If the Lord is not the Spirit, how could we be one spirit with Him? If we are going to enjoy Christ, to experience Christ, first of all we have to realize that this Christ today is the anointed One, full of the Spirit, and that we are joined to Him as one spirit. Prior to the day we heard the gospel and were inspired to believe in the Lord Jesus, we did whatever we desired by ourselves. On the day we called on His name, we were saved and attached to the anointed One. We were made one spirit with our Savior. We may realize this fact, but the way we talk to others exposes whether or not we know the way to experience Christ. The right way to talk to others is to exercise our spirit. How do we exercise our spirit to contact the Lord? How do we practice this? According to my experience, the best way is to pray. To pray does not mean I have to go into my bedroom and close the door. I can pray spontaneously, “Lord, I am going to have a time with my brother. Lord, be with me. Be one with me.” Before going to see my brother, I may have to go to the restroom. While I am going to the restroom, I can pray, “Lord, thank You, that You are my life, and You are my utterance.” While I am in the restroom, I can pray. All the time I can pray. Then while the brother is in the next room, I pray, “Lord, be my talk. Lord, be my utterance. Even, Lord, be the sentences I am going to speak to my brother.” We should practice this way all the time, realizing that the Lord is really one with us. Eventually, we will experience that this very Christ to whom God has attached us and with whom we have become one spirit is just our conversation. Our conversation with a brother is just Christ. Christ is so rich. He is our utterance, our thought, our word, and our expression. He is the very content of our conversation. He is the entire conversation. This is an experience of the riches of Christ.
Suppose that while you are speaking with a brother someone tells you that your wife wants you. You should begin to pray, “Lord, go with me. Go with me to meet my wife. Lord, be one spirit with me. I believe I’m one spirit with You. Lord, now is the time for You to prove it, so You have to be one with me to meet my wife. Lord, be my utterance, and be my eyes looking at my wife.” Then you go to meet your wife. That meeting with your wife will be just Christ. While your wife may be so poor to you, you can still pray, “Lord, You are with me. Yes, Lord, this is Your situation.” Then you will experience Christ as your patience, your endurance, your longsuffering, and your knowledge-surpassing love. If at that time your cousin is there and sees the situation, he would be surprised. He would admire the way you meet with your wife. In this way you will experience Christ when you meet with anyone in any kind of situation.
Even a young student has to learn how to experience Christ in the study of his lesson books. He may pray, “Lord, here is the lesson book, and tomorrow will be the final. Lord, prove that You are one spirit with me. Lord, read this book with me.” If he does this, I assure you he will experience Christ as his understanding and as his wisdom to take in all the secrets of his lesson book. He will even experience Christ as his good memory. Then the next day when he takes the exam he does not need to be so pressed and so trembling. He just needs to pray, “Lord, I am one with You, and even one spirit with You. Not only in speaking, Lord, but even today in the classroom, taking the exam, I am one with You. Lord, make it so real. Make it so real to the angels. Make it so real to the entire universe that I am one with You.” I assure you that he will experience Christ as his wisdom and quite often as his answer. This is the way. According to my observation, not many Christians experience Christ and enjoy Him today in this way. Even among us I am very concerned. Message after message has been given, but when we come to the practical things in our daily life, we are persons without Christ. In dealing with our wives, we are persons without Christ. In handling things, we are persons without Christ. In studying lesson books we are persons without Christ. We only practice being one spirit with the Lord at our ordained time for prayer. Even in most of the meetings, we do not practice this enough. I could not come to a meeting to speak to the saints without praying, “Lord, You have to vindicate that I am one spirit with You. I do not like to go there, Lord, to speak by myself. You have to go with me. You have to be my thought there. You have to be my feeling there in my speaking. You have to be the words, even the terms and the expressions of my speaking. Lord, even You have to be the speaking.” Without such a prayer, I just would have no boldness to come to speak. Even though I have obtained a lot of knowledge of the Bible, I do not trust in that. Of course, we need Bible knowledge. But we have to speak not just with the words or verses from the Bible. In our speaking we must be one spirit with the Lord.
I beg you all to practice this. Do not take this as just another message. Since I came to this country, over three thousand messages have been given and printed. Yet the living of some of the saints makes me sorrowful. So many have heard and read the messages, and even participated in the trainings in which they were given. Yet in daily life the messages are gone. The messages could only be lived out when you have the practical experience of being one spirit with the Lord.
The reason why today’s Christian meetings are so weak and so poor is because most of the Christians do not have this kind of experience of Christ. Every seeking saint is a genuine believer with a thirsty spirit created by God. Only God Himself, that is, the items of the riches of Christ, can satisfy people. So we must have the experience of Christ. Then when we come to the small meetings, we all can spontaneously say something and minister something that is Christ Himself. I recently read the testimony of a prominent government official in Taiwan. When he was close to forty years of age, he felt he was short of nothing physically, yet deep within him he was hungry for something of the real human life. At this time he and his wife visited many Christian meetings in Taipei, but felt that they had received nothing. One day, they were brought by some brothers to the meeting of the church in Taipei. On the first visit they realized that the Spirit of God was there. From that day, he was saved and began to attend the meetings. I just give you this testimony to show you what we need in our meetings. We must have something in spirit to pray or to sing or to say that can satisfy the hunger of the real seeking ones. This hunger is not in our mentality but in the depths of our being, that is, in our God-created and God-seeking spirit. For the home meetings we need the very Christ whom you and I experience.
