The book of Song of Songs is a history of love in an excellent marriage revealing the progressive experience of an individual believer’s loving fellowship with Christ for the preparation of His bride; we need to have a personal, affectionate, private, and spiritual relationship with the Lord day by day. Amen!
This week we come to a new topic in our morning revival, Loving the Lord’s Appearing by Maintaining our Love for Him according to the Intrinsic Significance of Song of Songs.
As we are preparing ourselves for the Lord’s coming, we need to fight the good fight, finish the course, and keep the faith.
Furthermore, we need to be those who love the Lord’s appearing so that the Lord, the righteous Judge, may recompense us on that day. Amen!
We want to be those who love the Lord’s appearing by maintaining our love for Him, as it is revealed in the book of Song of Songs in its intrinsic significance.
In 2 Tim. 4:10 Paul said that Demas has abandoned him, having loved the present age.
Loving the present age is contrary to loving the Lord’s appearing.
Demas was a co-worker of Paul’s, he worked with Paul, and he probably saw the difficulties and sufferings that Paul went through.
However, Demas could not overcome; he loved the present age. He changed in a certain way and did not love the Lord’s appearing but loved the present age.
We do not know how we will change, but we want to have the Lord’s mercy to keep us living in the light of His coming so that we can maintain our love for the Lord and love His appearing. Amen!
The most vivid and deepest way we can see how to develop and advance in our loving relationship with the Lord is in the book of Song of Songs.
This book is a poem; it is the history of love in an excellent marriage.
The subject of the Song of Songs is the history of love in an excellent marriage, revealing the progressive experience of an individual believer’s loving fellowship with Christ for the preparation of His bride in six major stages (see Rev. 19:7-9; Matt. 25:6-13; Rev. 3:18-22; Zech. 4:1-6, 11-14; 1 John 4:19; Psa. 110:3; 119:140).
What the Lord is after today is not only a group of people who worship God and serve Him but even more, He wants to gain His bride.
He wants to gain the bride of Christ, the wife that is made ready for the wedding feast, being clothed in fine linen, bright and clean.
Blessed are we if we are called to the marriage dinner of the Lamb.
Christ is our Bridegroom, and He will return at midnight when there will be a cry to go forth and meet Him.
May we be the prudent virgins and the faithful slaves who will enter the wedding feast and rule and reign with the Lord, entering into the joy of our Master. Amen!
The Lord wants His Seekers to have a Personal, Affectionate, Private, and Spiritual Relationship with the Lord
We believers in Christ are not only members of the Body of Christ to express Him and components of the church as the house of God but also loving seekers of Christ, even lovers of Christ.
Our relationship with the Lord should be one of loving Him affectionately. The Lord wants His seekers to have a personal, affectionate, private, and spiritual relationship with the Lord.
The Lord did not just die for the whole world, and He did not just love the whole world; He died for me and for you, and He loves me and you.
When we were saved, we were saved personally, for we saw something of the wonderful Jesus Christ and were drawn to Him.
Each one of us, the individual believers, needs to have a progressive experience in our loving fellowship with Christ.
Our relationship with the Lord is described in Song of Songs 1:2-4.
We are drawn to the Lord, we ask Him to kiss us with the kisses of His mouth, and we appreciate His love for us and in us.
We treasure His name, considering that the name of Jesus is like ointment poured forth, so we just love Him.
We ask the Lord to draw us individually, and we corporately run after Him.
The Lord as the King is the most wonderful One, and He brings us into His chambers – into our spirit as His dwelling place.
Here, in the inner chambers where the Lord is, in our mingled spirit, we love the Lord, we rejoice in Him, and we are glad.
We extol the Lord’s love more than wine, for rightly we love Him! Amen!
After we believers in Christ receive Christ as our life, each one of us must have a very personal seeking after Christ.
No one can represent us, and no one can seek the Lord after us.
We seek the Lord personally, affectionately, privately, and spiritually, not relying on second-hand knowledge or what others say about the Lord but coming to Him personally and intimately in our fellowship with Him in His word to know Him and enjoy Him.
