Leaning on our Beloved, we are Hoping to be Raptured and pray, Come, Lord Jesus!

As we advance in our loving relationship with the Lord, we are hoping to be raptured, leaning on our Beloved, realizing that we depend on the Lord and we depend on His word; we ask our Beloved to make haste to come and set up His sweet and beautiful kingdom which will fill the whole earth! Hallelujah!

How wonderful it is to be in the divine romance, in a loving relationship with the Lord in which we pursue Him in love and we experience transformation, maturation, and building up for His Body!

The book of Song of Songs is filled with types and signs seen in the loving relationship in an excellent marriage between the lover and her beloved, and our prayerful consideration of these types will enrich our love for the Lord and uplift our experience of Him.

We all start by loving the Lord and asking Him to kiss us and draw us, so that we run after Him! How sweet the Lord is, and how loving He is toward us, causing all things to work together for good!

As we pursue the Lord for satisfaction and spend time with Him in a romantic, loving, intimate, spiritual, and private way, we treasure His person and we run after Him.

However, there’s a chance that, as we focus on our satisfaction in pursuing the Lord, we may become introspective, so the Lord comes to us, again and again, to call us out of our situation and condition to be where He is and even to be one with Him.

He is taking us through the process of death and resurrection, and He is bringing us into the reality of ascension.

And all this is in our mingled spirit; our love for the Lord is in our spirit and spreads to our soul, and whenever we exercise our spirit to contact the Lord, we love Him more and more.

As we go on with the Lord stage by stage, we become the same as He is in life, nature, expression, and function, but not in the Godhead.

When others touch us, the fragrance of Christ emanates from us.

We then enter into the Lord’s work, working not just for the Lord but with the Lord, together with Him, for the building up of the church.

Our work with the Lord is out of our love for Him, and we give Him our love as we labour in the Lord’s work in the churches.

Our desire is to rise up early and labour with the Lord, in oneness with Him and in dependence on Him, labouring not only for our local church or the area we are in but in the fields, lodging in the villages, in all the local churches for the building up of the Body.

What a wonderful thing it is for us to give the Lord our love as we work with Him, at the place of His work!

As Lovers of Christ, we are Hoping to be Raptured, Coming out of the Earthly Realm by Leaning on our Beloved

In the sixth stage of the Song of Songs, we as lovers of Christ are hoping to be raptured (Song of Songs 8:1-14).

We are coming out from the wilderness (signifying the earthly realm) by leaning on our beloved (v. 5).

As we lean on our beloved, we constantly leave the world behind and come up again and again until the Lord comes to take us away.

We are leaning on our Beloved, for we’re powerless and unable to walk. We lean on the One we love, for He carries us on and He takes us through.

The hollow of our thigh has been touched, and we cannot advance on our own; we lean on Him.

We thrust ourselves on Him and make ourselves a burden for Him to carry.

We find ourselves pressed beyond measure, and this is until the wilderness journey is over.

We don’t rely on ourselves anymore, we can’t go forward on our own; we lean on our Beloved, knowing that only He can prepare us for the rapture.

We trust in the Lord helplessly until we come out of the wilderness leaning on our Beloved.

As we advance in the divine romance with the Lord, we realize that whether we can endure to the end doesn’t depend on our own endurance but on the Lord’s preservation.

We no longer want to perfect ourselves or reach perfection, for only the Lord can sustain us until He returns; we are hoping to be raptured, and we are leaning on our Beloved.

Everything depends on God and His preserving power.

We even tell the Lord, Set me as a seal on Your heart, As a seal on Your arm (Song of Songs 8:6).

We ask Him to set us permanently as a seal upon His heart of love and upon His arm of strength.

Just as the priests bore the Israelites upon their breasts and their shoulders, we ask the Lord to remember us constantly in His heart and sustain us with His strong arm.

In ourselves, we’re weak and empty, and we’re conscious of our powerlessness. We are helpless, for we cannot do anything without the Lord.

Even if we try to preserve ourselves until His coming, we only bring shame to the Lord’s name and loss to ourselves.

All our hopes are in the Lord’s love and His keeping power.

We depend on His constraining love and His preserving and keeping power.

As lovers of Christ, we ask Him who dwells in the believers as the gardens to let us hear His voice (Song of Songs 8:13; 4:13-5:1; 6:2).

In the work that we do for the Lord as our Beloved, we need to maintain our fellowship with Him, always listening to Him (Luke 10:37-42).

Our position is at His feet, listening to His word and absorbing His speaking.

Our lives depend on the words of the Lord, and our work depends on His commands; we need His words for us to live and we need His commands for us to work with Him.

The central point of our prayers should be our longing for the Lord’s speaking (Rev. 2:7; 1 Sam. 3:9-10; cf. Isa. 50:4-5; Exo. 21:6).

From the very time that we get up in the morning, we yearn to have the Lord’s speaking, and all throughout the day we keep our being open to Him so that He may speak to us.

Our life depends on the Lord’s words and our work depends on the Lord’s commands.

Without having the Lord’s words, we will not have any revelation, light, or subjective knowledge of Christ as the mystery of God and of the church as the mystery of Christ (Col. 2:2; Eph. 3:4-5; 5:32).

Our life as believers in Christ and lovers of the Lord hinges totally upon the Lord’s speaking (vv. 26-27); we lean on our Beloved because we depend on Him and on His speaking.

Our Lord dwells in the gardens (Song of Songs 8:13); these gardens are plural in number, for the Lord dwells not just in our garden but in the gardens of all His believers.

All those who seek the Lord together with us adopt the same attitude of listening to the Lord’s voice (8:13).

We learn to be slow to speak so that we may be quick to hear, and we are no longer as talkative as we once were.

We come to the Lord and listen to His word, leaning on our Beloved.

