The Spirit of the Bride

"Then I said, Behold, here I am,
coming to do Your will, O God."
Heb. 10:7 Amplified.

During the midnight season with the Father referred to in Part II — The Groom's Fiery Cost, after the Father lifted up to me Michael's strong power to save, and that He was paying the cost and earning the right to bring His bride to the full realization of her marriage to God, Father made it very clear to me that there is only one way for the bride to be made ready for the wedding. She must be in love with the Groom. Each member of the bride must receive the divine anointing of the Spirit of the bride, because only that anointing can divinely love and be one with the Bridegroom. Father said that the Spirit of the bride cannot be faked. This anointing oil cannot be humanly produced or imitated. Nothing is hidden from the eyes of our heavenly Husband as He sees clear through the soul. He knows intuitively the soul that has received the anointing of the Spirit of the bride, and the soul that hasn't. The heart that is in the earth continually looks to the sensual or sexual to judge this relationship. They miss completely the vast and deep intrusion of the soul by the soul of Michael. They completely misunderstand the divine touch. As with Jesus, He brought the heavenly dew, but all men failed to perceive it. The bride alone grasps the depth and meaning of this union. All others are oblivious to anything but their own dysfunctional world, trying to judge the heavenly marriage by that world.

In July, when the anointing of Messiah came to us from the Father, The Song was written to draw the bride of God to His chamber of love. The introduction stated:

The Song of Solomon is a beautiful and most supreme example of how one finds the Lord. If the reader will carefully and prayerfully consider The Song, he will find the answer to all the mysteries. He will know what he must now do. If the mystery of the Song is not carefully considered, the answer will slip by like a moment.

We have been courted and know the truth about our heavenly Husband. Now, it is the woman's work alone in yielding up to Him. She must open the door to Him and make the decision whether or not she will be married to Him in whatever form He comes to her. He is come for His lover and if the virgins have not taken the opportunity to prepare for His light by taking much oil with them in the waiting, they will be left outside the door. The other virgins will not be left, but will be invited on into the feast He has prepared for them. "Two women shall be grinding together; the one shall be taken, and the other left." Luke 17:35. This study constitutes the basis for the marriage feast. In the Greek "the one shall be taken" literally means taken along side. "The other left" literally means, left desolate, left unmarried.

It was at this very time that the voice of the anointing of the bride of God was also heard distinctly and recognized for what it was. It was an anointing of irrepressible responsiveness to Messiah and a love of intimate communion with Him. It was a divine spirit that recognized its oneness with the Spirit of God in the One sent from God. It was an anointing of yielding and abandonment to the divine purpose of the hour.

The anointing of the spirit of the bride is stronger now than ever before. It is brooding over the land, seeking to anoint and permeate those who consent to let it be in them. These pure breathings of divine love from the Father for His precious Son is the prerequisite for each virgin that enters into the wedding.

We have included a few excerpts from the notes that the Father ordained to be preserved from the beginning until now, so that the breathings of the Spirit of the bride can be recognized clearly by all who contemplate them and so the virgin might also recognize the stirrings within her of the Spirit of the bride.

July 25-Heart-breaking desire; The anointing

My dearest Faithful Keeper,

Here is the diary of the first part of my night last night. I feel Your continual sustaining, Spirit-mate and Sharer of the knowing.

I find a strong, heartbreaking desire deep within me. I go to bed, but not to sleep. I find the song breathing through me, "Blest hour when mortal man retires to hold communion with his God; To send to heaven his warm desires, and listen to the sacred word."

Verse to my spirit --I see MIchael's face, and everything about His life and being as He lives the words of this prayer to the Father before us: "I have revealed and will continue to make known Your character and Your very Self, and I will that the love which You have bestowed upon Me may be felt in their hearts - and that I myself may be in them." John 17:26.

