The Heart of a true Lover: An Exposition of the Song of Solomon

By Henry Nwaneri

Dear Friend,

If there is one relationship book you should read, this is it. We have left relationship matters to singles who are looking or married who are in trouble. The statistics highlighting loneliness are dumbfounding. Something is seriously wron

• Language: English
• Publisher: Book Writing Founders
• Release date: Dec 1, 2022
• ISBN: 9781957547435

Book preview

The Heart of a true Lover

By

Henry Nwaneri

Copyright © 2022 by Henry Nwaneri

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.

Dedication

This book is dedicated to every FRIEND, who fights for their friend-ship, you deserve nothing but the best love you can ever get, and I have no doubt that ‘something’ is about to happen.

About the Author

Henry Nwaneri is a passionate lover of Jesus Christ, an intercessor, a prophetic voice, and the lead Pastor at Jesus House International, a nondenominational fellowship. Henry answered the call to ministry in August 1991 and has since then pioneered and planted several successful churches on four continents. Henry has ministered in over 60 countries with the message of preparing the church for the coming of the Lord.

Henry is passionate about revival and what it takes to birth a revival in our communities. In November 2019 come on just before the COVID pandemic hit, Henry was led by the Lord to walk away from the church where he had pastored for 8 years, to begin the nondenominational arm of his ministerial assignment.

Henry's greatest joys are carrying the presence of God, stirring and revival wherever he goes, and interceding daily for the body of Christ. Henry is involved with several prayer groups with over 7000 worldwide members that are committed to staying in the background and interceding for the body of Christ and for God's move on the earth.

Henry has authored several books such as how to overcome prayerlessness, overcoming the spirit of anger, the identity code, and where the sun never sets. Henry is the president and founder of Mantle Publishers and Rhema Gospel TV.

To connect with Henry in the Courts of Prayers prayer group please send an email to;

[e-mail]

Or go to www.henrynwaneri.com/contact and sign up for information on how to join Courts of Prayers intercessors.

Praise for The Heart of True Lover

I counted it a thing of honor when Pastor Henry gave me the advanced chapters of his book to read. Pastor Henry has been my father in the Lord, my mentor, and my friend, and I have held him in high regard for the longest time. He helped me through the toughest time of my life and brought me to where I am today, in love with my husband and married to him.

I read most of his chapters in tears and felt I should have read this book when I was a teenager. When I finished, I told him that I was so engrossed in the message in the book that I forgot to do any spell check or proofreading. I felt that proofreading the book was a betrayal of how much the book had blessed me even in its raw and unedited format.

This is a book I will be buying for everyone that I love who is single, male, or female. I cannot believe that all that is in this book is just a simple interpretation of one chapter of the Bible. I am earnestly looking forward to every edition of this book and the other ones to come. If there is a way to do more than recommending this book, I would do it, and not because PH is my pastor, but because the wealth of resources that are in this book is something every believer, single or married, male or female, young or old, is supposed to receive.

Sheena Arthur

Canada

If you want to understand why so many servants of God remain single in the midst of so many other single fellow Christians,  if you want to understand why so many people are attracted to people who ultimately end up being toxic and bad for them, if you want to understand why so many women who are children of God and even servants of God have problems settling down in a marriage or relationship, if you want to understand why so many marriages in Christianity are failing, then you need to read this book. At the end of proofreading and editing it, apart from the corrections that I made, the word I wrote most on almost every page was ‘YES’. I found myself saying YES to everything.

Nicole Anderson Smith

Gary, Indiana

Pastor Henry has done such a good job with such a very difficult topic. This book is not just a relationship resource, but it is also a scriptural resource because Pastor Henry takes you to a realm of understanding the Song of Solomon that you most likely have not seen anywhere else.

Suni Brito

GA, USA

This is the kind of book you want to read twice because every paragraph of it seems to be speaking to something about your life. This is the kind of book you read and wonder if the Author was thinking about you as he wrote this book. As a woman in my late 40s, I cannot recommend this book enough. As a wife and a mother, I cannot recommend this book enough to other wives and mothers. Henry spoke to the issues that are known and then he spoke to the issues that are deep and buried and unknown. This is the kind of book that gets you into a season of soul-searching. This is the kind of book that gets you to begin to reassess what you have done and what you have believed. Above all, this is a book that begins to point you in the right direction on how to love, how to find love, how to prepare to fall in love, and how to prepare to be loved. There is one more thing about this book that I need to mention, and that is that Henry links everything he talks about in this book to our relationship with God. It is astonishing to see how my walk with the Lord is affected by my emotions and relationships and vice versa.

