The first gift we received from God was the Son of God, who is Christ. But different people have different degrees of knowledge of God. Among God’s children, some know the Lord Jesus as one of the many gifts of God, while others know Him as God’s unique gift. Many people confess that the Lord Jesus is God’s gift, which means that they recognize Him as God’s unique gift. But many other people accept the Lord Jesus only as their first gift. Apart from the Lord Jesus, they still see many other gifts. There is the first gift, but there are also the second, the third, the fourth, the fifth, the tenth, the thousandth, and even the ten thousandth gift.
When many people believe in the Lord, they accept Him and they are saved. But after they are saved, they find that in spite of their salvation, they still have many shortcomings and needs.
Some people find that they have a quick temper. Although they are saved, they still have their temper. Some people find that they are very proud. Although they are saved, their pride still follows them. Many people find that they are weak and timid. Although they are saved, they are still timid.
Hence, among God’s children, we very often find that after many believe in the Lord Jesus and are saved, they hope, ask, believe, and pray before the Lord, and subsequently receive many gifts. They regard the Lord Jesus as one of the many gifts. They consider the Lord Jesus as one from among many gifts of God; that is, He is only the first among many gifts.
It is very interesting that at the beginning of our pursuit of the Lord we see many needs in ourselves. We think that since we are Christians, we should not do this and that. We are very sure that we are genuine Christians, yet we still have many shortcomings. It does not matter what the shortcomings are; as long as there are shortcomings, we consider them as wrong, and we try all we can to deal with these shortcomings. For this reason, we pray before God, we hope, we believe, and we strive, and eventually we receive something. When this happens, it seems as though we have overcome our shortcomings, and we rejoice in our heart that we have acquired a gift.
In this circumstance, many of God’s children begin to think that the purpose of God’s gifts and grace is just to fill up our lack. When some people hear this, they may ask, “If God’s grace is not here to fill up our lack, what is it for?” Many people think that God’s grace is for filling up our lack. This is like a Bible that has two thousand pages. If it is short one page, we try to make up the missing page. This is what we do when we try to use God’s grace to fill up our lack. In other words, we think that we are lacking just a part; we think that we are lacking only a little and that as long as we can fill up that little part, we will be perfect. Some have said that they lack five things, and as soon as they have the five things, they will be satisfied. Some have said that they lack ten things, and as long as they have the ten things, they will be satisfied. Some may say that they have love and that they only need a little more humility, a little more patience, or a few other things. As soon as they have these few things, they say that everything will be fine. Man’s thought is merely one of lack and shortage. What does he do? He prays to God and asks God to give him what he lacks.
But the problem is that many of us have come to realize that what we think we lack before the Lord and what we ask for are merely things. Our lack and our prayers are all centered around the matters and the things; they are all individual, countable objects. We say that we lack this or that, and if God will fill up our lack, everything will be all right.
We lack patience. But what kind of patience are we looking for? Most of the time our eyes do not look to heaven. If our eyes did look to heaven, we would be looking upward. But most of the time, we cannot look upward; we can only watch and look at what is around us. We sigh and say that certain people are good but that we are not like them. What they have is patience, and what we have is a temper. What they have is meekness, but what we have is pride. We wish that we could be as patient and meek as they. Once I prayed to the Lord—it might have been my first prayer—that God would give me a Bible like the one I saw in a certain brother’s hand. We can only pray for things that we see. We can only pray after we have seen something, and we can only pray for what others already have. We cannot pray for something from heaven which we have never seen. As a consequence, when we pray, we ask for patience like that of a certain person, or we ask for humility like that of another person. In our mind, we already have a picture of what humility is and what patience is.
If, when we were first saved, God had told us that He was going to pluck patience from a certain person and give it to us, would we not have been overjoyed? If we could have patience and humility on top of what we already had, we would have been satisfied and thought that we were perfect.
Patience is a thing to us; it is a thing that others possess. There is a certain thing called patience among the brothers and sisters, and we want it. We often hate ourselves, and we blame our parents for begetting us and giving us such a bad temper. We wish that we could be like certain persons, because they have something which we do not have. Many of God’s children are after patience as a thing. They want something that will stop them from losing their temper. They think they need something called patience. With many people, patience is a thing. God has this thing, and it is found in many places on earth, but they do not have it. They think they need this thing, patience, so that they can become a patient person.
Here lies the basic difference between genuine Christianity and wrong Christianity. Many of God’s children are looking for things which they think can be found everywhere except in themselves. They think that it is found in Mr. Chang, in Mr. Yu, in Mr. Hsu, or in this or that person, but not in them. They are pursuing after a thing that can be found on earth. This is Christianity in the mind of many. They are craving for and pursuing after things, and they have acquired things. Many people only acquire a thing; yet their heart rejoices and they thank the Lord because they have acquired it.