We all need to have such a personal, affectionate, intimate contact with the Lord every day.
Just as we cultivate, develop, and work on our personal, intimate, and affectionate relationship with our spouse, so we need to develop and cultivate our personal, affectionate, private, spiritual relationship with the Lord.
Every morning, when we rise up we need to come to the Lord as we are and simply tell Him that we love Him.
We need to open all the inner rooms of our being and tell Him how much we love Him.
We need to build up a habit of telling the Lord Jesus, Lord Jesus, I love You!
Throughout the day we need to turn our hearts to the Lord and love Him.
We need to build up a personal and affectionate relationship with the Lord.
We cannot rely on our feelings, for our feelings fluctuate.
We cannot rely on our minds or will, for they are very much distracted.
We need to exercise our spirit to contact the Lord. In Christianity today the physical Jesus is being preached, but what we enjoy today is the pneumatic Christ, the Christ who is the Spirit (2 Cor. 3:17).
He is private and spiritual. He draws us to Himself in His chambers, in our spirit, and He visits us privately as the all-inclusive, consummated Spirit.
As we exercise our spirit to contact the Lord and enjoy Him, we are drawn by Him, we enter into the King’s chambers – our spirit – and we pray to the Lord in spirit.
We realize that the Lord Jesus is a wonderful person, and when we contact Him, we have the entire Triune God in us – the Father, the Son, and the Spirit – to be our enjoyment for our satisfaction (Eph. 4:6; 2 Cor. 13:5; Rom. 8:9).
Our spirit is the Holy of Holies, the dwelling place of the Triune God, even the inner chambers of God living in us.
We tell the Lord to kiss us with the kisses of His mouth, for His love is better than wine.
His anointing oils have a pleasant fragrance. His name is like ointment poured forth.
We love the Lord Jesus. As lovers of Christ, we pursue Christ, we are drawn by His love, and are captivated by His name and His purpose; so we pursue Him for satisfaction.
This is the first stage of the Song of Songs, where the lover of Christ is drawn to pursue Him for satisfaction (Song of Songs 1:2 – 2:7).
Because we seek after Him, He brings us into our spirit to have a personal, intimate, affectionate, spiritual fellowship with us.
Every morning we need to contact the Lord in a loving way, and throughout the day we need to remain in our loving personal relationship with the Lord.
Lord Jesus, we love You. Kiss us, Lord, with the kisses of Your mouth. Your love is better than wine. We love to call on Your name, for Your name is so sweet, even like ointment poured forth. Oh Lord Jesus, draw us, and we will run after You. Bring us into Your chambers, into our mingled spirit, to enjoy You personally, intimately, privately, spiritually, and affectionately. Amen, Lord Jesus, we love You and we are drawn by You to pursue You for satisfaction. We pursue after You, Lord, for You are the most lovely One. Your sweetness is so precious, and Your love is better than wine. We just love to come to tell You day by day that we love You. We want to be the lovers of Christ who have a personal and affectionate fellowship with You. Amen, Lord, we love to spend time in secret to just enjoy You, love You, and partake of Your riches. We love You, Lord Jesus! You are the most precious One. We are drawn by You!
Remain in the Progressive Experience of our Loving Fellowship with Christ for the Preparation of His Bride
The Lord wants to gain His bride, and we as the many believers in Christ are those who are being prepared to be His bride (Rev. 19:7-9).
We are in a progressive experience of our loving fellowship with Christ so that we may be prepared to be His bride.
This progressive experience is seen in type, in a poetic form, in the book of Song of Songs.
It begins with being drawn to pursue Christ for satisfaction and it continues with being called to be delivered from the self through the oneness with the cross, being called to live in ascension as the new creation in resurrection, being called more strongly to live within the veil through the cross after resurrection, sharing in the work of the Lord, and hoping to be raptured.
All these are the stages that the loving seeker goes through in Song of Songs, and we all need to go through these stages today.
We could say that the stages of such a progression should be landmarks in the course of our pursuit of Christ for His satisfaction and our satisfaction – for our mutual satisfaction.