We no longer insist on speaking like others do, and we don’t speak just for the sake of speaking. Oh, Lord.

May we be such ones, those who adopt the attitude of a hearer, realizing that our life depends on the Lord’s words.

We listen to the Lord, for we can’t move by ourselves any longer: without the Lord’s words, we no longer have revelation, light, or knowledge.

Dear Lord Jesus, our Beloved Bridegroom, we are hoping to be raptured! We come up from the earthly realm by leaning on our Beloved. We cannot go on without Your speaking; we depend on You for our very breath. Set us as a seal of Your heart of love and as a seal on Your arm of strength. We are conscious of our powerlessness and helplessness, and we realize that everything depends on God’s love and preserving power. We are leaning on our Beloved for we depend on Him in all things. Dear Beloved who dwells in the gardens, let us hear Your voice! We just want to listen to Your voice; speak to us, dear Lord. Our life depends on Your words. Our work depends on Your commands. We need You, Lord, and we depend on You. Our dear Beloved, we are hoping to be raptured, and we come to You, leaning on our Beloved! Come, dear Lord Jesus!

Praying for our Beloved to make Haste to Come back to Set up His Sweet and Beautiful Kingdom

In the concluding word of the book of Song of Songs lover of Christ prays that her Beloved would make haste to come like a gazelle and young hart on the mountain of spices (Song of Songs 8:14).

As lovers of Christ, we are going through the process of being transformed, conformed to the image of Christ, and inwrought with God until we are one with Him and even become the same as He is.

We work together with the Lord, we are leaning on our Beloved, hoping to be raptured, and our prayer is, Come, Lord Jesus!

May we all go through this process all the way to the consummation when we pray that our Beloved would make haste to come back in the power of His resurrection to set up His sweet and beautiful kingdom, which will fill the whole earth (Rev. 11:15; Dan. 2:35).

Such a prayer portrays the union and communion between Christ as the Bridegroom and His lovers as the bride in their bridal love.

Our divine romance with the Lord consummates in us being full of love toward Him and, leaning on our Beloved, we yearn for Him to return.

This is the prayer of John, a lover of Christ, as the concluding word of the Holy Scriptures, Come, Lord Jesus (Rev. 22:20).

Such yearning for the Lord’s return culminates in our praying for our Beloved to make haste to come back to set up His sweet and beautiful kingdom which will fill the whole earth.

Come, Lord Jesus! is the last prayer in the Bible; the entire Bible concludes with the desire for the Lord’s coming expressed as a prayer.

The Lord comes quickly, and He promises us He is quickly coming; our response is, Amen, Come, Lord Jesus!

We take Him at His word and we pray His word back to Him.

When He promises that He is coming in resurrection and ascension on the hill of spices, we simply pray for Him to come back quickly.

When the Lord comes, faith will be turned to facts, for we will see Him even as He is.

When He returns, our prayer will become praise, for everything will be accomplished in full, and we will enter into the reality and manifestation of what we believe and pray for.

Love will consummate in a shadowless perfection, and we will serve the Lord in the sinless domain. What a day that will be!

Our experience today is like a drop of water that has disappeared into the ocean; we are advancing, going deeper and higher until we call on Him to come quickly with His kingdom!

We yearn for Him to return as a roe or a young heart on the mountains of spices!

Today we love Him and our love for Him is perfected, but it is still lacking, for only at His return will our faith be turned to facts and praise will replace our prayer!

What a wonderful, sweet, delightful destiny we have!

We are now in the process of the divine romance, learning to love the Lord, giving Him preeminence in our being, allowing Him to transform us and conform us, and being built together in love as the Body of Christ.

One day our faith will become facts, our prayer will turn to praise, and we will see Him even as He is.

Until that day, our prayer is like that of the apostle John,

Come, Lord Jesus! Make haste, our Beloved, to come! Come back in the power of Your resurrection to set up Your sweet and beautiful kingdom to fill the whole earth! We yearn for You to return. We have nothing and no one here on earth that we desire, and only You can satisfy us. Oh Lord, come back quickly! Make haste to return and turn our faith into facts and our prayer into praise! How we yearn for our love to consummate in a shadowless perfection so that we serve God in the sinless domain! Lord Jesus, come back quickly! It is Your desire to come; we simply say, Amen, Come Lord Jesus!

References and Hymns on this Topic

• Sources of inspiration: the Word of God, my enjoyment in the ministry, a sharing by brother Ed Marks in the message, and portions from, Collected Works of Watchman Nee, vol. 23, “The Song of Songs,” pp. 119-126, as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, Loving the Lord and loving one another for the organic building up of the church as the Body of Christ (2022 fall ITERO), week 2, entitled, Song of Songs – the Progressive Experience of an Individual Believer’s Loving Fellowship with Christ for the Preparation of the Bride of Christ.
• Hymns on this topic:
  – Thou art my life, and I Thine image real; / Love in such union is as death most strong, / Ne’er can it be destroyed or e’er replaced / Till Thou on spices mountains come ere long. (Hymns #556 stanza 8)
  – Set me, Lord Jesus, / As seal on Thine heart; / Jealousy’s cruel as Sheol, / And love’s strong as death, / Jealousy’s cruel as Sheol, / And love’s strong as death. / Much water cannot / Quench love, nor do floods drown it. / All man could give for love is contemned. (Hymns #1154, stanza 4)
  – My Beloved, come on spices’ mountain; / How I yearn to see Thee face to face. / Drink, dear Lord, from my heart’s flowing fountain, / Till I rest fore’er in Thine embrace. / Not alone, O Lord, do I adore Thee, / But with all the saints as Thy dear Bride; / Quickly come, our love is waiting for Thee; / Jesus Lord, Thou wilt be satisfied. (Hymns #1159 stanza 4)