Wherever we go, we must be a people who are full of the Holy Spirit. We must be those who are in Jesus, and Jesus is living within us. It doesn’t depend upon what we say. Eloquence in gospel preaching has never saved anybody. It is not our utterance that can impart life to others, but the pouring out of the indwelling Christ. We must learn how to be full of Jesus and to release Him from our spirit. Jesus wants to save others out of us, not out of the heavens. We should never let Him be stopped within us. All the time we must learn to release Him by opening ourselves and making a thorough and absolute confession of all our sins. Then we will have the boldness to call on Him to be filled with Him, and to share Him with others.
We really need to have faith in this matter. We should not doubt in the least. We should be fully assured that when we open ourselves and make a thorough confession to the Lord, applying His precious blood, we are in Him and He is in us! We must exercise our faith and say, “Amen, Lord Jesus, I am one with You, and You are one with me. Hallelujah!” This is the exercise of faith that we must have. We should not try to preach, but every day exercise our faith to be filled with Christ.
When the Apostle Paul was thinking of going to Asia from Phrygia, he was going there for Jesus. He was about to turn in one direction, but the Spirit did not allow him. “Now when they had gone throughout Phrygia and the region of Galatia, and were forbidden of the Holy Spirit to preach the word in Asia, after they were come to Mysia, they assayed to go into Bithynia: but the Spirit of Jesus suffered them not” (Acts 16:6-7). On the one hand the Holy Spirit forbade them, and on the other hand the Spirit of Jesus did not allow them. This shows that in the early days the apostles and disciples spread the gospel by being one with Jesus. It was not something done by themselves or according to their understanding, but something done by the indwelling Jesus. They were one with the Triune God, and this Triune God in Acts 16 is called both the Holy Spirit and the Spirit of Jesus. The Spirit is the embodiment and realization of the Triune God, and this Triune God was living in Paul. Paul was fully mingled with the Triune God. This is why he preached the Gospel in such a living way. Wherever he went, we can be sure that it was the decision of the Triune God within him.
I wish that we all could be so simple to be recovered back to the ways of the early disciples. We should not care so much for doctrine, preaching, or talk. We should only care for the outflowing of the indwelling Christ. We must learn to exercise our spirit and to exercise our faith. Then we will have the assurance that we are one with Christ, and He will flow out of our spirit.
To reach the unbelievers and to chase away the darkness requires a real exercise of faith. We all must learn to exercise our faith to deal with Satan. We are full of the Holy Spirit, so all the darkness and unbelief must go. We must challenge the enemy because we are not there by ourselves. We must tell the enemy, “Satan, I am not here by myself. Jesus is one with me, and I am full of Him!” Then we will see the enemy flee. We should not be bothered by today’s Christianity, thinking that it is hard to be full of the Spirit. Whenever we are preaching the gospel, we should say, “Lord Jesus, I open to You. Whatever You condemn, I condemn. Whatever You allow, I allow. Whatever You like, I like. I do believe that I am in You, and You are in me. Now that I’m going out to preach the gospel, You have to go with me, and I have to go with You.”
When we go out to reach others, we must have the assurance that we are really one with Jesus. This is what it means to be witnesses unto Him. We are not only going to preach the gospel, we are going out to be the witnesses. And we are not going to witness to the Jesus who is in the heavens, but to the Jesus who lives within us. He is in us, and we are in Him. We are just one in the Spirit. We have full assurance that we have been put into Him, and He is living within us. We are abiding in Him, and He is abiding in us. Then when we contact an unbeliever, we must exercise our spirit to release the living Jesus. And we must exercise our faith to deal with all the darkness. “Satan, you have to go! Jesus is here!” This is the way to be the real witnesses unto Jesus.
To be full of the Spirit as described in the book of Acts is a condition which is easy for us to attain. If we open our heart and make a thorough confession of all our sins under the cleansing of the blood, we will be full of the Spirit. Then we must realize that we have been put into the Triune God, and we have the Triune God continually living within us. We are in Him, and He is in us. We should never look at ourselves or our background. We have to forget all of these things and realize that we are under the cleansing blood. All our past has been covered by the blood. We should never take away the covering of the blood to look at our past. Instead, we must declare that all our past is covered by the blood of Jesus! Now under the covering of the blood we are enjoying the Triune God and we are being filled with Him. This will make us the real witnesses.
This is the indwelling of Christ in the book of Acts. We see a group of people in whom Christ was living daily and through whom Christ was poured out as the gospel preaching. The real outreach is just the indwelling of Christ. And the indwelling of Christ is so simple. He is the processed God as the life-giving Spirit so nigh to us. Moment by moment we open ourselves to Him, confessing all our sinfulness. Then we will be under the cleansing of His blood and we will be filled with the fullness of the Holy Spirit.