This is a very interesting verse to me.“The kingdom of heaven is like a king (Father God) who prepared a wedding banquet for his son (Jesus).” Matthew 22:1-2 (NIV) The kingdom of God is like a wedding banquet? Really? What? Have you ever heard a message or read an article that talks about this? 

In my circles of Christianity, there is almost no talk about the kingdom is like a wedding. But we are called as Christians to be the Bride of the Bridegroom who is Jesus. If you are a ‘bride’, you are more cherished than just someone saved from hell going to heaven. Let’s explore 8 reasons why we want to be the bride of Jesus.

Reason #1 – We all want to be enjoyed by someone. 

This was built into us by God because He enjoys being with us! He wants us to know the love of Jesus in our hearts is more than just an appreciation that we are saved. Jesus wants us to know that He enjoys being with us like we enjoy being with family and good friends. This is a Godly principle – to be enjoyed by someone else. Rest assured – that Jesus Enjoys His Bride – You!

What happens when we are not enjoyed by our earthly mate? We feel rejection, shame, emptiness, and emotional impairment. It is the same way in our Christian life. Jesus is not distant and He really wants to be around us. Jesus died to win you back to His heart – not His hand! He doesn’t want a marriage so that He can have a cook, house keeper, ministry worker, etc. He wants a mate that He can be intimate with! Why? Because He enjoys you! He enjoys your personality, conversations, strengths, weaknesses, jokes, and stories. He made you that way. That is why he likes it.

Just as Satan tries to destroy natural relationships through rejection and pain, he does the same between you and Jesus. But Jesus does not reject you! This is a lie of the devil. Remember you are created in His image, so naturally He would like you. Your relationship with Him is not like 2 aliens talking but “2 peas out of the same pod”. As you are affectionate, so is God! You got your affection from Him. Jesus wants to be affectionate with you. It is right and natural to be affectionate and emotional with God as it is with our earthly mates. God has emotions towards you! Read Luke 15:4-5 and see the emotion that God has over you when He finds you (also look at verses 8 & 20).

Song of Songs 7:10 (KJV) “I am my beloved’s, and his desire is toward me.” Our lives will be truly changed when we understand the revelation that we are deeply enjoyed by God. This seems too good to be true to most people. Many believers automatically resist this truth because of their untaught mind and religious way of thinking. But the scriptures are very clear that He has pursued us and not the other way around. We can imagine that God will enjoy us in heaven or if we are spiritually mature, but the idea that He enjoys us when we are spiritually immature or on earth is unthinkable for many people. God as Father has passion for us as His children and God the Son has passion for us as His Bride. John 15:9a (NIV) “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you…”

Reason #2 – There is a craving in every human being to be in awe of something. 

This is why we love circuses, stunts, movies, science fiction, fantasy, etc. We are made to wonder about great and powerful things. Hollywood fills this God given desire with endless movies and TV shows. Unfortunately, they have also perverted this God given desire. One of the biggest lies of the devil that the Church has believed is that to be spiritual means you are boring. The exact opposite is true. The true Christian life is the greatest adventure and awe inspiring journey there is. God wants to take us on a journey and show us awe inspiring things about Himself, the Universe, the Earth, and ourselves. Ask Father to show you the awe of God and what he has created!

Father is showing us His Son Jesus in a new way. If He is our bridegroom then we ought to be fascinated with Him. These times are here. God is leading us on a journey to show us what Jesus is really like. If someone came up to you on the street today and said if you will go down the street and turn to the left you will get to meet Jesus personally, wouldn’t you run to meet Him? This is happening. He is letting us see Jesus as He is and not some dead religious icon representation. Seeing the Creator of the Universe is fascinating. Tell Father, I want more of Jesus!

Throughout church history most believers have not been deeply fascinated by the Lord, but they have simply gritted their teeth as they seek to avoid evil. However, a new anointing is being released on the church worldwide to see the awesomeness and beauty of the Lord Jesus Christ. God is answering our craving for awe and wonder by revealing to us the ultimate awe and wonder – the God man Jesus. Ask Father to increase your fascination of Jesus!

The reason many people go into sin is to answer a craving for adventure, stimulation, etc. But in the end the stimulation leaves us burned out and used up. But as we learn to see the beauty of the Lord it will give us supernatural strength that goes on and on. We won’t even want to go into sin because it is an inferior pleasure compared with the beauty of God. In Revelation 4:8, the overwhelmed seraphim angels gazed on God and were stunned by what they saw. These “burning ones” cried out, “Holy! Holy! Holy!”  Let’s start crying out to see the beauty of the Lord and not accept any cheap substitution like Hollywood entertainment, video games, or other man made creation.

Reason #3 – Every one longs to feel beautiful or handsome. 

On top us this natural desire, the Western culture has an obsession with physical appearance and vanity. Think how much time and money is spent on advertising clothes, cars, perfumes, jewelry, etc. The reason is that this is a God given value that the Devil is trying to fulfill before we fill it with God. We talked about the beauty of God and how it is to fascinate us. But here is the good news: we are created in His image and we inherited the beauty of God. What a concept! Ask Father to to show you the beauty you have created with!

The fact is that you are beautiful to God and He loves the way you are! Remember He also enjoys you! The amazing thing is that as we spend time in Jesus’ presence, it will fulfill that desire in us to be beautiful or handsome! He as our bridegroom will fulfill that in us! We spend much time and money pursuing something very temporary because we feel so ugly. As we spend time in God’s presence, it will fulfill that need to be told we are beautiful. Make Jesus your all, your lover, your God, and let His words of praise fill that need in you. Psalms 90:17a (KJV) “And let the beauty of the LORD our God be upon us…” Psalms 149:4 (NASB) “For the LORD takes pleasure in His people; He will beautify the afflicted ones with salvation.”

