"I am my Beloved's, and His desire is toward me."

I am my Beloved’s, and His desire is toward me. Come, my Beloved, let us go forth into the field.

Song of Songs (Solomon) 7:10-11

   “Her attitude is one of restful faith; she says, ‘I am my Beloved’s, I am at His entire disposal, separated unto Him and unto the gospel (Romans 1:1). In the shadow of His hand He has hidden me; He has made me a polished shaft (Isaiah 49:2). His desire is toward me; His will is to use the vessel He has thus prepared. And His desire toward me moves in me toward Him. Come, my Beloved; I may not, I dare not, go without Thee. Come, let us go forth into the field, the great field of the world!’

   The soul hidden in His hand says nothing now about herself; she is wholly taken up with Him and His desire. This is the divine remedy for self-consciousness and shyness. A God-consciousness that excludes the remembrance of self bestows the highest culture and the truest grace. The inward revelation of Christ had this effect so long as His presence was powerfully manifested to the consciousness; but abiding deliverance comes from such a knowledge of one life in common with the Well-Beloved that the soul is drawn out of itself, so to speak, to dwell in Him.

   …In early days, even though Christ was ‘dwelling in her heart by faith,’ she was still disposed to the ‘self’ center which grasps to itself all things and sees them only in their relation to itself. She manifested this in her words, ‘My beloved is mine!’ ‘I am His’ was a secondary thought (2:6).

   Later on, we watch her losing her ‘self’ center as she rests upon His hold of her and says, ‘I am my Beloved’s, and my Beloved is mine’ (6:3).

   Now even the ‘mine’ has vanished, for she is centered wholly upon Him. He fills her whole mental and spiritual vision. What she has, what she is, what concerns herself, is all out of the range of her consciousness. That He may have His way; that His heart’s desire may be fulfilled; that His inheritance in the saints may be given Him; that she may be all He wants her to be-this fills her mind and thoughts. He will care for her and will fulfill her every need; and she only needs what He thinks she needs. She only desires what He desires, and what He will desire in her…

   She is now God’s fellow-worker in service…The world lies before her in the light of God. ‘my church, my mission, my cause’ has given place to the great field of the world” This is a quote starting on page 169 of Thy Hidden Ones by Jessie Penn-Lewis.

Now read a few paragraphs from the preface of

Thy Hidden Ones by Jessie Penn-Lewis.

   “The ‘Song of Songs’ is the very last portion of the sacred Scriptures that I would personally have chosen to write upon, but during a period of enforced rest it was so illuminated to me as the heart-history of a soul in its progress in the divine life that I was constrained to write; and as I did so, the conviction grew that I dared not withhold the light given.

   The language of the ‘Song’ must be read as pertaining to the spiritual realm alone; and there is no book in the Bible requiring more reverent reading, greater freedom from all earthly sentiment, and deeper recollectedness of the majesty of the High and Holy One who inhabits eternity.

   It is often described as a love song between Christ and His Church, but it is also a mirror upon which the Divine Spirit flashes photographs, so to speak, of the glorified Lord, first from one standpoint and then from another, so that beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, the soul may be transfigured into the same image, from glory to glory.”