I asked God this question this morning laying there (I used the covers as a visual aid). I said: God, what would I feel like, if I could feel You covering me now? If I could feel Your presence wrapping around me - if I could feel that You were as close as the air that I'm breathing? What would I feel like, if I could feel it?
It changed my life, just by doing that every day, because I knew: if I could change my hallowings in secret I could change what I was manifesting in public. I needed to learn to feel that God really liked me. I knew God loved me, but I didn't know that God liked me.
There are 5 steps to a Hebrew wedding process. I'm going to say them in Hebrew; and show it to you in the Bible, and hopefully that’s a tool that will help us. If I'm sharing my story, and it's not helping anybody but me - fair enough, this is good therapy okay!
1) Lakah - the stage of the relationship where somebody declared: “I want to make you mine”. In the '70s I think they called it ‘going steady’. When I was a teenager we called it ‘going together’.
2) Segullah - the stage of the relationship where I actually declare: not only do I want to make you mine; but “you are my treasured possession”. You are the apple of my eye. You are the most important person in the world to me.
3) Mikveh - the part of the wedding process where they washed, they cleansed. To think of it spiritually, it's: getting all your stuff straight before you say "I do".
4) Ketubah - the wedding contract. Every Hebrew marriage had a marriage contract, called a ketubah.
Let's say you and I are getting married - and you're way out of my league, but that's okay, alright? What would happen is, if we’re getting married - I would declare Lakah. In Hebrew, I would just say ‘lakah’ - a declaration of: ‘I want to make you mine’. At some point later, I would say ‘Segullah’ - and in her mind, she'd be like: we're moving along here! The next step would be Mikveh - and that's when you know I'm real serious, when I say: okay, it's time to wash.
When they baptise people, they baptised them in a Mikveh. It was a public declaration. They baptised people any time they changed social status; so any time they went from ‘unclean’ to ‘clean’, they would baptise them in a Mikveh, to declare in open public they can be touched now without being contaminated.
The next step would be: my family, and her family, would get together and make a Ketubah - a marriage contract. We can put anything in this marriage contract that we want; so as long as we both agree - such that the boundaries and expectations of our marriage are set in place on paper, and it's signed by both of us - Ketubah.
There would be a bride price in there - your family would charge my family for me to marry you.
There would be a doctrine of ‘oil, bread and shelter’ in there, which basically says that I'd have to support her.
There would be things in there around sexual expectations - all kinds of things in there. Ketubah was the clearly-set-out marriage expectations.
When we both agreed on it, we would sign it; then we'd stand up and face each other. As the groom-to-be, I would say: “I go to prepare a place for you, that where I am there you may be also”.
She would say back to me: “when will you return, to receive me unto yourself?”
I would say: “I do not know the day or the hour, but when my father approves the wedding chamber, he will send me back”.
It's all wedding language, so every Hebrew person listening to Jesus say that would go - He's talking about a wedding! This was wedding language - it happened every week, of every year, in First Century Hebrew culture.