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A person who desires to be used by the Lord needs the Lord’s visitation, and he must be willing to pay the price. Furthermore, he must learn to fellowship with the Lord. Having the Lord’s visitation and paying a price are primary matters in being used by the Lord. However, if a person lacks proper fellowship with the Lord, his paying of a price will only be according to knowledge. It will be an action that he takes after learning doctrine. It will not be the result of being touched by the Lord while fellowshipping with Him. We must admit that there are still many things in our heart and in our living that substitute God and usurp His place in us. These things prevent Him from working in us. Unless these things are exposed by God in our fellowship with Him, we will not have any feeling concerning them. When we fellowship with Him, He causes us to realize that certain persons, matters, or objects are occupying us and restricting His work. The experience of being touched by God in our fellowship with Him and surrendering to Him is very precious. This experience will not only enable us to be used by the Lord; it will also keep us fresh and living. When we sense that our experiences, testimonies, or messages are old, there must be a problem in our fellowship with the Lord. We have either lost this fellowship, or we do not fellowship as much. As a result, we do not have new experiences, and we are not useful.
There are two ways of paying the price. One way is to pay the price according to the demand in our feeling. The other way is to pay the price according to the revelation of the truth. We must keep in mind, however, that paying the price according to the revelation of the truth is not enough. We should also be willing to pay the price according to the demand in our feeling that comes through our fellowship with the Lord. Only then will our paying the price be fresh and living. When we lack fellowship and pay the price only according to the revelation of the truth, others will not sense God’s presence or His expression. The revelation of the truth may require us to give up a certain matter, but we should pay the price by letting go of it when, in our fellowship with God, we sense that He wants us to let go of it. This way of paying the price is fresh, and it will cause others to sense God.
To be used by God is to let Him flow out of us in order to supply others. However, if we do not let Him flow into us, He cannot flow out of us. The best way to let God flow into us is to fellowship with Him. Every time we fellowship with God, we should sense that He is demanding something of us. If we do not sense that He is demanding something of us, we have not yet entered into His presence. God is always demanding something of us. Fellowship with God is the way to gain Him. It is also the way to pay the price. Those who desire to be used by God must fellowship with Him regularly.
The kind of fellowship we are speaking of does not refer to merely shutting ourselves in a room in order to read the Bible or pray. Fellowship refers to our having contact with God in spirit at any time and in any place. This inward contact with God should continue even while we are busy at work and while we interact with others. When we have such fellowship with God, we can experience and gain Him continually, and He will flow out of us so that we can impart Him into others. When we are such persons, we can be used by God all the time. Those who have a heart to be used by God must learn this lesson.
God always requires something of us when we fellowship with Him. Hence, in every experience of genuine fellowship we do not feel as though we have gained much from God; instead, we feel as though God has asked many things of us. If we always feel that we have gained God but not that He has required anything of us, we cannot be used by Him. Those who are used by the Lord often feel that He is constantly requiring something of them, and they are willing to respond by His grace. As a result, living water is constantly flowing from them, just like a renowned spring in Shantung Province, China, that flows and gushes forth water even when there is a long drought. This is according to the Lord’s words, “He who believes into Me...out of his innermost being shall flow rivers of living water” (John 7:38).
The Lord always demands something of us in our fellowship with Him because there are too many matters and things in us that replace Him. There are many things that replace Him within us and in our living and in our environment; hence, we do not express much of His element. For this reason the Lord continually makes demands on us. The more ground we give to the Lord, the more He will require of us. When we answer His demands, He will require more of us. However, if He does not ask anything of us, our fellowship with Him has been interrupted, and although we may still work, we cannot be used by Him. We may labor, but we will not have the flow of life. We may still give messages, but we will not impart God into others. Hence, as those who desire to be used by God, we must not neglect the lesson of fellowshipping with God. We must enter into His presence continually and respond to His demands.
To fellowship means to be in the presence of God. To live in fellowship with God means to live in His presence. In John 15:5 the Lord said, “I am the vine; you are the branches. He who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit.” When we abide in the Lord, we are with the Lord, and when the Lord abides in us, He is with us. Here, abiding denotes remaining. The Lord desires that we remain in His presence and not leave it. When we are continually with the Lord and He is continually with us, we are in fellowship with Him. This fellowship is also a union. The Lord explains this in chapter 15. Our union with the Lord is maintained through our fellowship with Him. Once the fellowship is lost, there is no practical union. Hudson Taylor wrote a book concerning his study on Song of Songs, entitled Union and Communion. Song of Songs is concerning our experience of fellowship with the Lord. Our fellowship with the Lord is our communion with Him. Fellowship and union are one matter.
