"Awake, O north wind; and come, thou south; blow upon my garden, that the spices thereof my flow out. Let my beloved come into his garden, and eat his pleasant fruits." (S.O.S. 4:16)
If there is going to any part of this journey that might be based or associated with any precept of religion, then this might be that form, stature, or whatever shape it may look like: Before we can honestly proclaim this is His garden, the fruits produced must be His, and they must be pleasant! This word for, "pleasant," is a word that means more than feeling, senses, or any other sort of human experienced nicety we might try to imagine to enjoy. This is, "something very special and noble," "the precious things of heaven." To be somewhat practical, we are simply a vessel that He works through; however, as this vessel, we are to be faithfully allowing Him to shape us and mold us into what we should be.
So then, in that sense, we can make this more than just a relationship, because our part of this requires that He shapes us, we never ever shape Him! A really good example of how this might be better explained, is to simply hear it from Matthew Henry: "She calls it his garden; for those that are espoused to Christ call nothing their own, but what they have devoted to him and desire to be used for him. When the spices flow forth then it is fit to be called his garden, and not till then. The fruits of the garden are his pleasant fruits, for he planted them, watered them, and gave them increase. What can we pretend to merit at Christ's hands when we can invite him to nothing but what is his own already?"
You can assume to be doing all to Him, and at the same time you are looking for approval of man! In that sense, we are always to be on guard for what James speaks about in saying, "Do ye think that the Scriptures saith in vain, The spirit that dwelleth in us lusteth to envy?" (James 4:5) The spirit that James is referring to is man's fallen spirit, that which is the root cause of the fall of man; that which is manifested in selfishness and malevolence: in other words, It's all about me, myself, and I; everyone else is out to lunch!
There is really only one other way to even try to explain how this can be explained without getting to far into Psychometrics: The Love of God! In all of this, whatever it might be, or in whatever condition we might try to make it to be, it is only by love that it makes any sense at all. If it is not based on love, then it is not His; those are His pleasant fruits! In that, your garden is not your own, but His, because we cannot love as God loves without Him loving through us! In this, please please see, we are all in this together, making any suffering seem totally worth praising God for the chance to show real love...
"Therefore, dear brothers and sisters, you have no obligation to do what your sinful nature urges you to do. For if you live by its dictates, you will die. But if through the power of the Spirit you put to death the deeds of your sinful nature, you will live. For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God." (Romans 8:12-14) NLT
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