself from the environment, and if you need help doing that, you are absolutely within your rights to get it.

Given the “normal” sins of marriage, the messiness and the brokenness, as difficult and wearying as it can be, we must remember that the vows exist for precisely such experiences. You don’t really need to make a vow to stick with someone in the best of times. The inclination to run doesn’t exist then. It’s the low times the covenant is made for.

Isn’t this a reminder that grace exists for sin? We would not need grace if we weren’t sinners.

As you plan for the future of your marriage, as you look forward to those twilight years, remember your vows to ahava so that in the darkest days, in the lowest moments, when all hope seems lost, you can say, “I’m not going anywhere,” and when you’ve finally arrived, you can rejoice that you endured to the blissful end.

Still Building

Now let’s read to the end of the Song and see where the attention turns in the couple’s finishing of their race:

We have a little sister,

and she has no breasts.

What shall we do for our sister

on the day when she is spoken for?

If she is a wall,

we will build on her a battlement of silver,

but if she is a door,

we will enclose her with boards of cedar. (vv. 8–9)

This was the chorus chiming in, saying basically, “Hey, we have a young daughter who hasn’t gone through puberty. She is not a woman yet. What are we to do when a man comes her way?”

If she’s a wall, they’ll build armor on her so that a man can’t get to her. If she’s a door, they’ll build cedar around her so that he will not be able to get to her.

Here’s how the queen responded:

I was a wall,

and my breasts were like towers;

then I was in his eyes

as one who finds peace.

Solomon had a vineyard at Baal-hamon;

he let out the vineyard to keepers;

each one was to bring for its fruit a thousand pieces of silver.

My vineyard, my very own, is before me;

you, O Solomon, may have the thousand,

and the keepers of the fruit two hundred.
(vv. 10–12)

Then Solomon rejoined the song: “O you who dwell in the gardens, with companions listening for your voice; let me hear it” (v. 13).

Here is the third key to staying together and finishing well in your marriage: looking not just to heaven ahead of you but to the legacy behind you.

Remember back in chapter 8, verse 4, we heard a repeat of the admonition not to “awaken love until it pleases.” Why is that there? I mean, if they were growing old together, why would they worry about that? Hasn’t the time to awaken love long since passed?

See, there’s a slight twist in the Hebrew text there, and the queen was not saying, “Don’t awaken love until it’s time” to Solomon but to others, to the “daughters of Jerusalem.” She was counseling others.

In verses 8–9, the subject of the younger generation comes up. What do you do with the young girls (and, we can assume, the young men)? Solomon and his wife had wisdom to share with the younger generation. Their ministry was not over; it only shifted some of its focus. They didn’t retire their wisdom and coast. They kept building a foundation for the future, for the generations coming after them.

Suddenly all their mistakes and sins didn’t seem wasted. They had lots of things to teach, and a lot of that teaching consisted of what not to do. This is one great way that God redeems our sins and our stupidity.

There is no experience of joy or loss that has not been redeemed by Christ and now is used by the Holy Spirit of God to minister to others. What tends to dominate people in their failures is a feeling of inadequacy, as though the loss can’t be redeemed. That’s wrong thinking. Every failure in your life, every shortcoming, every stumble, every bloody knee, every broken nose is redeemed by Christ and used by the Holy Spirit to help shape, mold, and serve what’s behind you.

The Bible is very clear about how we are to engage those who are younger than us, whether in age or spiritually. Consider Titus 2:2–8:

Older men are to be sober-minded, dignified, self-controlled, sound in faith, in love, and in steadfastness. Older women likewise are to be reverent in behavior, not slanderers or slaves to much wine. They are to teach what is good, and so train the young women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, and submissive to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be reviled. Likewise, urge the younger men to be self-controlled. Show yourself in all respects to be a model of good works, and in your teaching show integrity, dignity, and sound speech that cannot be condemned, so that an opponent may be put to shame, having nothing evil to say about us.

The younger generation will praise us as examples of wisdom because we’ve invested in them, taught them, mentored them, and encouraged them. We built a legacy of faith and endurance for them to continue adding on to. We laid a strong foundation for the next generation of ministry.

When I came to pastor The Village Church, we were a church of about 160. I was twenty-eight years old. Lauren was pregnant with our first child. We very quickly hired a man named Gilbert Montez, an older guy who was an empty nester.

I praise God for that man because I felt so lost in so many ways. I had no idea how to do things. I had read all the books and researched all I could, but there’s a time when research falls apart in the line of fire.

Then our daughter Audrey came into the world. We were losing sleep. When that’s all you know, it’s like, “Oh man, is this the rest of my life? Do I ever get to sleep again? Will I ever not be tired again? Will she ever be able to just tell me what she wants?”

Gilbert came alongside my wife and me and said, “It won’t always be like this. This is a season. Be faithful in it. Enjoy it. It won’t be here long.” He spoke truth into our marriage and poured so much wisdom into me.

There have been older women who have come alongside my wife and mentored her and taught her so much.

I don’t care if you’re twenty-seven and your marriage is just coming out of a season you’d call a train wreck. As the Lord grows you, heals you, and begins to create a new relational dynamic between you and your spouse by his grace, your experiences are going to be invaluable. Your dark days will become jewels to pass on later in life.

For the first five or six years at The Village, we were so terribly young it was embarrassing. I just hated it. We were so hungry for gray hair.

We’d have all these twenty-year-olds sitting around, giving each other advice. It was like blind men describing vision to other blind men. We were making a bunch of mistakes, but we didn’t know it. We were finding the land mines by stepping on them.

We didn’t need a bunch of people coming in acting as though there was a way to never get blown up. We just needed people who’d stepped on a few land mines to come in and help us know what to look for. We needed people with some scars, with some wrinkles, with some white hair, with some hard-won wisdom to help us grow up. We needed people further along to help us get further along.

