Devotion to the Lord must precede effective service.

This is Nancy DeMoss-Walkimuth.

She says, make sure you're spending time alone with the Lord before rushing into a new ministry.

Once there has been devotion, intimacy with the Lord, the fruit of that devotion will be a passion for service.

This is the Revive Our Hearts podcast for Thursday, March 17, 2016.

Well, if you've been following along with us in this series, you know that we're coming toward the end of our lengthy series on the Song of Solomon, had a fall and stay in love with Jesus.

And we've tracked with this bride and her beloved through a whole series of ups and downs from initial love to now the final section where we're seeing them in mature love.

We're in chapter seven today, and we talked in the last session about the first nine verses

where the beloved praises the beauty and the maturity and the fruitfulness of his bride.

He says, for example, how fair and how pleasant you are, oh love with your delights.

Verse eight, let now the fragrance of your breath be like apples and the roof of your mouth

like the best wine. And then, right in the middle of verse nine, she interrupts. She actually

finishes his sentence for him. He's saying the fragrance of your breath is like apples,

the roof of your mouth like the best wine. And she says, the wine goes down smoothly for my beloved,

moving gently the lips of sleepers.

Now, we know she's the one talking because she calls him, my beloved.

He calls her, my love.

She finishes his sentence for him.

And it says, this is all for my beloved.

It's for you.

It's all about you.

And she continues to express that heart through the rest of the chapter. She picks up the conversation now, and she says, this wine that

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