As seen in Song of Songs 4:8, Christ calls us, His lovers, to live with Him in ascension, in the heavenlies, where there’s a spiritual warfare and where we fight from victory.
In the Song of Songs, which depicts a loving romance between God and man, we see the matter of the spiritual warfare. When we love the Lord Jesus and have a love relationship with Him, we will join Him in His fighting the enemy, and we will be where He is to defeat the enemy and proclaim His victory.
We need to have a personal, romantic, private, intimate, and spiritual relationship with the Lord, daily contacting Him personally, spending time privately with Him, kissing Him and letting Him kiss us, and being in spirit, the chambers where He dwells.
If we are not in the divine romance between God and man, we do not live a meaningful life but rather our life is vanity of vanities.
Christ came as God becoming man to court us, woo us, and draw us to Himself, and even as He went through a process to become the same as us, so we are passing through a process to be transformed and built up to be the same as He is.
In Song of Songs we see at the end that the lover becomes the Shullamite, the feminine form of Solomon, fully matching him in life and nature for their marriage life and living together.
One of the most important things the Lord is doing in us is subduing our will and bringing it into resurrection to be strong for the spiritual warfare. Many times our emotion loves the Lord and our mind is open to Him to be renewed, but our will is still so free, stubborn, and unsubdued.
The Lord considers the submission of our will a most beautiful thing. He loves it when His people offer themselves to Him willingly in the day of His warfare, in the splendor of their consecration.
The way to experience Christ as the King, the Priest, the Warrior, the Victor, and the Drinker – as seen in Psa. 110 – is for us to be a voluntary freewill offering in the day of His warfare.
When we have a serious and thorough consecration to the Lord, this becomes a beautiful thing in God’s eyes, and we become a young man in God’s plan.
For this, we need to spend time with the Lord personally, privately, intimately, and spiritually, and this time has to be early in the morning, just us and Him, and something fresh of Christ will be conceived in us to make us dew to water Christ.
Having a time with the Lord in the morning waters us and it also waters Him, for it makes us a dew to Him. Then, we need to experience Christ day by day and live according to the divine nature.
We need to be rich in our experience of the Triune God as the divine nature, the redemption, and the transforming work, and we will be adorned with gold, silver, and precious stones.
If our will is subdued by the Lord and brought into resurrection by Him, our will is expressed to be like the tower of David rich in the defending power and holding all kinds of spiritual weapons against any attack.
The weapons that protect us against the arrows of the enemy are kept in the tower of the subdued and resurrected will of the Lord’s seeking one.
Being Called by Christ to Live with Him in Ascension in Oneness with Him in Victory
In Song of Songs we see that Christ calls His lover to live in the clefts of the rock, in the covert of the precipice, and here she is His dove, with a voice that is sweet and a countenance that is lovely (S. S. 2:14).
When we live in Christ’s death, one with Him, and we find our home here, we abide in the crucified Christ, and our voice is sweet and our countenance is lovely to the Lord.
When we as the Lord’s lovers experience Christ in His sweet death and His fragrant resurrection, we determine to stay in the sweet death of Christ (signified by the mountain of myrrh) and His fragrant resurrection (signified by the hill of frankincense) until our Beloved comes back and the shadows flee away (see S. S. 4:6).
However, the Lord wants to call us onward for us to go where He is and be with Him, so He tells us, Come with me from Lebanon, my bride; with me from Lebanon come. Look from the top of Amana, from the top of Senir and Hermon, from the lions’ dens, from the leopards’ mountains (S. S. 4:8).
Christ calls us to live with Him in ascension, and not remain in the sweetness of His death and the fragrance of His resurrection.
Here we live with Christ in His ascension, and we look with Him from His ascension (typified by Lebanon), the highest place of the truth (typified by Amana) and of Christ’s victory in His fighting (typified by Senir and Hermon), and from the heavenly placed of the enemies (typified by the lions’ dens and the leopards’ mountains).
Christ wants us to be with Him where He is right now, and He is in ascension, where He wants us to be one with Him, living with Him as a couple. Today Christ is calling us to live with Him in ascension, after enjoying the sweetness of His death and the fragrance of His resurrection.
As we pass through these experiences, we become one with the Lord, and we match Him where He is for what He wants to do.
What is here in ascension, where the Lord is? Here there are the positive peaks of reality, victory, and the destruction of the enemy. Amana means “truth, reality”; this is the truth, the reality of the consummated Triune God, the all-inclusive Christ with His complete redemption, and the all-inclusive, compound, life-giving, sevenfold intensified Spirit.
When we answer the Lord’s call to come and live with Him in ascension, we enjoy the realities of the Triune God. Here, in ascension, the victory has been won: we wear soft armor (the meaning of Senir is “soft armor”) because the war is over and the victory has been gained.