Most people, especially men, have a hard time approaching God at the emotional level we have been talking about. Men are typically told from when they are young children that to show emotion is to be weak. If you have been taught this it is not true. Deep down we have emotions, we just don’t know how to correctly release them. One of those emotions is to be well liked, handsome, etc. In your quiet times, sincerely seek Jesus and you will see that He has emotions too and they are for you. Tell Him how you feel. Tell Him if you are lonely, depressed, feel incapable, etc. You will be surprised that He will say something back to you in His own way that will fulfill that longing to be attractive and needed.

Reason #4 – In the core of our being, we long to be successful and noble. 

Our great God created us with a pursuit of greatness deep within our emotional genetics. Sometimes we misunderstand this longing and assume that we must repent of it, but this isn’t true. We cannot repent of the God given longing to be great, but only of pursuing it in a wrong way. We were made for greatness and honor. Remember, it was God who said to Adam to take dominion over the whole earth, subdue it, and multiply. This command is still valid – it was never taken away! The key is to do it with Jesus. Discuss what you are to do with him. This will keep your eyes on him as you walk with him.

Reason #5 – We are honored heirs of God’s throne.

You are a heir! This produces a divine inner strength and a fierce determination to be wholly His. Why would we want to be a part of any other team? The key thing to remember is that we are great because we are doing it with Him – our bridegroom. It is His show that He shares with us. Walk close to Him and walk in greatness. Rom. 8:17 (NIV) “Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.”

Reason #6 – We all have a built in desire from God to be intimate with someone. 

We all long to know and be known by somebody. But did you know you can do this with Jesus? This is the ultimate intimacy. Just as an earthly Bride and Bridegroom are intimate and share everything, Jesus wants to do this with us. If we are willing to be vulnerable with the Lord, we can go to great depths of intimacy with Him. The great thing is that when we do this, Jesus will return the intimacy. It is not a one way street. He will entrust to you as His Bride unique secrets of Him and His strategies.

Unfortunately, intimacy gets perverted in our society. We pursue it in the wrong way. When this happens, shame and guilt will attach themselves to us. We then try at all costs to avoid intimacy. But intimacy is a God given thing and is not wrong. While God wants us to be intimate with others, He also wants us to be intimate with Him. The good thing is that intimacy with Him never has shame and will fulfill any inordinate desires in us to be intimate with others in the wrong way. Ask Father to heal you of any fear of intimacy wherever it may live.

Reason #7 – He has many secrets that He will reveal to His Bride.

These are secrets that the principalities and powers of our enemy do not know. Ephesians 3:10 (NIV) “His intent was that now, through the church, the manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms”. Because of our value to Him we are invited into the mysterious realm of Divine knowledge. God put this longing in us for intimacy because He wants us to find our deepest satisfaction in experiencing intimacy with the Divine. God will allow us to know Him more fully than the rest of His created beings. This spiritual intimacy is available to the redeemed both in time and eternity. Wow!

Intimacy involves not only our knowledge of His (Jesus) secrets but also, His knowledge of our secrets. He understands all the secret aspects of our life that are unknown, unnoticed and misunderstood by others. Jesus feels our pain and struggle. He knows our sin and shame. Yet He believes in us and treats us with honor as He walks with us through every season of life. Ask Father to help you acknowledge your secrets to him for healing and increased intimacy. He will not reject you!

Reason #8 – Jesus loves to celebrate with us in our victories. 

He created you to succeed. He loves it when we partner with him and victory comes. He knows our true greatness and He sees the heights of our nobility in Him. When it comes about, he is more proud of what is accomplished than you are! So share your victories with him. He loves hearing about them!

All of us want to be a part of something that we can pour our whole heart into and be passionate about. We don’t like being a part of a “losing” team. We don’t like spending time on things that have no lasting value. This characteristic is built in from God. Many people try to find this in their earthly mates, jobs, ministry, etc. But this has a limited ability to passionately involve us. These things will not give life. The only thing that can return passion to us is to do what is on His heart.

As humans, if we don’t have something to die for, then we don’t have anything to live for. We don’t work right when we are half-hearted. The passive heart is vulnerable to every lust of the flesh. What are you passionate about? Is it a God given Passion? Ask Father to show you what you are to live for. Show me what I should die for!

We have a longing to be great. This is the longing to do great things that last. We all are desperate for a life of meaning that is filled with relevance and significance. We so want to make a contribution to the lives of those we care about. We enjoy bringing good news to others. We delight to exhilarate others. The good news is that again this is a God given desire. Why? Because God is this way and we are created in His image (Gen. 1:26). He has made you to make a relevant impact in the lives of others. Ask Father to reveal to you where you are to make an impact in the lives of others that you ordained before I was even created! (Ephesians 2:10)

In closing, we are created in God’s image (Gen. 1:26). As God makes an impact in the world, He has made you to make a relevant impact in the lives of others. The devil doesn’t want this to happen because this is how the Kingdom of God is advanced and not his. So he tells you that the “path to meaning” is to go off somewhere and find yourself. The opposite is true. The only going off is into the heart of Jesus. From there He will show you His burden for others and ask you to help in fixing that burden. So you are now helping people from a place of having been with Jesus and not trying to meet some void or need in you. This will produce rewards that literally last forever!