The Father providentially leads me to the following precious inspirations that comforts my soul with a description of what I feel happening deep within me, and draws me out to Him:

God requires every heart to be filled with pure, clean, sanctified Christlike love. The soul is awakened to cry aloud with every aspiration." [That's what I'm feeling! How can you sleep when your soul is being awakened? You can't!] Let your swelling heart break for the longing it has for the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. When our hopes are fulfilled, self is hid with Christ in God Who has anointed us with the oil of gladness by His divine efficiency. Testimonies to Southern Africa 83

In the secret place of prayer, pour out your most hidden desires and longings to the Father of Infinite pity, and in the hush and silence of the soul, that voice which never fails to answer the cry of human need will speak to our hearts. He would have us understand how earnestly and tenderly His heart yearns over us. He invites us to take our trials to His sympathy, our weakness to His strength, our emptiness to His fulness. Never has one been disappointed who came to Him. "They looked unto Him and were lightened, and their faces were not ashamed." Ps. 34:5.

Those who seek God in secret, telling the Lord their needs and pleading for help will not plead in vain. "Thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly." As we make Christ our daily companion we shall feel the power of an unseen world all around us; and by looking unto Jesus we shall be assimilated to His image. There will be a growing intelligence in prayer. We are receiving a divine education, and this is illustrated in a life of diligence and zeal. The soul that turns to God for its help, its support its power, by daily earnest prayer, will have noble aspirations, CLEAR PERCEPTIONS OF TRUTH AND DUTY, lofty purposes of action, and a CONTINUAL HUNGERING AND THIRSTING after righteousness [Himself].

Maintaining a connection with God we shall be enabled to diffuse the light, peace and serenity that rule in our hearts. The strength acquired in prayer to God, united with persevering effort in training the mind in thoughtfulness and care taking prepares one for daily duties and keeps the spirit in peace under all circumstances.

Draw near to God. He will put a word in our mouth to speak for Him, even praise unto His name. He will teach us a strain from the song of the angels even thanksgiving to our Heavenly Father. IN EVERY ACT OF LIFE the light and love of an indwelling Saviour will be revealed. Outward troubles cannot reach the life that is lived by faith in the Son of God.

The prayer that comes from an earnest heart, when the simple wants of the soul are expressed, as we would ask an earthly friend for a favor expecting it to be granted -- this is the prayer of faith. The unspoken cry of the heart, broken and subdued with a sense of its utter weakness, finds its way to the Father of all mercy. MB 85,6.

I find the song of strong desire breathing through me:

COME IN, O COME!

Come in, O come! the door stands open now;
I know Thy voice; Lord Jesus, it is Thou;
I seek no more to alter things, or mend,
Before the coming of so great a Friend;
Come, not to find, but make this trusting heart
A dwelling worthy of Thee as Thou art.

Father draws my eyes across the page in the Hymnal to the words that describe the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. I identify so keenly with the phrases I highlighted:

STAND STILL AND SEE

"Stand still and see!" yea, see, today
New wonders of redeeming grace
The mighty Potter molds the clay
Again within this hallowed place,
Till through the human, the Divine
Is seen once more to move and shine.

Here "commune with thine heart, be still!"
Search all the secret stores of years,
Till silence, now unbearable
My need gives way with blinding tears;
Then fall at Jesus' feet and say,
Thou can'st, Thou shalt, cleanse all today.

"Be still, and know that I am God!"
Peace, broken heart and swelling breast!
Christ's hand alone doth press the need,
His love transfigures and brings rest.
Take Lord, Thy power, reign, great I AM
O'ershadowing Guest, all conquering Lamb!

Then in the hush of this fair tent,
And solemn stillness of this hour,
Three thousand souls before Thee bent,
Break forth, O Holy Ghost, in power;
Sweep through, Thou Wind of God, sweep through;
Once more, cleanse, consecrate, renew.

Words come to me from the Father, Those who beg for bread at midnight will not be denied. Those who allow their hearts to be broken for love and efficiency at midnight will not be denied. I look at the clock. It is midnight.

