Everyone who follows the Lord must realize that there are certain spiritual requirements in every spiritual matter. Some requirements come from the outward teaching of the Bible, and others come from the inward sense of life. A Christian who is living and who is according to the proper standard will be sensitive to these requirements. If we have been shown mercy and love the Lord, and if we are willing to learn to live before the Lord, then spontaneously our heart will turn to the Lord and love Him. We will also want to please the Lord. In this way we will be in fellowship with the Lord inwardly. In our fellowship we will often encounter spiritual requirements from the outward teachings of the Bible and from the inward sense of life.
Before a sister is saved and begins to pursue the Lord, she may always set herself over her husband and take the lead in everything at home. She can rule over her husband with her opinions and completely disregard his opinions. In such a situation, she is the leader and the head of the house. As she begins to pursue the Lord and fellowship with Him, however, she will read Ephesians 5:22, which says, “Wives, be subject to your own husbands as to the Lord.” When she reads this word, the teaching of the Bible will be full of power and touch her being, and light will come forth to shine in her whole being. At this moment the teaching of the Bible will require her to subject herself to her husband. If she truly loves and pursues the Lord, it will be difficult to ignore this requirement and not accept it.
All the brothers and sisters who have had this kind of experience understand what I am saying. If we do not accept this requirement, we will immediately sense that there is a barrier between us and the Lord, and we will feel as if something is wrong. Sometimes we receive a requirement in the morning. If we do not agree with the Lord, we will feel very uneasy throughout the day; it will seem as if something is missing in us. Only when we answer the Lord’s requirement can we be at peace and inwardly at rest. Then our relationship with the Lord becomes very pleasant and comfortable, and we have a sweet feeling before the Lord because we are in agreement with His requirement in the Word.
In the past many of us liked to gossip about others and were quite talkative. Before we were saved, we had no feeling and did not care about our talkative nature. However, after we were saved, we began to pursue the Lord and fellowship with Him. In our fellowship we sensed a demand that restricted our speaking. Although we may not have read a teaching about this in the Bible, we sensed that there was a demand from the life in us, which restricted our tongue and the words in our mouth. This demand required us to be less talkative. This is a demand from the life within. If we do not agree with this demand, we will feel that we have offended the Lord, and we will immediately be condemned by our conscience. We will remain under condemnation until we submit to this demand, confess our sin of gossiping, and agree that we are willing to learn to restrict our speaking through His grace. After we agree, we will immediately feel bright, fresh, and comfortable, and we will have the Lord’s inward presence.
These two examples show two spiritual requirements. Strictly speaking, as those who pursue the Lord, we have a spiritual requirement as the standard of our walk, but how do we know if we are walking on the right path? How do we know which way to take? The standard of our walk is based on a spiritual requirement, and there are two kinds of spiritual requirements. The first requirement comes from the Bible’s clear teaching, and the second comes from the sense of life. We often experience these requirements at the same time, and they correspond to an inward and outward requirement. They can be compared to a compass which directs us on the right path for our walk on the Lord’s way. This compass tells us what we should do and where we should go. In other words, our Christian living should match these spiritual requirements and always agree with them. I hope all the saints would firmly adhere to this principle and realize that our whole Christian living should be a living in agreement with these spiritual requirements.
We may have been a Christian for only a week, a month, or even a year, but if we have never had a sense of these spiritual requirements, we are probably not saved, and if we are saved, we probably do not love the Lord much or fellowship with Him. If we are truly saved and fellowship with the Lord, we should sense some spiritual requirements in us every day. We should touch the Lord’s requirements in His Word and the requirements from the sense of life every day. If it has been a long time since we touched any spiritual requirements, we should realize that something is wrong in us. This shows that the fundamental frustration in a Christian’s living is related to these spiritual requirements. We cannot neglect these spiritual requirements.