How can the home meetings be strengthened, refreshed, and made new? How can they be so attracting, full of power, with might to uphold? There is no other way than to experience Christ. Just to have a list of all the items of the riches of Christ does not work. The only thing that works is what you have experienced. I hope that I have made this clear.
I hate to pass on to you another message of doctrine. I surely expect that you all would take this word and pray, “Lord, minute by minute I want to live a life praying to You all the time.” This is why Paul says to “unceasingly pray” (1 Thes. 5:17). Years ago I did not understand what it meant to pray unceasingly. How could this be? Although I never received the proper instruction, gradually, by groping I touched the way. To pray unceasingly is just to pray all the day in all things. While I am writing, I pray, “Lord, be one with me in this writing. I am going to study a verse that is too deep. It is hard for me to apprehend. Lord, be one with me. I am studying a Greek word that is too deep. I have exhausted all the reference books, yet I cannot get the proper, right, spiritual significance. Lord, be one with me.” Even when I am speaking, I have a praying spirit, “Lord, right now, be my utterance. Be my instant utterance, a present utterance, an utterance just for now, an utterance for some definite persons. Lord, be one sentence for a certain person I don’t know.” I prayed quite often in this way. The Lord answers and honors this kind of prayer. Quite often people have come to me and told me, “Brother Lee, tonight just one sentence out of your mouth caught me. That was exactly what I needed.” We must be ones attached to God’s Anointed and one spirit with Him. Then we will live such a daily life, in everything experiencing Him in specific ways.
In certain situations, you need humility, wisdom, forbearance, slowness, or quickness. If you pray in the way I have described, you will experience Christ as certain items. In one kind of environment, you will experience Him as your forbearance. In others, you will experience Him as your wisdom, your humility, or your longsuffering. With some weaker ones, you may experience Him as your sympathy, as your mercy, as your compassion. On all different occasions, and in everything, you will be one with Him and realize that He is one with you.
After this kind of experience we will come to the meeting with something of Christ. We will come to the meeting with the riches of Christ, not in our mind, but in our very being, because we have experienced Him and we have enjoyed Him. If we come to the meeting with these riches, we will surely have something to say. So we have to learn how to pick up the phrases, the terminology, and the expressions from the Bible. This is why we all have to study the Bible. We all may have something to say, yet if we do not have the expression, we have no way to utter it. For instance, if I am in an English-speaking meeting, yet I do not know any English, I may have something of Christ, but it would be impossible for me to utter it to you. Even if I have the knowledge of English, I also need the terminology, expressions, words, phrases, clauses, and sentences from the Bible. This is why we all have to read the Bible and the valuable spiritual books. From those books, spontaneously we will pick up many things. Even today in the elementary schools the teachers teach the young ones composition by reading. They have to read and read and read. In the same way we must have the experience and enjoyment of Christ’s riches as an accumulation, a storage in us. Then we must read the Bible, and this will enrich our store. Also, we must read some spiritual books such as the life-studies to pick up not only the knowledge, but also the expressions and terminology to express what we have enjoyed of Christ. Then surely the home meetings will be rich. We will not be able to avoid it. We will have the riches and the utterance, and these riches and utterance will match the filling in our spirit and the strengthening into our inner man. If we have these four items, we will be the enriching, strengthening, refreshing, and renewing factors of the home meetings.
Now we are equipped with four things: the filling up in our spirit by the all-inclusive God; the strengthening into our inner man with might through the Holy Spirit; the experience, the enjoyment of Christ’s riches; and the speaking. We have to realize that when we speak the experiences of the riches of Christ, our speaking is just the preaching of Christ as the gospel. Whatever we speak will be the gospel, the good news, the glad tidings. Acts 5:42 says, “They did not cease teaching and bringing the good news of Jesus as the Christ.” In this verse, the Greek word translated “bringing the good news” is the same word translated “preach as the gospel” in Ephesians 3:8. In Ephesians 3:8 it is to preach the riches of Christ as the gospel; in Acts 5:42 it is to preach Jesus Christ Himself as the good news. This word in Greek really means something stronger than preach, so Darby renders it “announcing.” Some other translations use the word “proclaim.” The Greek word is a predicate indicating that we are announcing, we are proclaiming, we are preaching, we are speaking Christ and His riches as the gospel, as the glad tidings, as the good news. The Concordant Literal Version translates this word as “bringing the evangel.” Evangel means the gospel, the glad tidings, the good news. Evangelize is the predicate. This is to evangelize with the riches of Christ. Evangelize means to preach, to proclaim, to announce something as the gospel.
Therefore, in all the home meetings, whatever we would speak would be the gospel, the good news to the hearers. I often have been hungry to get something in the home meetings. If one would speak Christ, that would be a glad tiding to me. If we are full of the enjoyment of the riches of Christ as we are going to a meeting, when we open our mouth, it will be the announcing of the riches of Christ as glad tidings to the attendants. This surely will enrich, strengthen, refresh, renew, and make our home meetings attracting and full of power to hold and to uphold.