Refuge Theology, Part One

Some have asked and/or wondered why I entitled my blog "The Refuge," so I would like to attempt to explain it a bit. This will take quite a few posts, so I'll start with laying a foundation.

Here at the International House of Prayer (IHOP), we teach that there are three dominant faces of God that He is revealing at this hour of history: The Bridegroom, The King and The Judge.


KING
Revelation 4 says there is ONE seated on an eternal throne. In the way He administrates all of human history, God is a wise and sovereign King (translation: He's really, really smart and really, really strong). He raises earthly rulers and brings them low; He promotes and tears down; He cause one nation to be moved and another to be immovable; He hardens the hearts of some and softens the hearts of others; He sets out laws of nature (seasons and gravity, for instance) and laws of function (sowing and reaping, for instance); He controls everything big, like solar systems, and everything miniscule, like quarks; He has dominion over the seen and the unseen, and the spiritual and the natural. And, now think about this, He does it all without violating any person's free will--at all. He is the sovereign and wise King.


BRIDEGROOM
In the core of His being, He is a passionate Bridegroom. His heart is ravished over us, and this overflowing heart of desire and delight is what motivates Him every second of every day. In everything that He does, whether it is bringing blessing or pain into our lives, it is from His overflowing heart of love and desire. "God is LOVE," says the Apostle John. That means, in the deepest part of the triune God is tenderness, affection and longing; a voracious desire so reckless in its pursuit that He would look at death and count it as joy if it stood a chance of winning your love for Him. As much as a man longs for a woman, so God longs for you. The Bible begins with a wedding between the first man and woman, and it ends with a wedding celebration. Throughout the middle are countless pictures of Jesus, the heavenly Bridegroom, and the believer, the Bride. Look at Esther and the king, Hosea and Gomer, Isaiah and Israel, Jeremiah and Israel, the Song of Solomon, and many of the New Testament parables. In fact, when God speaks in the Old Testament, it is many times (you could almost say "most times") as a lovesick Husband who is longing for His bride. "The Father's love was so overwhelming, He sent Jesus, the eternal romantic, to Earth. With joy in His heart, Jesus gave His life for us. All we need to do is say yes to His love and we will never perish, but will be with Him forever and partake of love together for all eternity (John 3:16)." Yes, God is a passionate Bridegroom and the redeemed are His Bride.


JUDGE
In all of His ways, God is the righteous and good Judge. Only a being with a heart of love can judge rightly; and if we are to be honest, that is the only kind of judge we want. Just think, if He did not know everything (lacking the "wise and sovereign King" part), and if He did not have love or mercy for EVERY person (lacking the "passionate Bridegroom" part), that would make Him a foolish, biased controller--evil in all His ways...without goodness in any form. We NEED a righteous and good Judge. We could not stand under the weight or scrutiny of anything less. The book of Revelation says that He will personally come to every single individual and wipe away every tear. On that day He will come to me, speak of that which I have gone through, and supernaturally touch every pain I have ever felt that has not already been taken care of. He will demand payment for pain. The scary part is, I know I have hurt others as well; that is one reason why I need a good and righteous Judge.

QUESTION
So then, how do we reconcile the heart of the Bridegroom with the face of the Judge? How can a passionate God appear on the Earth at the end and, with His bare hands, kill those in positions of authority who have ravaged mankind? How can the "God who so loves the world" take the scroll from the Father, break the seals and loose calamity upon tragedy upon death upon destruction across the entire world? How can He kill a third and then a fourth of mankind? How can He do all these things if He is so loving? [Rev. 5:9; 6:1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 12; 16:1, and the kicker 16:9 ... Jesus has control over the plagues]

Amongst the Church, reconciling the heart of the Bridegroom with the face of the Judge seems to be quite difficult. The King part is okay, but the other two are hard. They seem like complete opposites, but it is very clear that it is the Lord. What's more, if you can see Him as He truly is you will fall more madly in love with Him for it.

I will leave you with no answers for tonight in hopes that you will wrestle with Him and pursue Him in all His glory--the great and the terrible, the passion and the fury. For our invitation is to make the Lord our Refuge, and the only way to make Him our Refuge is to wrestle with Him over the issues that plague our heart and mind. He is not afraid of our questions. Neither must we be; for just as life is in the journey, the answers are actually IN the wrestling.