Come away in reckless abandon

Psalm 45

February 17

    Like Proverbs 31 and the Song of Songs (Solomon), one cannot read this psalm and wonder if a woman contributed to the composition of this extremely beautiful psalm. The King James Version introduces this as a “song of loves.” The poetry of the first verse is striking, “my tongue is the pen of a ready writer.”

  If the previous psalm cries out for a lack of response, this psalm resounds with beautiful intimacy. Whether known or not by the author, this is a psalm about the coming Christ, who was as much as a thousand years away in coming the first time (see Heb. 1:8-9). I would encourage you to read Ps. 45 in the exquisite language of the King James Version.

   Within the content of this psalm, we, the reader, identify with the role of the bride of Christ, and the Father of the Warrior is none other but God the Father. We frequently say we love God and Christ loves the church, but few passages of Scripture capture the emotionalism of such love in the sense of grandeur and poise and grace. As you read this psalm, ask yourself, “Do I truly love Christ? Do I understand God’s love for me?”

    "Hearken, O daughter, and consider, and incline thine ear; forget also thine own people, and thy father's house; So shall the king greatly desire thy beauty: for he is thy Lord; and worship thou him."
As a man, I often find it hard to identify a love relationship with Christ as a bridegroom and myself as the bride, the church. And yet in a platonic, spiritual and nonphysical way, we must rid ourselves of the earthly, distorted view of love and fall without restraints into an abandoned love for our Savior.

   Oswald Chambers first etched the word “abandon” onto my spiritual heart, “stating whenever the realization of God comes, even in the faintest way imaginable, be determined to recklessly abandon yourself, surrendering everything to Him. It is only through abandonment of yourself and your circumstances that you will recognize Him.”

   The psalmist wrote of such abandonment. Like a lover whose fear has been replaced with reckless trust, fall deeply for Christ today, arouse your spiritual passions to follow this King into a relationship of devotion.