God is Spirit (John 4:24). Since God is Spirit, He is not with us in our physical body. He is with us in our spirit, the deepest part of our being. First Corinthians 6:17 says, “He who is joined to the Lord is one spirit.” Romans 8:16 says, “The Spirit Himself witnesses with our spirit that we are children of God.” Second Corinthians 3:17 says, “The Lord is the Spirit; and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.” The Lord Spirit is in our regenerated spirit. Hence, we have freedom in our spirit, and we are being transformed into the Lord’s image from the Lord Spirit (v. 18).
Our fellowship with God involves two spirits, the divine Spirit and our human spirit. God is Spirit, and the created man has a spirit within him. The human spirit is the highest, the deepest, and the most central part of man. It is also the most genuine part of man. Human beings are higher than all the animals because humans have a spirit. The spirit in man enables him to contact God. The Spirit with our spirit is the meaning of our fellowship with God. It is the way for us to fellowship with God.
“The mind set on the spirit is life and peace” (Rom. 8:6b). According to this verse, we can sense the Spirit with our spirit. Romans 6 is doctrinal, but Romans 8 is experiential. Verse 6 says that the result of setting our mind on the spirit is life and peace. This sense of life and peace must be something that we can experience. The word peace does not refer to peace in our environment. It refers to the peace in our inner being. When we have peace in our spirit, we feel proper, comfortable, at rest, and at ease. Similarly, the life spoken of in this verse must be something that can be sensed. When we have the sense of life in our spirit, we are satisfied, strengthened, watered, refreshed, living, and bright. When we set our mind on our spirit, we sense life and peace within. Second Corinthians 3:17 says, “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.” This freedom is also something that we can sense. These two verses show that when the Spirit is with our spirit, we sense life, peace, and freedom. Hence, God is with us whenever we sense life, peace, and freedom within.
“The mind set on the flesh is death” (Rom. 8:6a). Death is also something that can be sensed. Death is not only in contrast to life but also in contrast to peace. Hence, the sense of death is opposite to the sense of life and peace, and it includes emptiness, weakness, dryness, staleness, depression, darkness, not being satisfied, not being comfortable, not being at rest, and not being at ease. Whenever we have such feelings within, we must realize that we have touched death. Such feelings also indicate that we are not living in our spirit and have lost our fellowship with God.
Fellowship refers to a continual living in our spirit in communion with the Spirit. Our spirit should remain in fellowship with the Spirit even when we are very busy. We even may laugh or we may become angry as long as we remain in fellowship with the Spirit in our spirit. First John 1:3 says, “[The eternal life] which we have seen and heard we report also to you that you also may have fellowship with us, and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ.” The apostles reported the eternal life to the believers so that the believers might have fellowship with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ. We have this fellowship because we have the eternal life. Second Corinthians 13:14 says, “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.” In Philippians 2:1 fellowship is a matter of our spirit: “If any fellowship of spirit.” From these verses we can see that our fellowship with God is entirely of life and altogether in the spirit. Our fellowship with God depends not on our outward acts but on the fact that the Spirit is in our spirit.
Prior to our salvation the Spirit of God and our spirit were separate. At our salvation the Spirit entered into our spirit, and we were joined to Him. The Spirit and our spirit have become one spirit. Being joined as one spirit is a continuous matter involving a mutual flow. The life of God, which we have received, is neither a part nor the whole but a mutual flow. This mutual flow is the fellowship of the divine life, and it makes us one with God by mingling us with Him. Fellowship is a matter of communion between the Spirit and our spirit.
A genuinely spiritual person remains in his spirit, enjoys God’s presence, and has life, peace, and freedom. He is also satisfied and strengthened. Since he lives in fellowship with God, the divine life can flow into him and become his constitution. As a result, he can always express the life of God and impart this life into others. By means of the divine life flowing into him and becoming his constitution, he gradually grows in this life unto maturity. The flow of life and the imparting of life are the genuine work of every person who serves the Lord. Our growth in life and our function in the work depend on the fellowship of life, which is also fellowship in God’s presence. It is possible that some of us do not have the fellowship of life, yet we still give messages, pray, visit, or administrate the church. This kind of work, which is not in fellowship with God, is merely a job, and it cannot impart life into others. The inexperienced ones may regard such outward things as being the work of God, but those who are experienced, who live in fellowship with God, know that such work can be carried out without fellowship and without the supply of life.
A believer who desires to be used by God must pay the price. This is the prerequisite to being used by God. In addition to paying the price, there are still many lessons that can be learned only in fellowship with God. Some brothers paid a price when they began to serve, but now they cannot be properly used by the Lord, because they gradually lost the fellowship. Not every person who pays the price is able to maintain the fellowship. However, those who maintain the fellowship will surely be able to pay the price. When we are not willing to obey the inner sense and pay the price, the fellowship will cease spontaneously. There are times when we pay the price, yet we do not have the fellowship. Learning to fellowship with the Lord is the most important lesson for the Lord’s serving ones. Fellowship is the key to all our spiritual experiences, whether they are related to our life, our living, or our work. Hence, if we desire to be used by God, we must pay full attention to this fellowship.