We don’t need to wear the hard armor to fight, for Satan is a defeated foe, and Christ has defeated him already (Heb. 2:14; Col. 2:15). Hermon means “destruction” – in ascension, the enemy has been destroyed. Hallelujah!
Lord Jesus, we want to answer Your call and come to be live with You in Your ascension. Strengthen us not to remain where we are but advance and be with You and live in ascension, enjoying Your victory. Thank You Lord, You have already overcome the enemy, and in ascension we are seated with You and we look down on the enemy, who has been defeated. Praise the Lord, in ascension we can enjoy all the realities of the Triune God and wear a soft armor, proclaiming Christ’s victory over His enemies!
Looking from the Heavenlies and Wrestling with the Evil one from the Victory of Christ
Christ calls us, His loving seekers, to be with Him in the heavenlies, to live with Him in ascension; from this vantage point we can see and enjoy all the realities of the Triune God in truth, and we can proclaim Christ’s victory over the enemy.
With Christ, Satan is a defeated foe; with us, he is still a troublesome one. This is why Paul tells us in Eph. 6 that we need to wrestle with the evil one. Here in the heavenlies we can look with Christ over the lion’s dens and the leopards’ mountains (S. S. 4:8).
When we live with Him in ascension, we can be one with Christ as a couple, matching Him and being fully one with Him, and we see from His vantage point where Satan and his subordinates are (Eph. 6:12; 2:2).
In ascension and from the position of His victory, we as believers fight with Satan and his power of darkness by being empowered in the Lord and in the might of His strength (Eph. 6:10), by putting on the whole armor of God (vv. 11a, 13a), by standing against the stratagems of the devil (v. 11b), by receiving the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, the word of God (v. 17), and by praying always in spirit (v. 18a) for the building up of the Body of Christ and the spreading of the gospel (vv. 18b-20).
This is the reality of our living with Christ in His ascension, where we and Him live in one condition to be a couple – we are the same in life and nature, perfectly matching each other.
This is the fact stated in the Bible, and we stand not with our present condition or situation but with the truth in the word of God. As the Body of Christ, we put on the whole armor of God and stand against the stratagems of the devil, declaring the victory of Christ over him. Hallelujah!
In Christ’s ascension is His victory; there is no more fighting, for the enemy has already been defeated, and we wear soft armor to enjoy our victory in Christ; the position of prayer is ascension, that is, a heavenly position (Rom. 8:37; Eph. 2:6).
We were resurrected together with Christ to enjoy the resurrected life-giving Christ, and we now live in ascension with Him to enjoy Christ in the condition of ascension.
We need to live in ascension as God’s new creation in resurrection, and we will enjoy Christ not only in His death and resurrection, but also in ascension and as being the life-giving Spirit.
Praise the Lord, Christ in ascension is the all-inclusive life-giving Spirit of Jesus Christ to us! On the one hand we fight the spiritual battle from victory, and on the other, we live in ascension with Christ, enjoying all that He is and what He has done!
Lord, we are one with You in Your ascension; we want to live in ascension as God’s new creation in resurrection. Keep us in ascension one with You, having the same condition and living, so that we may fight with Satan and his power of darkness by being empowered in the Lord and in the might of His strength. Amen, Lord, we stand against the stratagems of the devil by receiving the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit! May the Body be built up, the enemy be defeated and put to shame, and the gospel be spread all over the earth!
References and Hymns on this Topic
- Inspiration: the Word of God, my enjoyment in the ministry, the message given by Ed Marks for this week, and portions from, Collected Works of Witness Lee, 1994-1997, vol. 3, “Crystallization-study of Song of Songs,” pp. 320-321, 319-320, as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, The Spiritual Warfare of the Church as the New Man (2018 Memorial Day Conference), week 4, Fighting the Spiritual Warfare through Living in Christ’s Ascension as the New Creation in Resurrection to Become Christ’s Duplication and Counterpart.
- Hymns on this topic:
# My Beloved responds: / Rise up my love, / My beauty and come away; / The rain is gone. / The winter is past, / The time of singing has come. / Rise up and come away, / You are my dove, / In the clefts of the rock. (Song on, In the Clefts of the Rock)
# One with Thee in Thine ascension, / In the heavens now with Thee; / Here a pilgrim and a stranger, / My true life is hid in Thee. (Hymns #474)
# From strength to strength go on; / Wrestle, and fight, and pray; / Tread all the powers of darkness down, / And win the well-fought day: / Still let the Spirit cry / In all His soldiers, “Come!” / Till Christ the Lord descend from high, / And take the conquerors home. (Hymns #888)
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