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Scripture Reading: Eph. 5:18
All human beings have the tendency to try to be good. Even sinful people often have the thought that they should try to be good. In addition to trying to be good, some people feel the need to be religious. Being religious is going a step further than simply trying to be good. It is possible to try to live a good life without having any consideration concerning God. Throughout history there have been many people like this. Although these people had nothing to do with God, they appeared to be good people. Whether or not they were truly good is another question, but to those around them they appeared to be good. On the other hand, people who are religious consider God. They fear God, worship God, and endeavor to live and walk according to the will of God. Many of these religious people become Christians, thinking that to be a Christian is to be one who fears God, worships God, and attempts to live and walk according to God’s will. Is this concept correct? Is this what it means to be a Christian? Surely, as Christians we must be good. Moreover, no one can dispute the fact that true Christians fear God, worship God, and seek to live and walk according to God’s will. Nevertheless, we must see that being a Christian is much more than this. Being a Christian is more than merely being a good or religious person.
To be a Christian is to be a spiritual person. What does it mean to be spiritual, and what is the difference between being spiritual and being good or religious? To be spiritual is to be mingled and filled with Christ. Thus, a true Christian is a person who is mingled and filled with Christ. The word Christian means “an adherent of Christ.” A genuine adherent or follower of Christ is a man of Christ, a Christ-man, one who is filled with Christ.
A cup of tea is a good illustration of what it means to be a Christ-man. A cup of tea is not composed solely of tea; it is tea that has been mingled with water. It is neither merely water nor merely tea; it is tea plus water, water plus tea. Thus, we can call it “tea-water.” Human beings are like a cup of water, and Christ is like tea. When Christ as the tea enters into us as the water, He is mingled together with us, making us Christ-men. A true Christian is a Christ-man — one who has been mingled with Christ and has Christ as his life.
To be spiritual is also to be one who is filled with the Spirit, for the Spirit is the reality of Christ, and Christ today is the Spirit (1 John 5:6; John 16:12-15; 1 Cor. 15:45b). If we do not have the Spirit, we do not have Christ, because Christ is the Spirit. Second Corinthians 3:17 clearly states, “And the Lord is the Spirit.” Furthermore, Romans 8:9 says, “But you are not in the flesh, but in the spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. Yet if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not of Him.” This verse reveals that we are of Christ because we have the Spirit of Christ. Thus, if we do not have the Spirit of Christ, we do not belong to Christ. We can never divide the Spirit from Christ, because Christ and the Spirit are one. God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit are not three separate Gods. They are one God who is three-one. Just as the Triune God is one, Christ and the Spirit are also one. Thus, if you have the Spirit, you have Christ. This makes you a Christ-man — a man who is mingled and filled with Christ. Furthermore, a Christ-man is a Spirit-man — a man who is mingled and filled with the Spirit of Christ. This is what it means to be a Christian. A Christian is not a good man or a religious man; a Christian is a spiritual man, a man mingled and filled with Christ as the Spirit.
Suppose there is a man who does not believe in God. He does not love God, fear God, worship God, or have any consideration for God. However, because he is a human being, this man feels that he should be a good person. He feels that he should try to love his neighbors and that he should be good toward others. This is the kind of person that we would call a good man. However, suppose that one day this good man begins to realize that in this universe there is an almighty Being, a God. With this realization, he begins to fear, love, and worship God. Eventually, this man hears that he is a sinner before God and that God sent His Son, the Lord Jesus, to die on the cross to redeem man. As a result, this man believes that Jesus is the Savior, repents to God, and is saved. He then begins to attend Christian meetings and to endeavor to live according to God’s will. In addition, he begins to study the Bible and to read many Christian devotionals and religious writings. He even begins to collect sermons and to practice delivering sermons. He also learns how to compose prayers, and when he comes to the meetings, he offers to God the prayers that he has composed and delivers to the congregation the sermons that he has prepared, reading from his notes. The question now is what kind of man he has become. Previously he was a good man — a man who attempted to do good apart from God — but now what kind of man is he? Surely he has become something more than a good man, but can we say that he is a spiritual man? We cannot. This man has become a religious man, but it is doubtful that he has become a spiritual man. From this we can see that it is very possible to become a religious person without becoming a truly spiritual person.
