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Christ is the portion of the saints (Col. 1:12). God has prepared this eternal, unlimited portion for us to enjoy. Before we consider how we can partake of Him daily, let us answer some questions.
Question: How do we get in spirit and stay there? Many times we feel that we are in our spirit, but a moment later we are out of it.
Answer: To stay in your spirit, you need to learn to abide in the Lord. The Lord today is the life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45; 2 Cor. 3:17). If He were just the Savior (1 John 4:14) and the Lamb of God (John 1:29), how could He get into us? He could only be in the heavens (Acts 2:32-35; Phil. 3:20). The Scripture says clearly, “Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Col. 1:27). He can only be in us as the Spirit. How could we reach Him and abide in Him if He is confined to heaven? Even logically speaking, for the Lord to ask us to abide in Him surely indicates that His nature is Spirit. The Greek word for spirit is pneuma, which is also the word for air. Christ today is the holy air. We have no trouble abiding in the air, and the air is obviously abiding in us.
Like the air, the pneuma, He is in us and we are in Him. If you remain there and let Christ remain in you, you will be abiding in Him. According to our experience, however, we find that, in spite of our efforts and good intentions, unconsciously we slip out of Him. I may be in Christ while talking at the dining table, then suddenly realize I am out of Him. What has been the cause? I talked too much. Overtalking may get us out of the abiding.
A hint to help you remain in spirit is found in 1 Thessalonians 5:17: “Unceasingly pray.” I used to wonder how anyone could pray twenty-four hours a day. Gradually, I came to realize that to pray in the spiritual life is to breathe. Whether you are eating, speaking, or sleeping, you keep breathing.
Another kind of prayer is illustrated by drinking. This we do not do without ceasing. We may drink with our meals, and perhaps also at mid-morning, at mid-afternoon, and in the evening. Drinking typifies customary prayer. David said in Psalm 55:17, “Evening and morning and at noontime / I complain and moan,” indicating that he had this customary prayer at least three times a day. Acts 10:30 also hints to us that in ancient times people had set times to pray. This is a habit we all need to build up. Spend at least ten minutes for customary prayer every morning. Sometimes you may find yourself burdened to pray for an hour or more. This kind of praying is like drinking.
Unceasing prayer, which can be likened to breathing, is the key to remaining in spirit. While I am speaking outwardly, I am praying inwardly. While you are operating your machine at work, you can be praying inwardly. Practice saying “O Lord” whenever you feel that you are not in the spirit. There is no need to pray with composed sentences.
Suppose you are on the verge of losing your temper. Satan has filled you with anger against your husband. If you will pray “O Lord,” the anger will be gone. If you think this is just a psychological technique, try saying “O Washington” instead. It will have no effect. “O Lord” is a prayer that brings you back to the spirit. As long as you keep breathing this way, you will be filled with the pneuma. The respiratory process is complicated and hard to understand, but breathing is easy. Such is the simplicity of abiding in Christ. Pray without ceasing.
Question: Suppose after fifteen minutes in the Word and prayer, you feel that you have not gotten anything. Should you persist or by faith consider you have gotten something?
Answer: Learn to live not according to your feeling. Of course, your normal feelings help, but if you have a high fever, you may feel that the temperature in the room is warm when it is not. If you want to be spiritual, do not behave according to your feeling. Do not let circumstances determine how you feel. In the spiritual life learn to drop your feeling and go according to the facts.
It is a fact that you need to read the Word. Many young Christians get excited when they first start studying the Bible. They want to prolong the time and come back the next day for more because it is so much fun. Such excitement is short-lived. After a week or so, it fizzles out. If you feel excited when you first start getting into the Word and feel that there is light shining, do not have regard for that feeling. Prepare for a cold day soon to come. It is your duty to spend time in the Word and in prayer. Your day-to-day feeling about it makes no difference. Just fulfill your duty; go by the fact that you need to do these two things.
Do not think that you are wasting your time. A sister once asked Brother Nee if there was any point in her continuing to read the Bible every day; she could never remember what she had read. Brother Nee reminded her of how they washed the rice there in southern China. They would put the rice into a basket made of willow branches and then repeatedly immerse the whole basket in the water. The water would never stay in the basket, however many times it was immersed. Brother Nee pointed out to her that nonetheless the rice and the basket were both getting washed. By continuing to read the Word, this sister would be getting washed even though she could not remember what she had read.
