To live by Christ, to take Christ as our life in our daily walk, is absolutely a matter of being in the spirit. It is the real practice of the exercise of our spirit. Suppose you are quarreling or arguing with your roommate, your dear wife, or your husband. You know that when you persist in arguing you are out of the spirit; you are exercising your mind and your emotions, not your spirit. You may feel that you are definitely right and the other party is wrong, but you are not in the spirit. If you do not live in the spirit and exercise your spirit in your daily walk, how can you possibly exercise your spirit to prophesy when you come to the meeting? If you have been exercising your mind and not your spirit in all your daily living, when you enter the meeting you will do the same thing. You will consider this brother and that brother, you will criticize and analyze this brother and that brother. You will continue to exercise your mind and not your spirit—this is your habit. You have built up this habit in your daily walk. If we do not exercise our spirit all the day, every day, how can we exercise our spirit to prophesy in the meetings? In our homes, in our family life, on our jobs, we must practice continually the exercise of our spirit. We need to build up the habit of exercising our spirit. I may have many matters with which to quarrel with my wife, but if I turn just a little to the spirit, the spirit will indicate not to quarrel, not to argue. The spirit will tell me, “Do not say that you are right, say ‘O Lord!’” Forget about so many things and just exercise the spirit to say, “O Lord, Amen, Hallelujah!” If you do not exercise your spirit to say, “O Lord, Amen, Hallelujah,” in your daily life, it is rather difficult to come to the meeting to say, “O Lord.” If you can do it in the meeting without doing it in your daily life, you must be an actor or actress, and you make the meeting place a theater with some kind of performance.
The way we meet depends on the way we live. How should we meet? We must live in a proper way. We must live by taking Christ as our life, a life which is always expressed in the form of love. Love suffers, love endures, love forgives. How may we express this love? Just by exercising our spirit to contact the Lord and enjoy Him. Do you think that if you would exercise your spirit all day to say, “O Lord Jesus,” you could hate others? Can we banish darkness and hatred by struggling with them and resisting them? The more we do this, the more we will be in darkness and filled with hatred. If we would simply turn to our spirit and say, “O Lord, Amen, Hallelujah,” the Lord would be with us and be expressed in the form of love.
In one translation of chapter thirteen we have this word, “Love never reckons others’ faults.” This is love. Love covers, love never reckons, love endures, love suffers, love believes and hopes all things. What is this love? It is nothing less than Christ in my practical, daily life. If we would enjoy such a Christ as our love, we need to exercise our spirit, not our mind. If we do not exercise our spirit, sooner or later we will always reckon the faults and failures of the brothers. Exercise your spirit continually and you will enjoy Christ and experience Him; then when you come to the meeting, out of your habit of exercising your spirit, you will have the boldness to stand up and prophesy something of Christ. You will be able to say, “I do not care for anything but the spirit. O Lord, Amen, Hallelujah!” This is your habit. This is my habit. It is wonderful! With such a habit it is easy to prophesy, it is easy to say something about the Lord and for the Lord in the meetings. This is the way to meet; this is the way revealed to us through the book of 1 Corinthians.
Christ is our portion, Christ is everything to us, Christ is the life-giving Spirit, and we are joined unto Him in one spirit. It is by this way that we can live in Him, walk in Him, and have our being in Him. Then when we come together, as in chapters twelve, thirteen, and fourteen of 1 Corinthians, we gather with such a background, we come together with such a standing, with such a daily life, with such an exercise of the spirit. Then we need only take the initiative in the spirit to prophesy, to say something of and for the Lord Jesus.
Is this my teaching? No! This is the revelation of God in the Bible. It was buried, it was covered for centuries, but by His mercy it has been discovered. This book of 1 Corinthians is so open to us today. It is transparent from the first chapter to the last. Christ is so much to us that we may live by Him in a practical way day by day. Then when we meet together, out of such an experience of Christ, it is easy for us to exercise our spirit to share something of Him. We are no longer dumb, but bold to speak for the Lord Jesus. This is the way for us to meet.