This week was quite triggering for me.
( lol but before I say anything else, I must first sincerely apologize... I’m sorry I overshared in my last post, the Lord convicted me afterwards. Please forgive me, I’m still learning what it means to have a hidden life with Him… hopefully in the future I’d be more keen to following the sense of life and peace. My hope and prayer is still that these updates would firstly be a channel of life and encouragement to all y’all. 🫶🏼 )
Gah! Can you believe we are in the final class of the term?! It’s absolutely insane to me how quickly this term flew by… Ah, but this class is SO special. We are on “The Experience of Christ as Life — in the Song of Songs”
I have to plug here haha FTTAnaheim doesn’t get to go through these series of messages so here’s another reason to definitely come visit us in London sometime 😉
The Song of Songs, which is Solomon’s…
it’s a love song written by King Solomon of his lover, a country girl, whom He approaches as a country boy, to woo, court, and eventually bring her to become His Shulammite — A perfect match and duplication of Him.
This week I realized I have SO MANY CONCEPTS.
For starters, I had this concept that since the Song of Songs is a book about the divine romance, therefore during this class I kinda still hoped to be swept off my feet and to fall afresh wholly deeply in love with the Lord Jesus…
It soon became very clear to me: I have a warped, twisted, even in a sense, perverted definition of love.
So when we were constantly talking about us loving the Lord and Him loving us, I just became frustrated —
I don’t even really know what this means! How can I when my very definition of love is so lacking…
I prayed again and again:
Lord, redefine love to me. You said You are Love itself. So YOU show me. I just come as a blank sheet of paper. Write on me anew what love is.
I felt the Lord was actually quite pleased to hear me open to Him in this way… But towards the end of this week, I was exposed within that even this prayer is a bit self centered…
I myself am actually still very much self centered… but I need to learn to be CHRIST centered.
Which is EXACTLY why I so need this class.
This entire time, I had this concept that the Song of Songs was just all about the Lord loving me and courting me to make me His bride… but what impressed me this week was the emphasis on OVERCOMING.
The Song of Songs is a marvelous and vivid portrait, in poetic form, of the bridal love between Christ as the Bridegroom and His lovers as His bride.
This has everything to do with overcomers.
The Song of Songs is a Song of Overcoming.
Who is Christ’s bride?
This book shows us the Lord needs overcomers! He wants a bride that matches Him in every way.
Thus He comes as our Beloved, wooing us, calling us, drawing us on to overcome stage by stage.
There are 4 stages here that we see the lover goes through and each one of them is an overcoming…
Overcoming the attraction of the world (1:2–2:7)
Overcoming the self (2:8–3:5)
Overcoming the old creation (3:6–5:1)
Overcoming the flesh, the natural and old man (5:2–6:13)
Oh, we are talking about two VERY different people in the beginning, but somehow after many loving conversations, they become a perfect match…
I was really touched by this question our trainer asked us:
In what way do you love the Lord Jesus? By what means? How is it that you love Him?
There are millions of ways to respond to this but do we realize that what we are doing in our loving the Lord might actually become a HINDERANCE between us and Him??
Oh, we like to love Him according to OUR way, desire, and intentions… but that does not satisfy Him!
Classic Example: Peter LOVED the Lord… but how?
In Matthew 16, the Lord Jesus unveiled crucifixion and resurrection to His disciples and Peter took Him aside and began to rebuke Him! Saying, God be merciful to You, Lord! This shall by no means happen to You!
lol then the ultimate mic drop response: Get behind Me, SATAN!
Peter loved the Lord according to his natural man, according to his natural concepts… he maybe thought, Lord You have to save Yourself! If you go to the cross, won’t we lose You? How will Your ministry continue? How would we go on??
Oh but the Lord’s way is not to save Himself — His way is the cross.
We need to love the Lord according to who He is.
I heard many examples this week of what it means to love the Lord… this one touched me in particular:
To love Him is to become Him.
Let me blow your mind a bit more.
Have you ever seen that NOT ONCE in this entire book is He critical of His love. He is always encouraging…
This brought me to tears… He is never critical, never disappointed, never discouraged by me! 🥹
Even when (S.S. 1:9) He compares His lover to a mare (a wild horse full of natural strength) among Pharaoh’s chariots (so much worldly baggage) — He still calls her:
my love.
The Lord is not just looking at what the lover is now, but what she will become. And how He will operate through His constant wooing and speaking to her, adding something to her… Adorning her with the Triune God.
I don’t even know if she had to do anything! She just kept speaking to Him…
Next thing you know, oh her eyes are like doves… oh now she’s a lily… even then a bed and a palanquin!
OH, how much we need to spend a lot of time with our dear Lord Jesus…
Now here comes a word of love to all the SEEKING believers…
In every seeking believer’s pursuit, even if they have reached a point of fullness in their spiritual life — there comes a pitfall. Introspection.
In the second stage of the lover (specifically in 2:8-15), she has to overcome introspection, overcome the self.
Introspection is not only to examine, but to analyze ourselves.
To look inward, seeking self perfection
Actually, the self is just the soul mixed with the satanic mind! It’s the embodiment of Satan and our soul declaring independence from God.
In S.S. 2:9, the lover falls into introspection and it becomes a WALL, keeping her away from the presence of her Beloved!
The Lord is calling us! Showing us He is like a gazelle, with the power of resurrection, leaping and skipping upon the hills and mountains (over all our hard situations)!
But the lover is more worried about her self perfection… she builds a wall…
The reason why we are disappointed by many things in our Christian life, is because we are taking OUTWARD PERFECTION as a standard. No longer caring for LIFE.
The more we analyze our self, the more we are paralyzed in our function.
Even just yesterday I was fellowshipping with my team, and I opened up how I felt a bit defeated this term in different circumstances… I knew that there was still a deposit and gain of Christ even in our failures, but I was still worried for next term and said that I didn’t want to repeat the same mistakes. I hoped to verbalize the “lessons learned” so that in the future I could have a more secure standing and remember these lessons when the inevitable difficult moments come… (idk if that even makes sense sorry lol)
A teammate of mine then responded with a question that kinda bothered me at first… he asked
What is your goal?
Is it perfection and victory?
Or the present gain of Christ?
Haha i admit, i was a bit annoyed at first hearing it from him but it was sweet to realize he was right…
I’m still often stuck in the trap of wanting outward spiritual perfection and victory… but the Lord’s call to His beloved is
Rise up, my love / My beauty, and come away;
For now the winter is past; The rain is over and gone.
With the lover, the only way to be freed from the self is the cross. But the only way to enter into the cross is the power of His resurrection.
The Lord’s seeker is disappointed by her introspection, but the Lord is calling her into the springtime! When she looks into herself, it is the winter of dormancy; when she looks away to the resurrected Christ, she enters into the stage or spring, the stage of resurrection.
I confess, this point is still very mysterious to me and in my experience, it is still very hard to grasp… please pray for me.
I don’t want to get stuck behind my wall of introspection. I want to know and be with my dear loving and leaping Lord!
Not just for my own sake… but because the Lord also needs His lovers as Solomon’s bed with the sixty mighty men surrounding it. Fighting to keep Him at rest… in a union of love.
Maybe I should just stop here for now haha… I still have a lot of prayer and digesting to do.
Anyways, love y’all. I hope to see many of y’all soon!
Dasha.
I wonder how many just scroll immediately to this section (no condemnation haha I sometimes still do the exact same):
PICTURES!!