We need to simply remain in the progressive experience of our loving fellowship with Christ so that we may be prepared to be His bride.
Amen, may we daily contact the Lord in our spirit in a loving way to enjoy Him and simply partake of what He is.
The Lord wants us, His loving seekers, to have a personal, affectionate, private, and spiritual relationship with Him (Song of Songs 1:2, 4).
This is not only something that we need to have only initially, at the beginning of our Christian life, but it should be deepened throughout our Christian life.
All the spiritual principles are contained in the first stage of the loving seekers overcoming life.
We simply experience the same things but in a deeper way, even in a sweeter way.
The lessons that follow are not new – they are old lessons, repeated in a deeper way.
Song of Songs shows the progress of our relationship with the Lord in love, starting with the first stage, loving the Lord and pursuing Him for satisfaction.
When we first touch the Lord and He kisses us, wow, we just love the Lord and He is the most precious One to us.
However, this first revelation of the Lord, though so smooth and sweet, is not the firmest and most reliable.
We need to still pass through tests of fire so that our experience becomes a reality. So we need the second stage, a more advanced stage, a deeper stage.
We simply need to remain in the process of progressing in our loving relationship with the Lord, pursuing after Him in love so that both He and we would be satisfied.
As we have the second experience of the Lord, it seems that the feeling is not as sweet as in the first stage.
It seems that the problem is with our love for the Lord (Deut. 6:5; John 3:16; Rom. 5:5; 1 John 4:19).
So we need to consecrate ourselves to love the Lord, because there is no other way that is so rich, so sure, so dependable, and so full of enjoyment than loving the Lord.
May we not pay attention to anything else apart from Christ. May we only love Him and pursue only Him, and all our problems will be over.
May we allow the Lord to take us through the experiences we need so that we may advance with the Lord, go deeper with Him, love Him more, and even be made the same as He is, the Shulammite.
May we have a personal, affectionate, private, and spiritual relationship with the Lord and advance with Him in our Christian life until we are made the same as He is in life and nature but not in the Godhead.
Lord Jesus, we want to remain in the progressive experience of our loving fellowship with Christ for the preparation of the bride of Christ! Amen, Lord Jesus, we love You and we want to continue in our loving relationship with You. We want to have a personal, intimate, private, and spiritual relationship with You. Deepen our relationship with You. Bring us on with You in our pathway of Christian life. May we continue with You to be delivered from the self through our oneness with the cross. May we be called to live in ascension as the new creation in resurrection. Amen, Lord, call us even more strongly to live within the veil through the cross after resurrection. We want to advance with You stage after stage to live within the veil and share in the work of the Lord. Amen, Lord Jesus, make us the same as You are so that we may share in Your desire for Your return and our being raptured! We love You, Lord Jesus!
Read this article in the Romanian language – citiți acest articol în limba română la următorul link, O relație afectuoasă și spirituală cu Domnul ne pregătește să fim mireasa Sa.
References and Hymns on this Topic
- Inspiration for this article/sharing comes from the Word of God, the enjoyment in the ministry, a sharing by the brothers in the message for this week, and portions from, Collected Works of Witness Lee, 1994-1997, vol. 3, “Crystallization-study of Songs of Songs,” chs. 1-12, as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, Fighting the Good Fight, Finishing the Course, Keeping the Faith, and Loving the Lord’s Appearing in Order to Receive the Reward of Christ as the Crown of Righteousness (2024 ICSC), week 4, Loving the Lord’s Appearing by Maintaining Our Love for Him according to the Intrinsic Significance of Song of Songs.
- Similar articles on this topic:
– The coming of the Lord Jesus to marry the prepared bride in Revelation 19, article by David Yoon in, Affirmation and Critique.
– Help to Build Up a Personal Relationship with Jesus Christ, via, Holding to Truth in Love.
– The Betrothing Ministry, From chapter four of The Ministers in the Lord’s Recovery – Genuine Ministers of the New Covenant, via, Shepherding Words.
– Taking the Lead to Love the Lord with Our First Love, via, Living to Him.