Another fact is that you need to pray regularly. You may soon find that your time of prayer is dry and lifeless. Do not persuade yourself that this legality is killing you and that you should drop it. This would be going by your feeling rather than the fact. The truth of the matter is that having wonderful times in prayer can lead to deception. I can give you two examples.
One day while a sister was praying, she thought the Lord told her that He would come back at a certain time. It made her neglect her daily duties to get ready for His return. A number of times saints have been deceived in this way.
Once while a brother was praying, he received a “revelation” that he was no more in the flesh. Alas, not only was his flesh still with him; it was stronger than ever. He made many blunders as a result of this wrong feeling and eventually ended up in fornication.
Let me warn you to beware of excitement when you contact the Lord. Do not go the way of feelings. Whether you feel high or low, just come to contact your Lord for ten minutes every morning. Do not allow yourself to be played upon, directed, and even fooled by your untrustworthy feelings.
Sometimes when children will not drink their milk, the mother puts sugar in it. In like manner, when we are young, the word is sweet to our taste because God has added some sugar. You may also find singing hymns so sweet. But as time goes on, the sugar will be reduced, and eventually the sweet taste in the word and in the hymns will be gone. Eventually, we will have no ups and downs; all the days will be the same.
Question: But it is hard not to go by our feelings. I hear some brothers and sisters pray so strongly and loudly in the meetings. I highly regard them; yet when I touch their daily lives, they disappoint me. Then I cannot stand it. I love the saints, but I cannot control the bitter feeling about the lack of correspondence between their daily life and their meeting life.
Answer: The disparity you mention between how we live and how we behave when we meet has been greatly troubling me. Some of our meetings have become theatrical performances, an offense to God and an offense to the saints. If we feel down at home, we should just come to the meeting that way. That is being real. When we are real, God will come in to heal us. After we have been sitting in the meeting for a short while, the merciful God may visit us, touch our heart, and cause the tears to flow. Then we may say, “O Lord, forgive me. I am so down. Lord, forgive me.” This is genuine, because it results from the Lord’s visiting us. When we thus receive grace, others are helped and we are changed. Such is the genuine Christian life and the genuine Christian meeting. To stir yourself up to perform in the meeting is abominable in the eyes of God.
In the Epistle to the Colossians Christ is portrayed as the Head; the book of Ephesians deals with the Body. We will consider some of the descriptions of this Christ, our divinely allotted portion, as they are given in Colossians, and then go on to discuss how we can daily partake of Him.
Christ is “the image of the invisible God” (1:15). God is real yet abstract. Like electricity, He cannot be seen. But as light is the expression of electricity, so this invisible God has an expression, Christ. This very Christ is our portion, our heavenly food (cf. John 6:35, 48-58). By daily partaking of Him who is the very image of God, we too become the image of God.
In Colossians 1:15 and 16 Christ is described as both “the Firstborn of all creation” and as the Creator, the One by whom “all things were created, in the heavens and on the earth, the visible and the invisible, whether thrones or lordships or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through Him and unto Him.” How Christ could be both the first item of the creation and also its Creator, the One in whom all things were created, we cannot comprehend.
“He is before all things, and all things cohere in Him” (v. 17). That all things cohere in Him means that He holds everything together the way the hub of a wheel holds all its spokes together. Without the hub, the spokes would fall away. Scientists say there is some force that keeps the universe in its place. We do not know much science, but we do know who that force is; without Him the planets would fly apart. If such a hub can keep the universe on course, surely He can keep all our inward parts. What is the center of our being? Christ. Whatever happens, we do not fall apart because all our spokes are firmly fixed in this hub.
Christ is not only the Firstborn of all creation but also “the Firstborn from the dead” (v. 18). Our God is the God of both creation and resurrection. This One, who is also “the Head of the Body,” is in the highest position as the first among all things; this is what it means for Him to have the first place in all things (v. 18). In us also He must have the first place in all things.
God is a mystery, and this mystery is Christ (v. 27; 2:2; 4:3).
“Let no one therefore judge you in eating and in drinking or in respect of a feast or of a new moon or of the Sabbath, which are a shadow of the things to come, but the body is of Christ” (2:16-17). The food we eat and the drink we take are just a shadow whose reality, body, is Christ. Holidays are days of joy and good times; to have Christ is to have a holiday every day. In a dark night a new moon is like a fresh, new beginning. This is what Christ is to us when we are in a dark night without hope and with no way out. Christ is also the rest pictured by the Sabbath. Food, drink, holidays, new moons, Sabbaths — all these positive things have Him as their reality.