Suppose that one day the Lord comes to this brother and brings him into His light. As a result, the way this brother prays begins to change. Rather than praying from his memory, from his mind, or according to his circumstances, he begins to pray according to what he senses in his innermost being, and his prayer often comes out in broken sentences. He prays, “O Lord, O Lord, I am sinful. Lord, how sinful! Lord, forgive me. Oh, forgive me. I am sinful.” Then this brother fully gives himself up to the Lord, and the Spirit has the way to possess, occupy, and fill him. As a result, when this brother comes to the church meetings, he is filled with the Spirit, and there is something energizing, burning, and bubbling within him. He cannot control it; neither can he quench it. When the opportunity arises in the meeting, he offers prayers in a living way. Although his prayers are not grammatically correct like the prayers that he used to compose, he prays from his spirit, and a living stream flows out from within him. All the brothers and sisters in the meeting sense the presence and anointing of the Lord in his prayers. When the opportunity arises for this brother to give a short word in the meeting, he stands up and speaks from his spirit. Previously, he shared from his prepared notes; now he shares from the burning, energizing, strengthening, and bubbling within him, testifying to the congregation of the living One who lives within Him. What kind of person is this man? Clearly he has become a spiritual person — a person filled with Christ as the Spirit. He is not merely a good man or a religious man; he is something much more. He has become a spiritual man, a man who is according to God’s desire.
God’s desire is that we would be spiritual, that is, that we would be filled, occupied, and saturated with Christ. Only when we are spiritual can we be living and functioning. If we are not spiritual, we may be good and religious, but we will be dead. It is possible to be a good Christian and a religious Christian and at the same time be a dead Christian. A dead Christian has no living impact, no genuine spiritual gift, and no power or authority. All he has is religious knowledge and Christian teachings. This is why we need to be filled and saturated with the Spirit. When we are filled and saturated with the Spirit, we become genuine spiritual men.
Since our need today is to be filled and saturated with the Spirit, we must consider what we need to do in order to experience the Spirit. The Lord’s Word reveals that on God’s side everything is ready. God is ready and is waiting for us. We need to do something, but what is it that we need to do? The first thing we must do is to go to the Lord. To do this we need to learn how to contact the Lord in a definite and prevailing way. I am afraid that many believers have been praying for a number of years and have spent much time reading the Word but have never contacted the Lord in a definite and prevailing way. Thus, we need to consider at length how to contact the Lord in this way.
I was born into a semi-Christian family. My family was about fifty percent Christian and fifty percent Buddhist. At a young age I began to study at Christian schools and was thereby brought into the realm of Christianity. I was exposed to Christianity, but I was not saved. In fact, I did not like Christianity at all. When I was nineteen years old, I heard an announcement that a young, twenty-five-year-old lady was coming to my town to hold a public gospel campaign. This surprised me greatly, and I decided that I would go to one of the meetings to see what it was all about. At the first meeting, the Lord met me. I went to the meeting, not to see the Lord but to see if anything strange would happen there; however, when I got there, the Lord met me, and I was saved. In fact, I was saved in a prevailing way.
After receiving the Lord, I thought that I needed to begin to behave like a Christian. In my mind this meant that I needed to be good and religious. With this concept, I began to read and study the Scriptures, and I also sought out a place where I could obtain the best knowledge concerning the Scriptures. After finding such a place, I studied the Bible and learned the Scriptures there for seven years. Day after day and week after week I prayed and attended the meetings, but within I was dead.
One day in August 1931 the Lord spoke within me. He asked me, “What are you doing here? Are you living or dead? What kind of Christian are you?” This was a real crisis for me. The very next day I went up to a little mountain close to my home to pray. I went there early in the morning and knelt down and cried out to the Lord, saying, “Lord, be merciful to me! There must be something wrong with me. Week after week I attend Christian meetings, study the Word, and pray, but I am still so dead and weak, and for many years I have not brought one soul to You.” When I cried out in this way, the Holy Spirit flooded through me like a mighty tide. I realized that I was sinful, dirty, and rebellious. I cannot describe how I felt at that time. I simply prostrated myself on the ground and told the Lord, “Lord, I am sinful. I am the most sinful person in the whole world.” As I confessed to the Lord in this way, tears came down my face. Later, as I was on my way down the mountain, I was filled with happiness, joy, peace, and a heavenly feeling. At that time I did not know where I was. I could not tell if I was in the heavens or on the earth.
From that day on, for more than seven months I rose up early every morning and went up to that mountain. Day by day I went up to the mountain to pray to the Lord in a living way. During this time it was easy for me to meet the Lord. I would read the Word, pray, and call upon the Lord in a living way. Sometimes when I would call upon the Lord, I had to stop calling because tears would be pouring down my face. For seven months I went up to the mountain by myself to pray in this way. I was just a young person at the time, and no one could understand me. My family thought that there was something wrong with me and even wondered whether something had happened to my mind. They realized that there had been a great change in my life. After seven months of praying in this way, I learned the difference between being religious and being spiritual, between reading the Scriptures with the mind and reading the living Word of God with the spirit.