– Divine romance, new song via, Hymnal.net.
– The economy of God in Song of Songs, article by Ed Marks via, Affirmation and Critique.
– New Jerusalem is the Bride, the Wife of the Lamb, via, New Jerusalem blog.
– Song of Songs—the Progressive Experience of an Individual Believer’s Loving Fellowship with Christ for the Preparation of the Bride of Christ, outline via, New Zealand Training Centre.
– How to Have a Pure, Loving, and Soft Heart toward God, via, Bibles for America blog.
– Listen to the life-study of Song of Songs via, LSM Youtube channel.
– The Song of Songs, by Watchman Nee. - Hymns on this topic:
– How I love Thee, precious Jesus, / That Thy love laid hold of me; / Thou hast drawn and wooed and kissed me / That a lover I may be! / Our Beloved, how we love Him, / So attractive, our delight. / We are captivated wholly / And are comely in His sight. (Hymns #1155 stanza 1 and chorus)
– Thy name is as ointment poured forth: / Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus! / Thy name is as ointment poured forth, / Thy name is as ointment poured forth. / Therefore do the virgins love Thee: / Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus! / Therefore do the virgins love Thee, / Therefore do the virgins love Thee. (Hymns #1084 stanzas 1-2)
– I love Thee, Jesus, / And Thy love to me / Draws me, ever to seek Thee / And run after Thee, / Draws me, ever to seek Thee / And run after Thee. / Thou art beloved, / Yea! Altogether lovely, / The One in whom my heart delighteth. (Hymns #1154 stanza 1)
Song of Songs 1:1, footnote 1, Recovery Version Bible
Collected Works of Witness Lee, 1994-1997, vol. 3, “Crystallization-study of Songs of Songs,” pp. 257, 260
We believers in Christ need to have a personal, affectionate, and intimate contact with the Lord every day. This needs to become our habit.
The first thing we should do in the morning is to tell the Lord that we love Him!
He is the Spirit with our spirit, and we have a private, spiritual, and intimate relationship with Him.
Our loving relationship with the Lord needs to deepen and become sweeter.
Loving the Lord’s Appearing by Maintaining Our Love for Him according to the Intrinsic Significance of Song of Songs
Praise the Lord!😃🙌🙋🏼
https://www.hymnal.net/en/hymn/h/556
Amen Lord we do Love you! Rekindle our love and keep it fresh!
As we spend personal, affectionate, intimate and spiritual time with the Lord, Christ the King brings His seekers into His chambers, into our regenerated spirit, His dwelling place!!
Yes, Lord Jesus, we love you.
Amen. Hallelujah !
Today we should leave so much religion, not make ourselves believe in Him as simple religious, but be romantic Christians who tell Him that we love Him and that we are attracted to Him, that is why the virgins look for you.
The first stage of preparing to be Christ bride we must persue Him for His satisfaction and build a personal and affectionate relationship with Him. Our spirt is your home
We all need to cultivate a personal & affectionate relationship with our Jesus.
He is our loving King and we should be His loving bride.
May we earnestly pursue Him each day for satisfaction and call upon Him to deliver us from self through the cross.
We are called to live with Jesus in ascension as the new creation in resurrection.
We must press on within the veil through the cross after resurrection, and share in the Lord’s work with the assurance of being raptured to glory.
In Song of Songs we see the history of love in an excellent marriage in the unveiling of a believer’s progressive experience in their loving fellowship with Christ!
This is revealed in four stages in which we seek after Christ.
Firstly, by being delivered from the self through the cross and in resurrection; being called to live in ascension, and then being called to live more strongly within the veil, and ultimately, as such ones, to share in the work of the Lord with the hope of rapture!
For this we need a personal, private, affectionate and intimate relationship with the Him.
We all must have a very personal seeking after Christ. We all need this kind of personal, affectionate, intimate, private and spiritual contact with the Lord every day. No one can represent us or do anything for us in this matter. It must be personal.