Don’t let the Enemy make you feel as though your marital stumblings and failures have no redemption in them. In fact, let those failures and stumblings be redeemed by the Lord, and learn how to serve the Lord together in those shortcomings.

Lauren and I frequently meet with a couple now. Sometimes we just have dinner. I know all we’re doing at that dinner is navigating their relational conflicts. They’ve been married for just a few years. Lauren and I are able to dig into our treasure chest of missteps and help them. We’re not sitting around, thinking, Gosh, I wish I could get those seven years back! Man, how could I ever talk about marriage now? How could I possibly stand up here and preach the things that I’ve preached when I’ve failed so miserably in so many of these areas?

No, no. The cross bids me to share. The cross bids me to boast of my weaknesses.

The grace of God says, “Brother, you know better than most.”

Who might compassionately walk alongside the alcoholic but one who’s been delivered from alcoholism? Who’s more qualified to encourage those struggling in marriage than those who may bear some scars but made it through?

One of the keys to longevity is serving the Lord together. Keep building; keep building; keep building.

One of my greatest joys in this season of my life—and I’m not an old man, I know, but I’ve been weathered a bit—is in how Lauren and I are able to minister so well together. Of course, there are things that I do alone and Lauren has things that she does alone, but we try as often as possible to overlap those things. We stay in tune with one another so she feels as much as possible a part of my ministry, and I do hers. We serve the Lord together. It’s part of our marriage health.

As I pastor an ever-growing church and manage a growing ministry platform, she’s very much in the trenches with me. The Lord has called us to this ministry, not me to this ministry.

We are building together. And by God’s grace, year by year, we will keep building together, passing the baton as God calls younger and more energetic pastors and couples. And when our knees get creaky and our hands get shaky and our eyes grow dim, we plan to keep building as best we can, to leave the best legacy we can so the generation behind us has as much wisdom as possible.

Still Believing

I love how the Song of Songs ends. Look at this: “Make haste, my beloved, and be like a gazelle or a young stag on the mountains of spices” (8:14).

We conclude much as we began: with pursuit, desire, and hope. The Song started with the romantic hope of, “Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth!” (1:2) and ends with, “Keep leaping over those mountains! Get back to me! Keep pursuing me!”

What marks our relationships as men and women, husbands and wives, is the ongoing pursuit of one another for the glory of God and our eternal joy. Why? Because this is the way God designed it to work, and in God’s good design, our joy and his glory are found.

Your need for a Savior will never be more apparent to you than when you’re trying to faithfully walk in the wisdom laid out in the Song of Solomon. And so my earnest hope for you, for me, is that the Holy Spirit will sustain us with faithfulness until the end. May we fight against becoming just good roommates. May we lean hard into the covenant in difficult days. And may we see our shortcomings redeemed and as empowerment for us to mentor in strength and wisdom into the brokenness of others.

May we go year by year, serving the Lord together with gladness. And may our hearts and lives be marked by a legitimate pursuit of one another day in and day out. It will not be easy. We will get distracted. God has given us the tools of repentance, confession, and forgiveness. He has laid before us the methods of how to fight well. He has shown us how important it is to seek outside counsel. He has demonstrated to us how to respond to another seeking forgiveness.

Regardless of your stage in life, the first relationship I would spend a lot of time considering is your relationship with God. Read this closely, just so you’re not thinking in some sort of ambiguous “Yeah, I love God” kind of way. What I’m talking about in your relationship with God is not that you’re behaving a certain way but rather that you have surrendered your life to Jesus Christ.

Do you find your gladness ultimately in Christ? Only in him is ultimate gladness found.

Learn to find your rest in Christ alone. Learn to lean into him as your only strength and wisdom. If you don’t, nothing else will make the forever kind of sense.

If you don’t understand that Christ died for your sins, and if you don’t know that you are loved, forgiven, and adopted, then you will miss out on the joy that no date, no wedding, no marriage could ever deliver.

It is the gospel and our belief in it that make dating, courtship, engagement, marriage, and growing old together unbelievably vibrant. It is our understanding that God just keeps forgiving us for the same things over and over and over again that informs our patience with our spouse. It is the unbelievable romancing of God toward us as the bride of Christ that should inform and motivate our romancing and pursuit of our spouse.

So first and foremost, we must consider Jesus. We must consider this great salvation offered to us in Christ.

It is possible to have a decent marriage outside of Jesus Christ. Our next-door neighbors for years were unbelievers, and they were kind of gross to watch. They were in their sixties, and they would be out in the garden and they’d pinch each other, and … I mean, it was just disturbing. I almost called the cops one time, like, “I shouldn’t have to see this.”

But here’s what I found out about them: they loved one another and loved life and had grown children and grandbabies, and they were doing great. They had a great marriage, a marriage that in many ways could be emulated. But they will never have the spiritual mingling of souls. Because, although they might be able to come together physically, emotionally, and intellectually, they will never be able to connect at the deepest possible level, at the spiritual levels, where Christ’s washing of his bride is made visible in the marriage of his saints.

It makes all the difference.

Although marriage is not eternal, you can eternally waste your marriage if it is not built on Christ.

Marriage, properly understood, is an understanding of the grace of God made manifest in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. We see this gospel mystery gleaming in the beams of old covenant light in the Song of Solomon. I pray that you’ve had the eyes to see them.

May we be people who know God and love him. And may our knowledge and love for him lead us to ongoing repentance, confession, and the seeking out of healthy, vibrant, strong relationships. May we pursue one another often for the glory of his name and to reflect all the more the beauty of his romantic pursuit of us as his covenant people.

In love, dating, courtship, marriage, and sex—as in all things—Christ is all.