After seven months of praying to the Lord every morning on the mountain, something else very wonderful happened — the Lord began His ministry through me. A few years before this time the pastor of our denomination had asked me to give a sermon on the Lord’s Day during the morning service. I was only around twenty-three years old at the time. For an entire week before that day on which I was to give the sermon, I worked on my sermon. I wrote down notes concerning all the points on which I would speak, and when the time came for me to give my sermon, I spoke from the platform according to the notes that I had prepared. Although I had written everything down, I still missed several points that I had intended to cover. Years later, when the Lord began to use me to minister for Him and opened the way for me to begin speaking for Him, my first thought was to write down all my points on a piece of paper as I had done before. Initially I tried to do this, but eventually I found out that this way does not work. Once I discovered this, I dropped this way and simply began to speak from my spirit. At that time I learned that there are two ways to speak. One way is to speak from memory, from the mind, which does not work. The other way is to speak from the spirit.
God’s desire is that all His people would be genuinely spiritual. However, in order for us to become spiritual, we all need to have at least one time when we come to the Lord and are met by Him in a definite way. We must come to the Lord in a definite, purposeful way, not to pray for various things but to meet the Lord and to be met by Him. We must tell the Lord, “Lord, here I am. I am ready to be searched by You. I am ready for You to meet me, break me, and speak to me. I am ready. Lord, here I am.” We all need to go to the Lord and have such a time with Him at least once in our life.
Thus far, we have considered our need to spend time with the Lord in the morning to practice contacting Him in a living way by reading His Word and praying in a prevailing way. We all need to do this, and it is absolutely right for us to do this. However, in order for our morning time with the Lord to be successful, we must first do one thing. We must go to the Lord to have a definite time in which we allow Him to search us, enlighten us, and meet us. We must go to the Lord in a purposeful and definite way to have such a time. We have no choice, and we cannot argue when it comes to this matter. If we desire to be normal, living, and spiritual Christians, we must go to the Lord in this way. If we do this and are met by the Lord in a definite way, what will be the result? The result will be that we will be filled with the Holy Spirit, and there will be a great change in our life. We will realize that to be a Christian is to be in the spirit and that the Christian life is absolutely a matter in the spirit.
All genuine believers have been regenerated, and all true Christians have the Spirit within them. However, most believers have never been truly filled with the Spirit. They have not been occupied, possessed, and saturated with the Spirit. This is our great need. Christians today, especially those in America, do not need more teachings or doctrines. They already have plenty of both. The primary need of Christians today is to be filled and saturated with the Spirit in a living way. The reason many believers are not satisfied with their present condition, church life, prayer life, and gospel preaching is that they have not been filled and saturated with the Spirit. There are not many reasons; there is only this one reason. Our greatest need today is to experience the infilling and outpouring of the Spirit, and the only way for us to receive this experience is to go to the Lord. We must go to the Lord and allow Him to meet us in a definite way. Once we have been met by the Lord in a definite way, I believe that the Lord will meet us again and again morning by morning. May we all pray prevailingly and go to the Lord in a definite way that we may be brought into this experience.
Question: Can going to the Lord in the way that you are speaking of and praying in such a prevailing way be considered complete surrender?
Answer: This matter surely includes complete surrender. We simply need to go to the Lord at least one time in our life and tell Him, “Lord, I am not here to ask anything of You. I am just here. Lord, search me, enlighten me, and bring me into Your presence and light.” If you pray in such a way, the Lord will honor your prayer, and He will bring you into His presence and light. When He does this, you will realize your faults and sinfulness. Then when you confess them before the Lord, He will cleanse, purge, and search you. As you open in this way, you will have some sense within as to what you should pray. Simply follow this inner sense and utter your prayer to the Lord according to it. Through this kind of prayer, we breathe out all our filthiness and breathe in the Lord’s riches.
Question: Have you ever been afraid of what the Spirit might do if you opened yourself to Him in this way?
Answer: There is no need for us to be afraid. Matthew 7:11 says, “If you then being evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in the heavens give good things to those who ask Him!” This is the Lord’s promise to us. He will give us only good things when we ask. Moreover, if we seek the Lord with a sincere heart, a right spirit, and a pure motive, the Lord will surely keep, guard, and protect us. All those who desire to enter into the real Christian life and church life, to have the prevailing preaching of the gospel, and to realize the genuine testimony of the Lord Jesus in their city must be filled with the Spirit. It is not difficult to receive this filling, so there is no need to worry. We simply need to go to the Lord in a definite way to be met by Him. May the Lord bring us all into such an experience and bring us from being good and religious men to being genuine spiritual men.