Then the words came to me, "Anoint thine eyes with eyesalve that thou mayest see." The word anoint meant, "to anoint one's self--to use, to take for one's use, to make use of a thing. This is from the sacred and religious word for anoint; through the idea of contact; to anoint - consecrating Jesus to the Messianic office and furnishing Him with the necessary powers for its administration."

"Anoint your eyes" means "metaphorically, the eyes of the mind, the faculty of knowing." Father is saying, "Anoint your eyes with Messiah." Look at My Son. Make use of the preparation I have supplied for your eyes.

The Father said to me, "You have an anointing from the Holy One, and you know (see) all things." "The anointing which you have received of Him abideth in you, and the same anointing teaches you all things, and is truth, and is no lie, and even as it has taught you, you shall abide in Him. Let that therefore abide in you, which you have heard from the beginning; so you also shall continue in the Son, and in the Father." 1 John 2:20,27,24. I was taken back to the Father's intimation of my calling on December 3, 1999:

In order to be God's special instrument, you should lean to no one, but hang upon Him alone, and like the clinging vine, let Your tendrils entwine about Him. He will make you a means through which to communicate His light to the people. You must daily gather strength from God in order to be fortified, that your surroundings may not dim or eclipse the light that He has permitted to shine upon His people through you ... Your success is in your simplicity. As soon as you depart from this your power is gone. According to the light He has given you, He holds you responsible. 'Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit saith the Lord of hosts. 5T 667.

All my will, soul and heart and mind is yielded to Your full control, by Your keeping power. Michal

Here I Am

The precious Spirit of the bride that came upon the witnesses, and by which the Father led them to His divine Son, was a soft, quiet, patient, dependent, yielding spirit. The evening before the Father opened up my calling to lift up Michael before the church and the world, I was standing at the kitchen sink washing dishes, and I felt the presence of the Father come down on me and put the words in my mouth: "All to Jesus I surrender, all to Him I freely give." Immediately I became conscious of a divinely supplied prayer of yielding responsiveness breathing through my being, "Here I am surrendering all." Accompanying those words of response was this precious Spirit of faith which I could feel, and from out of Whose mouth that response had breathed. This Spirit was possessed by the knowing that in patient, blessed quietness the personal meaning of those words would inevitably come.

As I was standing there, this precious, quiet Spirit from the Father held me in patient waiting. I found myself relating to a scene from the allegory, Hinds Feet on High Places, where Much-Afraid was quietly waiting for a continued unfolding of divine instructions to her heart. She was at the very end of her extremely long journey up to the High Places of Love, where she found herself kneeling before a tiny brook. The Shepherd had given her the assurance that her ears would hear a word behind her saying, "This is the way, walk in it, when you turn to the right hand and when you turn to the left." (Isa. 30:21) Completely exhausted and physically unable to go forward to the completion of her journey, the promised voice had instructed her, "Drink from the brook and be strengthened." But upon kneeling and drinking, the water was so bitter that her stomach rejected it, and she was unable to retain it. As I saw her kneeling by the brook, gasping for a moment, her words came back to me and I felt the same divine Spirit of soft, quiet, patient waiting which her prayer conveyed: "My Lord, Here I am, in the place Thou didst send me to - doing the thing Thou didst tell me to do." "She felt nothing but a great stillness in which only one desire remained, to do that which He had told her, simply because He had asked it of her. One flame burned steadily, the flame of concentrated desire to do His will." She had obeyed - at least, she had obeyed as far as she could go in obedience. As Much Afraid waited patiently in silence, the voice came again, giving her simple instructions for sweetening the bitter water so she could drink and be strengthened.

As this Spirit of the bride caused me to begin to feel the awakenings of the dormant spiritual instincts within me, I felt the overwhelming need of being quiet so this awakening and these delicate sensings in my spirit wouldn't be overridden. "I charge you, O you daughters of Jerusalem, by the gazelles or by the hinds of the field, which are free to follow their own instincts." S.S. 2:7.