“In Him all the fullness was pleased to dwell” (1:19). God is rich, full, and complete; all His fullness dwells bodily in Christ (2:9).
This very Christ portrayed in Colossians is our life (3:4). This all-inclusive, excellent, wonderful One is our life. We have a physical life. If that life were gone, we would not have one to live. Christ is for us to live. We should not live American or Chinese; we should not live old folks or young people; we should all live Christ. Whether you are humble or proud, pleasant or tough, does not matter. Not only when you hate people but even when you love them, you may not be living Christ. The Bible is not a book of ethics, teaching you to love rather than hate; its message is that we should live Christ. We are to be neither moral nor immoral. We are called Christians, which means “Christ-men.” Thus, we must live Christ.
Religion’s wrong concept is that God wants us to be good. If God wanted good men, He could create billions of them. But He cannot create people who live Christ. God is omnipotent, but He cannot live Christ for you. He needs you to live Christ. The world has many good people, but where are those who live Christ?
When you were married, you were a “raw” husband, a beginner. But now your crudeness and toughness have worn off, and you seldom offend your wife. Please be assured that God does not want your kindness and gentleness any more than He wanted your crudeness and toughness. He wants you to live Christ.
In 1933 I was a young man staying in Shanghai. Two or three times a week I would go to visit Brother Nee and spend the afternoon with him. One afternoon we sat down together, he in a rocking chair and I on the sofa. After a long, long silence he suddenly asked, “Witness, what is patience?” Everyone knows what patience is; why would he ask me that? I dared not answer, but he just kept rocking and again asked, “What is patience?” I repeated his question, and he did too. Finally, the long time of waiting forced me to say, “Patience is enduring and suffering when one is mistreated.” In Chinese the character for patience is a knife pierced into a heart. My answer was obviously right, but Brother Nee shook his head. Another long silence ensued. Then he said, “Patience is Christ.” I was puzzled. “What do you mean, Brother Nee?” I asked. He would not explain further, though I kept begging him to do so. He just went on rocking and repeating, “Patience is Christ.” Evening came on, and I had to leave for dinner at my lodging place. So I said, “Sorry, Brother Nee, I have to leave now.” He replied, “Patience is Christ.” I said goodbye, and again his answer was, “Patience is Christ.” When I got back to the church guesthouse, I had no heart to eat. I went to my room, knelt down, and, nearly weeping, prayed, “Lord, what is this? Patience is Christ. What is this?” The Lord heard my prayer and that of Brother Nee, who was also praying for me. Within a few days the light came. I saw that patience is Christ because Christ is my life. Every human virtue is Christ. Because He is my life, He is my everything. I was so exhilarated that I felt like a bird soaring in the air. That very day I began to delve into the book of Colossians. “When Christ our life is manifested, then you also will be manifested with Him in glory” (3:4).
Do you live Christ? Do not say that this is poor English. Every day we should live Christ. He is “the hope of glory” (1:27). Now He is life to us; in the future He will be glory to us. That glory is our hope. Our hope is in knowing that glory is coming and that that glory is also Christ. Christ is in me now as my life and before me as my glory. This is the genuine Christ, our portion. Do not take Christianity’s wrong picture of Him. Do not be put off because this Christ is beyond your understanding. The things of life are hard to explain but easy to experience. I do not understand about the vitamins contained in wheat and what good they do me, but it is easy for me to eat bread and get its nutritional value anyway. This Christ too I can partake of without understanding.
Christ is our portion, our life, and our glory. How can we touch Him? Colossians says to “let the word of Christ dwell in you richly” (3:16). The word dwell here is a more solid word in Greek than the word abide; its root means “house.” We are to let the word of Christ make its home in us; here is the key to enjoying Him. Christ is abstract, mysterious, and intangible. But the Bible is tangible, solid, and receivable. Christ as the life-giving Spirit is embodied in the word of the Bible as our food.
You can see now why it is so important to be in the Word daily. However busy you are, you must begin your day in the Word. Buy an alarm clock if you need one to help you to get up early enough to set aside at least ten minutes for the Word. Then do not just read it; pray it with your spirit. Let the word of Christ thus make its home in you. With Christ embodied in the word and the word embodied in you, you will live Him. If you have not digested Him through His word, how can you live Him? When you are saturated with His word, you will be saturated with Him.