Maureen Rele

USA

I wanted to make this a fast read, I wanted to read it within a two-hour flight. By the end of the flight, I had only read the introduction. That is when I knew there was more to this book than what I thought it would be. I thought it would be one more book on relationships and marriage. I thought it would be one more book explaining how Solomon fell in love with some woman. I was wrong, and I have never been happier to be wrong. Even though I was supposed to be proofreading and making a few comments about what I read, I realized very quickly that this was a book that was coming out to be a blessing to my generation. I have pastor Henry’s permission to include the text message I sent him when I finally finished reading the advanced chapters he sent me.

Hey, Pastor Henry, I have emailed you the proofread and completed copy of the manuscript you sent me. I wanted to take this moment to just thank you. I want to thank you first of all for even writing this book, I can't wait for it to be released. I want to thank you for even counting me among those you would give an advance copy and expect my comments on it. This was such a blessing to me that I am totally convinced that it was God that made you write this book. I am proud of you; I appreciate you Man of God.

Chinonye Okorie

Nigeria

Foreword

I have known Henry for over thirty years. I have always known that when he says God has asked him to undertake a project, then God has really asked him to undertake that project. So, when he came and told me that God had asked him to release a book that would explain the Song of Solomon, I remember telling him clearly that only God would do that. Because knowing him, he is not the type that would want to write a book on this topic.

When he finished the book and brought it up to me and I read the manuscript, all I could say after almost every page, or every chapter was wow. So, join me in the adventure that is this book, the adventure that will take you through an amazing study of the book of Song of Solomon, and take you beyond that to the place where the issues of relationship are revealed to you in a way you probably have never heard or read in your life.

After I read the manuscript, I texted him back 2 words, only God. What you are about to read in this book is a depth and level of revelation that only God can reveal to you. The impact this book is about to have in your life it's the kind of impact that only God can do.

Apostle Kelechi Akandu

Table of Content

Dedication

About the Author

Praise for The Heart of True Lover

Foreword

Introduction

Chapter One :  Love is a Duet

Chapter Two :  The wine called Kiss

Chapter Three :  The aura of a virgin

Chapter Four :  Running to the chamber

Chapter Five :  Black, but comely

Chapter Six :  Dark sun and black paint

Chapter Seven : In love with a wandering shepherd

Chapter Eight :   Looking for you

Chapter Nine :  Here comes the Cavalry

Chapter Ten :  Beauty vs Glory

Chapter Eleven :  Beauty from within

Chapter Twelve :  My love is Strong

Chapter Thirteen :  A bundle of Love

Chapter Fourteen :  A cluster of Love

Chapter Fifteen :  Doves’ Eyes

Chapter Sixteen :  Green & Red Bedsheets

Chapter Seventeen :  Builders are vulnerable

Prequel to 2

Contact

Introduction

It is easy to fall in love because you do so with your heart. It is staying in love that is the hard part because for that, you have to use your brain, and the brain is not wired to feel what the heart feels, just as the heart is not wired to understand why the brain doesn’t feel the way it feels. I was ten years old when God revealed the book of Song of Solomon to me. I often wondered why He did, firstly because of how young I was then, and secondly, I did not see any link between the lessons in Song of Solomon and my call into ministry, which was primarily a prophetic call to prayer and revival. Thirdly, He told me that there were three aspects of the Song of Solomon: the relationship between God and His church, the relationship between friends and lovers, and the relationship between a child of God and God. In my mind, I would have wanted God to talk to me about the spiritual aspect of the Song of Solomon, but alas, I was dumbfounded when He told me He was going to speak to me about the aspect of the book that deals with the relationship between lovers. I remember asking how that was linked to my call to prayer and revival.

Indeed, another aspect of the whole situation that I had problems with was that at the tender age of ten, I became exposed to some of the most intriguing and romantic aspects of the scriptures. I became sensitive to friendships and relationships. I became sensitive to the relationship between my parents. I would skip reading the Song of Solomon when I read through the Bible because it stirred in me things that I was afraid of, things that I felt I could not handle, especially being called into intercession and revival. It was not until 1998 that my eyes were opened to understanding how and why this book was revealed to me.

There are two fundamental truths about the book of Song of Solomon. I think that one of the mistakes the Church has made is to emphasize one aspect of those facts at the expense of the other. The challenge in the Song of Solomon is to strike the Divine balance. It is understandable how a group of interpreters can see the Song of Solomon as primarily a book that symbolizes the love relationship between Jesus and His bride, the church. But doing that is to over-spiritualize a simple fact that God did not intend to be spiritualized or over-spiritualized. If you think God needed a Song of Solomon to explain the love relationship between Jesus and His bride, then you will miss the point dearly. The fact that God uses the love affair between Solomon and this bride is very important because while on one hand, God permits an earthly and carnal relationship to typify Jesus's relationship with the bride, on the other hand, it is simply a love story between a king and the lady he fell in love with, period.

