Life-Study of Psalms, by Witness Lee

More excerpts from this title...

I. A SONG OF LOVE
ACCORDING TO THE MELODY OF LILIES

The superscription of this psalm calls it "a Song of Love," and this love is feminine. It is the love between us and the Lord. This love makes us His love. This means that if we are those who love the Lord, we eventually become His love, His favorite. Just as He is our love, so we become His love.

The subject of this psalm is love, and the tune, the melody, is called "lilies." Here both love and lilies refer to the saints. Every lover of the Lord Jesus is feminine and is also a lily. A lily denotes a pure, simple, single life of trusting in God. Our love for the Lord Jesus should be a love full of affection. We should not only have a life of purity and simplicity as signified by the lily, but we should always have an affectionate feeling toward the Lord. According to Psalm 45, we all need to have a pure life with an affectionate love for the Lord.

John Nelson Darby, who lived to be eighty-four and never married, had such a love full of affection. One night in his old age, he was staying alone in a hotel, and at bedtime he said, "Lord, I still love You." When I read about this, I was deeply touched, desiring to have such an affectionate love for the Lord Jesus. Now I can testify that, as an elderly person, I love Him much more than I did when I was young. Recently I had a time of intimate, affectionate prayer to the Lord regarding a certain matter, and in my prayer I told Him, "Lord Jesus, I love You." As I was praying, I fell in love with the Lord Jesus once again.

II. A PSALM OVERFLOWING
WITH A GOOD MATTER CONCERNING THE KING
BY THE TONGUE AS THE PEN OF A READY WRITER

Verse 1 says, "My heart overflows with a good matter;/I speak what I have composed concerning the King./My tongue is the pen of a ready writer." This verse says that the psalmist’s heart overflows; we may also say the psalm overflows. The two are actually the same thing.

For the psalmist’s tongue to be the pen of a ready writer means that the psalmist does not need to write a draft of what will be spoken concerning the King. Real love for the King makes a draft unnecessary. Regarding many things we may need to write a draft, but to write a draft of what we want to say to someone we love would be altogether mechanical; it would not be real. If we have an affectionate love for the Lord Jesus, we will have the tongue of a ready writer. Instead of needing to write a draft, we will be ready to write our love and our praise.

(Life-Study of Psalms, Chapter 20, by Witness Lee)