07/08/24 Loving the Lord’s Appearing by Maintaining Our Love for Him according to the Intrinsic Significance of Song of Songs (Week 4, Day 1)
“The Subject of Song of Songs, a Poem, is the History of Love, in an Excellent Marriage, Revealing the Progressive Experience of an Individual Believer’s Loving Fellowship with Christ for the Preparation of His Bride in Six Major Stages” (Stage 1) The Lover of Christ is Drawn to Pursue Him for Satisfaction
Song of Songs is a poem of the history of love in an excellent marriage. It is a romance of the highest standard. The entire Bible is a romance, a love story, of God “falling in love” with man, and particularly, Song of Songs is a history of the wise King Solomon, the writer of this book, with the Shulammite, a girl of the countryside.
Solomon is called the beloved and the Shulammite is called the lover (lit., “love”—1:15; 2:2; 4:1, 7; 6:4). Solomon, in the masculine gender, means “peace,” and Shulammite is Solomon in the feminine gender. One is the king in the palace at the capital in Jerusalem, and the other is a girl from the countryside.
In a sense, Solomon, a royal king, and the Shulammite, a poor country girl, were not a match. Concerning marriage most would agree that two people should match each other. Yet it is difficult to find a husband and wife who are really a match. Two people who are the same may become enemies, but two people who are different may become loving friends. Solomon fell in love with a country girl, and the two of them were joined together. After their union they remained in communion all the time.
In a similar way, God fell in love with man. Since God is divine, great, and holy and we are human, small and sinful, we may find it hard to believe that God could fall in love with us. Yet even though man does not seem to match God, God has nonetheless fallen in love with man. Because of His great love for us, He accomplished His work of redemption for us and freely imparts His life and nature into us in order to make us the same as He is.
Song of Songs is a portrait of the love of Christ in His union with His individual believers. The entire New Testament stresses the Body life, not the individual life (Rom. 12:4-5; 1 Cor. 12:27). But Song of Songs stresses not the Body corporately but the believer individually. To have the Body life, we must have individual contact with the Lord. Without the individual fellowship with the Lord as a base, we cannot have the proper Body life.
The contents of Song of Songs are the progressive experience of an individual believer’s loving fellowship with Christ in six progressive stages:
The Song of Songs opens up with the loving seekers longing for the Lord to kiss him, “Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth! / For your love is better than wine.” (SS 1:2) The kisses of the mouth are the most intimate kisses.
This yearning to be kissed by Christ is a response to Christ’s cheering love, which is better than wine (SS 1:2b), and to His charming name (equivalent to His person), which is like ointment (the All-inclusive, Compound, Life-giving Spirit as the realization of Christ’s person—1Cor 15:45; Exo 30:23-25) poured forth with the pleasant fragrance of the anointing oils (SS 1:3a). No one can resist Christ’s cheering love and His charming person (Mat 4:18-20).
In Song of Songs 4a, we have a word concerning the lover’s pursuing: ‘‘Draw me; we will run after you.’’ Take note of the word “me”, being singular, and then the word “we”, being plural and corporate. In her pursuit of Christ, she asks Him to draw her, singularly, first so that she and her companions, corporately, may run after Him. Everyone who is drawn by Christ will have companions in following Him.
For Christ to gain more believers into His Body, He first needs to draw and attract them one by one, individually. Consider the situation with Peter when he, a fisherman, was called by the Lord (Mat 4:18-20). One day, Christ the Beloved came, and Peter was charmed by Him and he left the nets and followed Him. Many followed Christ as Peter’s companions.
When we are drawn to follow Christ, we become a factor in others’ following of Him. Because we are attracted to Christ, we cannot help but tell others of His beauty and then bring them also to Him, into His Body, the church. According to Song of Songs 1:4, after the Lord drew us and we run after Him, He brings us into His chambers. His chambers refers to the believers’ regenerated spirit, as His Dwelling Place. According to our experience, our regenerated spirit is the Holy of Holies, the Dwelling Place, the inner chambers, of the Triune God, where we can mingle with Him for our enjoyment and satisfaction (Heb 4:16).