Bridal Identity

So, coming to that perfect balance is what makes the Song of Solomon an Old Testament prophetic book about a New Testament relationship. The book gives the reader what I call the bridal identity. Bridal identity is formulated as the bride becomes betrothed, engaged, married to, dedicated, and committed to the bridegroom. It is in that process that the bridal identity is made manifest. It is the same thing in the realm of the spirit; the bridal identity of the church is revealed through the process of us being drawn by His love and our response of pursuing Him and remaining enchanted by His love all our lives. I think I'm going to spend some time, maybe at the end of this book or in a separate book altogether and highlight the processes through which the Shulamite woman grows in her maturation into her bridal identity. This becomes one of the most important factors in the whole Song of Solomon. If we miss this, we probably miss the most important thing because what happens here is that a poor and lowly virgin girl falls in love with a king and soon learns what it means to be the king’s love interest. Her lifestyle and mannerisms, her emotions and temperament, her personality and identity, all evolve into this perfect picture of the bride of the king that warrants that God would use her growth and testimony to highlight this pheno-menon of bridal identity. It is God's will that His children learn what their bridal identity is first, and subsequently, through that identity, they become the best lovers to their lovers and spouses. It is almost impossible to be a good lover if you have not figured out your bridal identity.

At the core of almost every mistake every believer makes in relationships is the issue of bridal identity. The moment we begin to figure out who we are, the easier it becomes for us to begin to figure out God's perfect will for our lives. The prodigal son realized that even as a slave in his father's house, he would fare better than he did at that moment, and so he decided he would arise and go home. Until then, his identity of himself allowed him to be tied up in poverty and squalor to the extent that he would share food with the pigs, which was such an abomination. The moment you figure out who you are in your bridal identity, that moment you stop panicking, that moment you stop being desperate. At that moment you stop getting mixed up in all kinds of toxic friendships and relationships. You stop begging for friends and relationships. That moment you find such inner peace, like the five wise virgins who though the groom delayed, were prepared, and not panicked. You can now sense toxicity from a mile and mature enough to walk away no matter the attraction. You can spot a distraction from a mile. You are comfortable in wearing the garment of Bridehood that has been given to you by your lover, Jesus. That is what bridal identity is.

If you have read the book of Romans written by Paul the Apostle, you know it is probably the best concentration of the treatise on the transition of the Old Testament into the New Testament, highlighting salvation by grace. The book of Romans chapters two to twelve, all deal with the issue of how a man that has been under the law has been freed to come under the grace of God. It has been said that, while the book of Romans deals with the ‘How’ God brings his children into the salvation plan, the book of Song of Solomon deals with the ‘Why’. The book of Romans deals with the process of God saving His people, while the book of Song of Solomon deals with God’s emotions that lead Him to save His people. Strangely enough, God seems to be showing us the reason why we, who are born in sin, can now claim to be saved by grace. He shows the reason in the Old Testament but reveals the process in the New Testament. What an irony. So, in the Old Testament, He loves us, but in the New Testament, He buys us with the blood of Jesus. What an amazing God we serve. That right there explains the Bible when it says He first loved us. Because the mind of a man and his thinking are that the process should come before the love, we should see what we see in the book of Romans before experiencing what we experience in the book of Song of Solomon. Which is literally salvation by works, and that is the mind of men. But God's mind is that He lays the foundation of His love for us even before He commences the process of redeeming us to Himself.

Identity is Personality

God is not looking to change our personality. God is not looking to match us with our soul mates based on our personalities. God is looking to give us an identity that is His, which is enough for us to enjoy all His blessings. This is why I say that bridal identity is at the center of the theme of the Song of Solomon. Now, if you understand that, you will understand why it is important to strike the proper balance in the interpretation of the Song of Solomon. This proper balance is not skewed towards the spiritual or the romantic. It is properly balanced between both.

The first test for the validity of this claim that the balance of the bride's spiritual and romantic love life is the essence of the Song of Solomon can be deduced from the reality of the state of the church. No amount of emotional and psychological propping of the bride will change the personality of that bride if it does not become a work of the Holy Ghost. So, to a generation that is the most emotionally broken, most sexually perverted, most maritally dysfunctional, and most psychologically chaotic, no amount of a Love letter would change this personality if we do not begin to comprehend God’s love properly. While the bridal identity is discovered by the actualization of the facts that are stated in the word of God, that bridal identity must have an impact on our sexual, emotional, and marital lives.

