For anything to exist, to act, and to live, there must be a support for that thing. We have seen that the church life depends upon the church meetings. The church meetings are very crucial to the church life. In this chapter we want to fellowship concerning the support of the church meetings. The support of the church meetings is the Christian daily life—to live Christ (Phil. 1:20-21). The Christian daily life is not just a matter of good behavior or character. The Bible reveals clearly that the Christian daily life is nothing less than Christ Himself. Christ Himself should be our daily life. In China there were a number of people who practiced according to the teaching of Confucius, and their behavior and character were very commendable. However, they did not have the Christian daily life because they did not have Christ as their life and as their living. They did not have Christ as their everything in their human life. They might have had good character, but they did not have the Christian daily life.
To have good meetings, the support is not merely good character. The support must be Christ Himself lived out of us. The new way stresses the Christian meeting, and the Christian meeting needs such a support of a daily life in which Christ Himself is lived out of us. Only Christ, the living One, can capture people. When we go to visit people by knocking on their doors, we must be linked to this living Christ. We should not only live for Him or to Him but also live Him. He is our life within, and He is our living without. We need to live Him daily.
To live Him means first to take Him as our life. As regenerated persons, we should take Him as our life. Though we have a natural life, a human life, a life created by God, that life is not the divine life. The human life was created by God to contain the divine life. Genesis 1 tells us that God created man in His own image (v. 26). Genesis 2 records that God put this man in front of the tree of life, indicating that this created human being needed the divine life (vv. 7-9). When we believe into Christ, He comes into us not only to be our Savior but even the more to be our life, thus fulfilling the purpose of God. The Lord Jesus said that He was the life (John 14:6), and Paul said that Christ is our life (Col. 3:4). Thus, Paul also said that to him to live was Christ (Phil. 1:21). We must live Christ, not just live for Christ or to Christ. Christ is our life and our life supply, and Christ should be our living, our very expression.
To live Christ is the Christian daily life, and this supports the Christian meetings. If we come to a meeting without such a living, such a daily life, we come in an empty and a dead way. Without such a living we could never support the Christian meeting. Regardless of how zealous we might be, we could never impart Christ into people as their life or life supply. We must live Christ. Day after day Christ should be our living.
To have such a living we must learn to deny ourself. God has no intention for us to live, but His only intention is for us to take Christ into us to replace our life so that He can be our very life. This should not be just a teaching to us; this should be our daily practice. Among us in the Lord’s recovery, I have noticed through the years that not too many saints really practice denying the self and taking Christ as their life. We must deny ourselves. When we love a person, we have to love that person by denying ourself and taking Christ as our love. We should let Christ love people through us. We should let Christ’s love become our love with which we love others. The Christian life is not a matter of us loving people but a matter of Christ loving people from within us. What comes out of us should not be our natural human love but Christ Himself.
When we talk to people, we must learn to deny ourself and take Christ as our life to express Christ. We should not talk with people by ourself. We must learn and practice to talk to people by denying ourself. Not only daily but also moment by moment, we must practice to do things, to live, to act, and to have our being in Christ, with Christ, and by Christ. We should also learn how to walk by praying to Him all the time (1 Thes. 5:17). While we are going to work, we have to go by praying. The best way to pray unceasingly is to call on the name of the Lord. While you are taking the cross, you have to do it by calling as a kind of instant and unceasing prayer to the Lord. To call on the Lord’s name is to breathe in Christ (Lam. 3:55-57). Whenever you say “O Lord Jesus,” you really breathe Christ into you.
When the Lord’s recovery came to the United States, a brother who had been a preacher turned this way. One day I called Hymn #255 by A. B. Simpson. The chorus of this hymn says:
I am breathing out my sorrow,
Breathing out my sin;
I am breathing, breathing, breathing,
All Thy fullness in.
After we sang that hymn this brother did not understand what A. B. Simpson was talking about, and he told me he did not like this song. A number of years later pray-reading the Word and calling on the name of the Lord Jesus came into the Lord’s recovery, and this brother practiced these things. One day I met him in another city and he told me, “Brother Lee, to me the best hymn is #255 on breathing.”
Without breathing, we all would soon expire. Our calling on the name of the Lord is breathing and is an instant and unceasing prayer. By calling we can pray unceasingly, and by this kind of prayer we actually and spontaneously take Christ as our life. Then we do things by Him and not by ourselves. We talk to people by Him and not by ourselves. Calling on His name causes us to live Christ, to have a proper Christian daily life. If we are such persons who practice calling on the Lord daily, we will come together full of Christ, with a living, rejoicing spirit. The meeting will not be vacant, empty, or idle. Instead the meeting will be busy, full of spiritual activities by members who live Christ daily. The meeting will be so high, so rich, so fresh, and so refreshing.
The fellowship in this book is not for the purpose of giving us more doctrine and teachings. What we are fellowshipping is altogether for us to practice. From today, we all should exercise to practice the New Testament economy. I have noticed that even during our trainings, the trainees were in the heavens as they were listening to the messages. But in between the meetings they became “people under the earth.” They were no longer people in the heavens. This shows us that we must practice to live Christ not only in the ministry meetings but also in our daily life. A husband should talk to his wife by Christ, and a wife should talk to her husband by Christ. We should talk by taking Christ. In our talking to our spouse we should live Christ. We need to mean business to really take Him as our life and live Him. Then we will be the right persons to come to the meetings, and with such a daily life, we will become a strong support. Even if only five saints out of one hundred meeting together would be persons who exercise to take Christ as their life and live Him, that meeting would be very fresh and very refreshing.