[Excerpt from HWMR-Wk. 4 Day 1]
S.S. 1:2-4
Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth! For your love is better than wine. Your anointing oils have a pleasant fragrance; your name is like ointment poured forth; therefore the virgins love you. Draw me; we will run after you—the king has brought me into his chambers—we will be glad and rejoice in you; we will extol your love more than wine. Rightly do they love you.
–
HWMRW4D1
“𝘓𝘰𝘷𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘓𝘰𝘳𝘥’𝘴 𝘈𝘱𝘱𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘣𝘺 𝘔𝘢𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘢𝘪𝘯𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘖𝘶𝘳 𝘓𝘰𝘷𝘦 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘏𝘪𝘮 𝘢𝘤𝘤𝘰𝘳𝘥𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘰 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘐𝘯𝘵𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘴𝘪𝘤 𝘚𝘪𝘨𝘯𝘪𝘧𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘯𝘤𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘚𝘰𝘯𝘨𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘚𝘰𝘯𝘨𝘴”
Christ the King brings His seekers into His chambers, that is, into their regenerated spirit, His dwelling place…
Our spirit is the Holy of Holies – the dwelling place, the inner chambers, of the Triune God.
Listen to the audio version of this article via,
Youtube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUMQhvBuPR4
Rumble:
https://rumble.com/v56018q-have-a-personal-and-spiritual-relationship-with-christ.html
O Lord Jesus! Keep us breathing Your name in prayer. Thank You for our regenerated spirit, the dwelling place of the Triune God, in making Your abode within our heart and soul. Hallelujah! …
I am learning to enjoy and experience calling upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, as a way to keep myself always rejoicing.
Also, it is so much more enjoyable to pray-read the Word, even to pray-read as I read from the life-study messages of brother Lee.
Knowing that the Spirit in the words of ministry are infused, and transfused within us, so as be be transformed into His image, and conformed into His likeness, so that we become one with Him as He has made Himself One with us, by God causing the growth in His divine life to us, all towards a greater expression of Himself, through the church, as His divine economy is revealed to us in spirit.
Hallelujah! Praise You Lord Jesus! 🙏
Amen – Lord draw us that we would run after You!
Amen. Lord Jesus we love you, you are so dear and precious to our hearts. Draw us Lord, and we will run after you.
Imagine you have begun a lovely romantic relationship, and you know it will soon be time to kiss your loved one. However, at the moment of your realizing this event, you take out a notebook and begin reviewing the do’s and don’ts as well as adding notations. Then you share these notes with your beloved and only when all has been read and committed to memory do you proceed to the kiss. How do you think this would be? Funny? Anti-climactic perhaps. Disappointing. Awkward. Clinical. I don’t think satisfying. Just my guess.
Saints. The Lord loves you and is in love with you. Kiss Him already. And then kiss Him again. And throw your manual away.
Love you all.
A very good new song on this topic is,
1. Let Him kiss me with the kisses of His mouth,
Whether bitter cold north wind or gentle south;
You are beautiful, my love,
With your eyes of turtledoves;
“Let Him kiss me with the kisses of His mouth”.
* Lord I love You, I really love You,
You’re the dearest, sweetest, precious love to me!
Lord I love You, I really love You,
Jesus, my Beloved, for eternity!
2. She’s become a lily, simple, pure and sweet,
Not relying on her naturalness and strength
She is trusting in Christ’s life,
In His rich abundant life;
“Let Him kiss me with the kisses of His mouth”.
3. She’s become a garden, fountain, streams, and springs,
From which fragrant, luscious produce Christ’s life brings,
Resurrection life expressed,
In ascension she can rest;
“Let Him kiss me with the kisses of His mouth”.
4. She’s become the New Jerusalem, His Bride,
Where His presence for eternity abides,
Here His faithfulness we prove,
And we serve Him for His move;
“Let Him kiss me with the kisses of His mouth”.
5. In the final stage of love a kiss remains,
Where the lover and His love forever reign,
“When I find you here with Me,
I will kiss you, all will see”;
“Let Him kiss me with the kisses of His mouth”.
Source: https://www.hymnal.net/en/hymn/ns/413
Listen to this song via,