When Apostle Paul said that he wishes above all things that you prosper and be in health as your soul prospers, it becomes a matter of fact that the Song of Solomon would have been a futile attempt by God if it only affects our spiritual bridal identity. On the contrary, the Song of Solomon is written that our spiritual bridal identities might be actualized on one hand but equally on the other hand, that the actual bridal identity reflects on our experience and enjoyment of love, romance, marriage, and life. That is the essence of the book of Song of Solomon; that the bride of Christ be lovers and enjoy lovemaking. By lovemaking, I do not mean sex. I simply mean the process by which we become better lovers. The reason the Song of Solomon is included in the Bible is that the people that God calls His bride are not just people walking with Him successfully but also walking with one another in marriage covenant and relationship, successfully.

When God started revealing the book of Song of Solomon to me in 1980, I was just a two- or three-month-old believer. I would be on my face reading the Song of Solomon during my Bible studies and devotions but watching Benny Hinn on VHS and being slain in the anointing. What a God of variety. I wondered why the Song of Solomon was the second book He would reveal to me. Isn't it amazing that the two personalities that had the most impact on Christianity, in the area of relationships, love, and marriage are two people whose testimonies of marriage are very interesting?

Apart from Jesus Christ himself, whom we know did not get married nor had any romantic relationships, the two other people who most influenced Christian beliefs on love, relationships, and marriage are king Solomon, who married 1000 women, and Paul the apostle, who did not marry any woman at all. If that is not in any way astonishing to you, I don't know what else will be. It is no wonder, therefore, that many who look at Solomon and the fact that he had 1000 women in his life, consider the Song of Solomon as primarily a love story between one man and his lover. They think that there can be nothing spiritual about it. On the other hand, for some reason, some think that because of the fact of a thousand women in his life, king Solomon is not qualified to give the church marital advice. They, therefore, look at the Song of Solomon as a spiritual treatise.

I strongly believe that both extremes are wrong and inadequate to explain why God would allow this amazing book of the Bible in His Holy word. Now I know that a lot of good work has been done regarding the Song of Solomon, and I am not looking to add to any of those. I am looking to bring a dimension of exposing the Song of Solomon in a way that I am yet to see or hear anybody else do. I have felt very inadequate to bring up these subjects for very many personal reasons, but in June of 2022, I had spent some time in a retreat on a mountain when I became overwhelmed on the last night that I had less than two months to write this book and bring it forth to the church. When I discovered that God was reaching out to me because He wanted to teach me about bridal identity, my ideas changed about the whole thing. 

Bridal identity is so important to God that He put a whole book in His holy word to teach us just that singular fact. As we draw close to the end of the ages, God's attention is laser-focused on preparing for Himself a bride. The Book of Revelation has 22 chapters, and the last two chapters have a singular theme: the marriage of the bride and groom. In Revelation 22:17, the Bible says that the Spirit and the Bride say come. What that means is that the Church and the Holy Spirit will speak with one voice. This is an answer to the prayers of Jesus in John 18. That level of unity and oneness with the Spirit of God is the purpose of the Song of Solomon focusing on the bridal identity. 

Isaiah 62 proclaimed over the body of Christ the new name. It's a new identity, it's a new relationship, and the new name is Hephzibah. Your new name is the Lord delights in you; the Lord takes pleasure in you. We are going to see the revelation of Jesus as the Bridegroom fills our pulpits, fills our songs, and fills the body of Christ like no other time. The Bible begins with a wedding, and it ends with a wedding. Isaiah 54 says your maker is your husband. Hosea 2 says you're going to begin to call me your husband. John 2, Jesus’ first miracle is at a wedding. He calls his disciples friends of the bridegroom. In Matthew 22, he says the Kingdom of heaven is like a wedding that the father prepared for the son. Matthew 25 is about five wise and five foolish virgins preparing for a wedding. Revelation 19 is about the wedding supper of the Groom and His bride. Revelation 21 is about a city that comes out of heaven, and the name of the city is the bride. It seems like God is loudly proclaiming His love for the bride. 

Bridal Mis-identity

Sadly, the message of the bridal identity is also going to be one of the end times messages that will mislead a lot. Just as there were five wise virgins in the book of Matthew 22, there were also five foolish virgins. The two sets of virgins were waiting for the same Groom. The two sets of virgins were betrothed to the same Groom. But one set of virgins, for whatever reason, did not see it fit or right to be adequately prepared for the marriage that was about to come. This is the point I'm making. While there is going to be a preponderance of powerful, prophetic, and scripturally based teachings on the bridal identity, there is also going to be a misleading of the bride because that's how they become foolish. Again, it is this balance that is necessary to bring the bride to the place of perfect identity.

