When you turn to the Lord and begin to seek after Him for certain things, right away you become very active. You would stay active for quite a long time. You would be doing things and would be so diligent and so active. You would consider that other people cannot pray so much, but you can. Other people cannot read the Bible so much, but you can. You can finish the schedule; you can do so many things. Yes, you can. It’s not bad. Don’t stop doing it. Do it. But gradually you will see that all your doings are traps. Then you may ask me why I wouldn’t encourage you to stop the doings? If you stop the doings, you are in a deeper, bigger trap. If you do the things, you may get yourself into small traps, but if you don’t do the things, you will remain in a bigger trap, so comparatively speaking, it is better to do it. Compared to the big traps these are much better, but compared to the proper and wonderful situation of living Christ, these are frustrations. All the traps are frustrations. I am not condemning prayer, and I am not condemning Bible study. These are steps to get you out. But the problem is that many Christians never get out of the steps. They are always in the steps and eventually they give up and jump into a big trap. Many of you did have this kind of experience in the past.
What shall you do? You need to keep seeking after the Lord. Keep loving Him, keep contacting Him, but learn all the time not to give Him too many commands. When you rise up in the morning tell the Lord: “Lord, I am here: I love You. I surely would like to live a life that is one with You. Lord, I would like to live You, but I am not giving You a command. And I wouldn’t do it. I like it, but I wouldn’t do it. Lord, I love You.” Try to pray in this way. Then you will see what will come out.
Many times the way to contact the Lord is not with a kind of prayer but just a kind of conversation. You need to converse with the Lord. You may say that any kind of conversation to the Lord is a kind of prayer. That is right, but prayer is somewhat different. Learn to converse with Him. See which way would give you more infusion. You may discover that this conversing way would give you a better infusion and more infusion. Learn to tell the Lord: “Lord, I’m not ambitious in anything except loving You. I only want You, Lord; I only love You. Whatever You want, I want. But, Lord, I must tell You regardless of how much I want it, I won’t do it. I just won’t do it, because I can never make it. I love You, Lord.” This will be a big field where you can go every day. You will find that a spontaneous living will come out of you, not by your determination and not by your kind of definite mind or strong will.
When you are in this kind of situation, you will already be saved very much from yourself. You have to realize your strong seeking after the Lord hides your self. Your self is subtly hidden in that kind of seeking. I hope that many of you would get the book, Life and Building in the Song of Songs, and reread it. In that book you can see that step after step the seeker of the Lord was gradually delivered from her own energy in seeking after the Lord. She was very strong and energetic in loving the Lord. When she first came to the Lord, He likened her to a company of horses in Pharaoh’s chariots (S. S. 1:9). She was not seeking after Pharaoh, nor was she riding back to Egypt. She was seeking after the Lord, and she was riding to the Lord, and she reached the Lord. But when the Lord appraised her, He appraised her as a company of horses. Horses at the time of the writing of that book mainly came from Egypt. So the horse in the Bible, especially in the New Testament, signifies the natural strength that belongs to the world. Yes, you are seeking. Even now you are seeking to live Christ. But in your seeking to live Christ, you are like a company of horses in Pharaoh’s chariots.
The second picture of the seeking one in the Song of Songs is a dove (2:14). But even the dove is not so satisfactory. After the dove comes a lily (2:16). A lily shows that you are living, but that you don’t have that much personality. A horse has an energetic and stubborn personality. A dove is much better, but still a dove has a character and a living personality. A lily, though, is living but with no personality. Eventually, the seeker became a pillar (3:6). This means the seeker becomes nearly nothing. But don’t imitate. If you are a horse and imitate a dove, that is ugly. If you are a dove, and you imitate a lily, that is not so good either. If you are a lily, but you pretend to be a pillar in the air, that doesn’t look nice. In the Song of Songs there is a clear picture showing us that the more we grow, the more we lose our character. To lose our character means we don’t give Him commands. In the first two chapters of Song of Songs, the seeking one always gave the Lord commands. In other words her seeking after the Lord was under her command and her direction. At first the Lord gave in a little bit, but after chapter two the Lord stopped giving in, so she couldn’t find the Lord. The Lord trained her and disciplined her to give up her commands and her direction and to pick up the Lord’s direction.