As I withdrew to pray for direction in the first days of the year . . . I was surprised by a strong and burning desire for the holiness of God that filled my heart. I was drawn to the book of Revelations where it describes the worship that is going on constantly in heaven . . . and in the center of this worship is the declaration that is going on forever . . . the ‘Holy, Holy, Holy’. It’s as if the angels, saints and all the heavenly creatures know that at the very core of who God is . . . is His holiness. Everything about God emanates from His holiness . . . and every action of God is motivated by His holiness. As I meditated on the scriptures . . . I realized that I wanted to sing it . . . actually ‘want’ is too weak of a word . . . I had to sing it! . . . and so I spent some time singing every ‘Holy’ song I could think of . . . and they all were good . . . but they didn’t quite satisfy my hunger to sing the ‘holy, holy, holy’. . . and so I walked over to my piano and began to sing those words with a new melody, like a simple chant. And pretty soon I was in tears as I sensed the presence of God. For the first few days all I sang was the chorus part . . . . just the ‘holy, holy, holy God’ and it was all I needed. Then after a few days, I realized that I wanted to declare the core of his character and answer the question; “What are the actions of a Holy God?

When we think of a ‘Holy God’, we would think He would keep His distance from us and our world . . . polluted with sin and impurities as it is. I think one of the most amazing things about God is that this God who is perfect and holy, draws near to us to forgive, redeem . . . even to the point of sending His only Son, the “nail scarred Lamb” to pay the price for our rebellion. But He doesn’t stop there! His goal is not just our forgiveness, so we can become His loyal subjects and servants.

Our God has the heart of a husband 1. God is actually ‘romancing’ us! When I use that word, I am not referring to the sweet, selfish, sentimental concept that is popular in our culture. I use the word in the biggest, grandest God sense. He is the one who created ‘romance’ which is intended to be rooted in the ‘forsaking all others’ union of marriage to be a source of blessing and revelation.

At the end of the song, I chose to use the image of “The Lion’s mighty roar” because I wanted us to be clear that the one romancing us is not someone small and cute that we can control (like a domesticated house cat); He is awesome, intriguing and fully in charge (like C.S. Lewis’s Aslan). Our love relationship with God will never be tame and safe because we can’t predict and control Him (He is after all HOLY,HOLY,HOLY!), but we can trust our great Romancer because He is good.

Footnote 1 Jer 3:14 , Jer 31:31,32, Hosea 2:16 , 2 Cor 11:2