Ephesians 4 talks about us coming to the fullness of the stature of Christ. The five foolish virgins made the decision to wait for the Groom the way they did. The five foolish virgins were virgins indeed. But the choice and decisions they made, even in their virginity, is what made them foolish. While the bride had not come, the foolish and the wise virgins all seemed alike. The foolish virgins could have looked at the wise virgins and felt that they were overdoing it. It was also possible for the wise virgins to look at the foolish virgins and wonder why they were so unprepared, but in the end, it was they who had enough oil in their lamps for the Groom and the wedding. We must take care not to allow the gospel of the bridal identity to become an opportunity for the misleading of the bride of Christ. If the five foolish virgins could not enter the Chamber of the Groom, it means that they became the bride to the enemy of the Groom. God is jealous of His bride, and that jealousy is what must guide us in our interpretation of the bridal identity.

In Genesis chapter 2, the main reason God decided to create the woman for the man was that the man was lonely and needed help. In Genesis chapter 3, when God asked the man why he disobeyed Him, the man said it was the woman that God had given him that had caused the disobedience. At that point, both the man and the woman lost their bridal identity as co-brides of the Groom. So, the man lost his help, and the woman lost her validation. Today, the man and the woman are devoid of the gift that God gave both of them in Genesis 2. This is why true bridal identity brings healing. It restores the original intention of God in the creation of the man and the woman. For man, it takes away the blame on the help that God has given him. For women, this healing takes away the emptiness that was created as a result of Adam denying the usefulness of the woman. It restores her validation and position in the life of the man. True bridal identity restores intimacy without toxicity. True bridal identity restores validation without pride. True bridal identity restores companionship without corruption. The man was given the woman not as a wife in the first instance but as help. It was his prophetic declaration that turned that woman into a wife. God's original intention for bridal identity is to create intimacy. True intimacy is what leads to satisfaction, the satisfaction of love, the satisfaction of validation, the satisfaction of companionship, the satisfaction of friendship, the satisfaction of sex, and the satisfaction of life together. In reverse, what that means is that the absence of a true bridal identity creates an emptiness and a void that cannot be filled by companionship, friendship, or any amount of validation or sex. Now you may understand the reason for the heightened level of perversion that exists today. 

That is why you would have noticed that people today are rushing and running after validation and companionship in so many ways in our modern-day society. We are rushing for these by piercing our skins everywhere for extra beauty and validation. We are rushing after these things by tattooing ourselves with affirmations of who we are or images of our desires and pleasures. We are rushing for these things by working out in the gym to create an image that would suffice for the bridal identity. We are rushing after these things by posting selfies and video clips of us, hoping that the world will see it and validate us. Now do not get me wrong. I do not mean to criticize any of those. All I am saying is that the void created by the absence of true bridal identity is what we need to fill. This is why women don’t like it when men give them the silent treatment, because they feel invalidated. And on the men’s side, they don’t like being disrespected because it makes them feel dishonored. 

Fix me first

For a long time, I felt so inadequate to talk about relationship matters. I wanted to build a perfect marriage before talking about a perfect relationship. I guess the Lord wanted to use me, all my failures notwithstanding. Reality dawned on me when I began to take heed to all that He had taught me for myself. I began to see myself as His Bride. I began to see myself as His love interest. It wasn't just enough to say that He loved me. I realized that His purpose for me in the things that I had gone through was to ensure that I came into the fullness of the stature of the bridal identity. The devil will want to give you a thousand and one reasons why you are disqualified. All you need to know is that there is only one reason you are qualified, and it is not because He died for you on the cross, it is not because He took your sins, it is not because He rose from the dead for you; It is way more than that. It is because He loves you. And His love for you does not mean that you can come as you are and be as you are. His love for you covers you where you are but destines you to where you should be. The bridal identity is covered in its weakness and fullness when it undertakes the journey that God maps out for it.

I kept on crying to God to fix me first before I can freely be a testimony for Him. I kept dying a thousand deaths that could not and did not kill the flesh. You know, when you die because of shame or intimidation or cowardice, it does not mean the flesh has died. Indeed, cowards are very carnal because they listen and respond to their fears. I truly died when I learned that I must take myself and place myself on the altar and not worry about what anyone was saying or doing. That is when I truly died. That is also when I truly learned how to love. All the revelation of love from the Song of Solomon did not make