The Bible says, like a person taking a light and bringing it down and lighting an oil lamp that was not working, he said that's what God does to our spirit. When we receive Christ we receive the love of God into our heart, it ignites something inside us. Isn't that wonderful? God ignites love inside you, then it's your job to keep it going. In the Old Testament God shows it everywhere in the Bible. Here's one example they had in the Old Testament. God said make an altar for Me. He says I want you to prepare an offering for Me, and give something to Me, then fire came from heaven. He said now you just keep the fire going, keep that fire of love burning, see? So God loves us, and there's a part of us can never be satisfying unless God satisfies us, so it says in another one of the Proverbs, it says in Proverbs 18:28, you will light and ignite, and set me on fire. How do we do that? When we receive Jesus Christ, when we experience God's love, we start to ignite on the inside. Now God has designed you with a number of thirsts or longings inside. It's interesting, everyone's got them, doesn't matter where they are, what colour, what race, we're designed with these needs.
One of them, there's a thirst in our heart for security. Every person longs to feel security. It's built into us, it's a longing see and we're longing to be loved unconditionally, not to have to work and never be sure whether we're acceptable, receive love that's unconditional and acceptance no matter what we've done, we're secure in that relationship. We need that. People enter into relationships hoping they'll find security, but if we don't find it in God, what we'll do is we'll find a substitute, so people enter into all kinds of relationships looking for security and then hurt themselves, because they need to find it in God. The second need we have, is the need for self-worth, to feel we're a person of value, so we try to find it apart from God; well we'll get lots of money, we'll try and become important people or get significant positions and whatever. But at the end of the day, none of those things satisfy. The money goes at the wrong time when you need it the most, the position fails and falls over and you get fired and something changes. There's no security in it. There's nothing lasting in it, but God never changes. He will always tell you how much He values you.
You look back at the cross, you see His value expressed in a very tangible, practical way - but right now we can experience Him. You can have that. There's another need we have, it's the need for significance, the need to have a sense of purpose in our life. There's a need to think that my life is not nothing but it counts for something, and God is the only one that can give you that, so if we don't find it in God we'll find it somewhere else, in thirst for adventure, in thirst for love and intimacy. But you know if you don't find some of those things in God, what you do is you try to find something that'll fill it, so guys get real excited about man stuff, and get excited out there and watching a match and getting all excited. But actually there's an area of adventure that God wants to put in your hearts called the walk of faith, where He takes you into situations, gives you opportunities to take risks and show courage and trust in Him. All the other stuff's a substitute - so this is God, this is what He's like.
So God wants to reveal His love for you. I want you to have a look in Song of Solomon. Guys are going to find this one a bit hard too but here it is, it's there anyway. So most guys just overlook this book - I'd rather go into the Kings you know, and read about the kings and the battles, and fighting the battles and won great victories and whatever, but that's only part of life you know. You can't live all your life like that, so Song of Solomon was put in there to show us the nature of the loving relationship God wants with us. Now look at this, now here it is. Song of Solomon's, which is Solomon's and remember it's just a picture and now here's the woman. Now remember she's speaking about the Lord; Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth, for your love is better than wine. Whoa! Now if you've ever been kissed, you remember what a kiss is like, first kiss. You don't usually forget it. My first kiss was a long time ago - I remember it. [Laughs]