Concerning learning to fellowship, we must begin with knowing the inner sense. Suppose a brother senses that he does not have life, peace, or freedom within. He must stop and immediately check with God concerning the reason. Perhaps he did something that God forbade, or he kept something that God wanted him to give up. Perhaps he has remained in a certain sin and is not willing to forsake it, even though he has a feeling about the situation. As long as he is willing to enter the presence of God, it will be easy for him to find the cause. Once he knows the cause, he must deal with it immediately. If he is not willing to deal with it, his sense of death and bondage will become more acute. These negative feelings are warnings from God, telling the brother that there is a problem and that he should check with God.
It may be that a brother did not make a mistake, commit a sin, or disobey God, but he senses hunger and thirst within. The sense of hunger and thirst differs from the sense of death, unrest, bondage, and emptiness. The sense of emptiness and death is not normal, but the sense of hunger and thirst is normal. God uses the sense of hunger and thirst to urge us to seek Him in prayer and to pay the price to gain Him. If we are willing to take care of this sense within, we will enter deeper into the presence of God. The sense of dullness is different from the sense of darkness. The sense of darkness is abnormal, and it indicates that there is a problem between us and God; that is, we have offended Him. The sense of dullness is often an urging from God for us to rise up and pursue Him in prayer and wait for His calling. When we have the sense of dullness, we should rise up to wait on God and seek Him in a deeper way.
There is also the sense of indifference, in which we feel neither peaceful nor restless. This is also a calling from God for us to enter into His presence. In order to take adequate care of the inner sense, we need to spend time to absorb God in prayer. Prayer is the way to absorb God. If we do not take adequate care of the inner sense, we will lose the sense of life, peace, and freedom. God gives us the inner sense because He desires that we would draw near to Him and respond to His call. If we do not ignore the inner sense, we will enter into deeper fellowship, which will result in our experiencing abundant life and enjoying deeper peace and more freedom. If we ignore the inner sense, we will lose the fellowship of life, which will cause us to lose the sense of life, peace, and freedom.
If we are willing to learn the fine details of the lesson of being in the presence of God and fellowshipping with Him, we will grow in life daily, and we will also be constituted with the spiritual element daily. As a result, we will have the overflow of life and be able to impart the divine life into others. This is the result of living in the divine fellowship and of allowing God to constitute His divine element into us. God can flow out of those who are willing to become such people, and such people can be used by God.
Fellowship is the flow of life. It is the Spirit flowing within us. To learn the lesson of fellowship is to take care of the feeling in our spirit by dealing with ourselves before God. Hence, we must set aside a substantial amount of time in order to look to Him, to absorb Him, and to wait on Him. We must enter into His presence so that He has the opportunity to strengthen the flow of His life within us. The more time we spend entering into His presence to wait on Him, draw near to Him, and absorb Him, the more opportunities He will have to flow in us. The dealings produced through this kind of fellowship will strengthen our fellowship with God, produce the overflow of life, and manifest our function.
As those who desire to be used by the Lord, we should pay attention to the fellowship of the divine life and not to good and evil or to right and wrong. The fellowship of life is the principle of the tree of life. Any church or any saint who desires to be used by the Lord cannot live in the realm of right and wrong. Whatever we touch in the realm of right and wrong is not of life and does not give peace or freedom. We must touch God’s presence, that is, His life. When we touch death, our service comes to a halt. The key to being used by the Lord is to touch Him. This applies to an individual saint and to a church. Those who are in communion with God will be used by Him. Rather than arguing over the fine details of the truth, we should pay more attention to entering into a deeper fellowship with the Lord. Regrettably, many saints who have a heart to serve the Lord have fallen into the trap of the devil; that is, they are in the realm of right and wrong or good and evil. As a result, they have lost the flow of life and have fallen into death. When believers debate concerning an item of the truth, they may get clear concerning the truth, but they almost always touch death. We must not forget that only those who touch the flow of life can be used by God. Hence, we must touch the fellowship of life.
Andrew Murray was greatly used by God because he was a person who touched the divine fellowship. He brought people into God, and his work was very effective. The secret of being used by the Lord lies in the fellowship of life. We must be willing to forsake other things in order to keep this fellowship. The apostle John was a mender of nets, and his ministry was a mending ministry with the divine life. God used him to write the last book of the Bible, Revelation, in which every spiritual matter concludes with the divine life. The foundation of serving the Lord is the experience of life, and the experience of life depends on our fellowship with the Lord.