In the early hours of the morning, the Father awakened me with this sentence: "Here I am," opens the way for the "letting" soul to take in the very Faithfulness of God. What the Father asks us to do or be, cannot be accomplished humanly any more than the Father's heart could stop beating; but when He supplies the Spirit of the bride breathing those divine words in us, "Here I am," whatever He has required, simply becomes possible.

The witnesses continually found the anointing of "Here, I am," breathing through us. Sometimes unconsciously and sometimes very consciously and deliberately in response to the humanly impossible instructions we were receiving from the Father. These weren't three magic words, but an immediate divinely supplied response to the Father's opening will. Madam Guyon wrote, "When the soul is perfectly yielding, it loses all its own consistency, so to speak, in order to take any moment the shape that God gives it."

Since that time, it has come to me over and over again, that all the times the Father has put those words, "Here I am," in my mouth, they have always been supplied in response to some humanly impossible instruction from Him.

"Surrender all to Me."

"Here I am, surrendering all," is the yielding, enabling response breathing through me. I don't understand as yet what I am even surrendering, or how to let go of whatever it is, but that prayer of the Spirit opens its own way for its reality to be experienced.

"Only believe!"

"Here I am, only believing." In the face of everything I'm seeing and feeling right now, I am speaking the word of truth that You put in my mouth.

The Father showed me that the true divine spirit of "Here I am," by-passes the inability of the human mind to "understand" the divine instructions of the moment and enters into our spirit, bringing with it an open, restful acceptance of God's enabling word; and then through that very openness, the Father's own divine faithfulness is allowed to enter and unite with His enabling instructions, and sweet is the divine fruit. "And so the holy, pure, sinless Thing, (Offspring) which shall be born of you will be called the Son of God." Luke 1:35 Amplified. "Here I am, coming to do Your will," whatever that is, and all that it entails, whatever that is going to look like, or feel like. It takes me to a place I've never been before. "Here I am," is a carte blanch to the Father. To do His will, this is perfect rest. Led by His movings upon our mind and heart, and not by our understanding, we did not use this prayer; this prayer rendered us useable, as it was breathed through us from the Father in accomplishing His will.

What I have seen and experienced is that the Spirit of the bride simply lets the Father's words of instruction come in, and responding to them in her Spirit of faith and yielding responsiveness, through some divine transmission, I find myself being taken up and conveyed along in obedience to each humanly impossible command. The Spirit of "Here I am," gives permission for the Spirit of Messiah to perform an unconscious work within.

The virgin Mary was divinely supplied with these words when the angel brought her impossibility to her: "Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to Thy word." Luke 1:38. And her cousin, who knew this divine secret by personal experience said, "Blessed is she that believed; for there shall be a performance of those things which were told her from the Lord." Luke 1:45. Performance literally means, "there shall be the event which verifies the promise; a consummation - a completion of the promise." Strong's Concordance. "For with God nothing is ever impossible and no word from God shall be without power or impossible of fulfillment." Luke 1:37 Amplified.

It is really the Father's Holy Spirit breathing those words through our very beings? "God said, I AM Who I AM and WHAT I AM, and I WILL BE WHAT I WILL BE." Ex. 3:14 Amplified. The Amplified Footnote to Exodus 3 says, "It is God's business to choose His special instruments; and when we are persuaded that we are in the line of His purpose, we have no right to question the wisdom of His appointments. To do so is to depreciate His wisdom or to doubt His power and willingness to become all that is necessary to complete our need…To know the name of God is to witness the manifestation of those attributes and apprehend that character which His name denotes." The Spirit of the bride's divinely supplied prayer, "Here I am," signifies the Father's active presence, and His power and willingness to become in us all that is necessary.

"Here I AM" is really the Father's divinely begotten personal Presence moving and living within us. When Messiah came the first time, He found the Father's Holy Spirit breathing through Him the very same way to His Father. "Hence, when Christ entered into the world, He said…Behold, here I am, coming to do Your will, O God." Heb. 10:5,7 Amplified. And somehow, like Abraham, it is "counted to us for righteousness," when we let God be Himself in us.

Chapter 3, page: 1, 2, 3