Finally, we drink the water of life through receiving and taking by believing. According to John 7:39, we receive the Spirit as the living water by believing into Christ. Revelation 22:17 speaks of taking the water of life freely. As we call on the name of the Lord, we spontaneously receive the living water and take it freely. If we call on the Lord, we shall have living faith. The more we call, the more we shall believe, and the more we believe, the more we shall receive and take the living water.
Calling on the Lord’s name solves all our problems. If you are filled with sorrow and worry, call on the Lord. If you are disappointed, discouraged, or distracted, call on Him. Call on Him when you are weak and when you are strong. By calling you receive and take the living water.
A basic problem among Christians, especially among those in organized Christianity, is related to the religious worship of God. Even many unbelievers have the concept of worshipping God in a religious way. Those who care for God think that they should worship Him as the mighty, transcendent One. They regard the almighty God as the object of their worship. This concept is part of their very nature.
Because the Bible tells us to worship God, we cannot say that the thought of worshipping Him is wrong. But how are we to worship Him? In John 4:23 and 24 the Lord Jesus told the Samaritan woman, who had raised a question concerning worship, “But an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and reality; for the Father seeks such to worship Him. God is Spirit; and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and reality.” The Lord’s word clearly reveals that we are to worship God. However, the question still remains concerning how to worship Him. The Jews and the Moslems have their ways of worship, and those in the Catholic Church and in the denominations have their ways. Actually, all the different religious ways of worship are wrong. Even the Samaritan woman in John 4 held a mistaken concept of the way to worship God. The Lord Jesus revealed to her that the proper worship of God is not in a certain physical place; it is in our spirit.
According to John 4, to worship God in our spirit is to drink of Him. Do not regard God as an object of worship which you then worship in spirit. In such a case the organ (the spirit) is right, but the way is still wrong. To prostrate ourselves before God is not the proper way to worship Him; to drink Him as the living water is. God does not want to be the object of our worship. Instead, He comes as living water for us to drink. When we drink of Him as the water of life, we worship Him in a genuine way. To drink of the Lord with our spirit is truly to worship Him.
The Lord’s table meeting is a meeting for worship. To remember the Lord at His table is to worship Him. The way to worship the Lord in this meeting is not to kneel down or to prostrate ourselves, but to eat the bread and drink the wine in remembrance of Him. Eating and drinking constitute real worship. We do not remember the Lord by exercising our mentality to recall certain things. We remember Him by eating and drinking. To remember the Lord by eating and drinking is to worship Him.
Not many Christians have seen that God’s intention is to work Himself into us. Most believers only realize that God is God, that we are God’s creatures, that we became fallen, and that out of His love for us God sent His Son to die for us on the cross and to accomplish redemption. Genuine Christians also realize that Christ was resurrected and then sent the Holy Spirit to lead us to repentance, to cause us to believe in Him, and to receive Him as our Savior. Then, according to the natural concept, the Bible is used as a book of ethics to teach the believers to glorify God in their daily living. Finally, Christians are told that, after they die or after the Lord comes back, they will spend eternity with Him. The Bible, of course, teaches such things. However, these teachings are superficial. They are not the kernel of God’s revelation in the Bible. The kernel of the divine revelation is that God created us and redeemed us for the purpose of working Himself into us to be our life. We in the Lord’s recovery need to see a fuller vision of this revelation. If we have such a full vision, our concept of worship will be regulated by it.
The Triune God works Himself into our being as we eat and drink of Him. As our food and water, He enters into us to be one with us organically. What we take into us by eating and drinking becomes one with us in this way. It penetrates our fiber and becomes our organic tissue. When the food we take in by eating and drinking is digested and assimilated, it becomes our constituent. Thus, we are a constitution of what we eat and drink. This is true both in the spiritual realm and in the physical realm. Through eating and drinking, the bride becomes one with the Spirit. According to Revelation 22:17, the Spirit and the bride speak as one to call those who are thirsty to drink of the water of life.
If we see that God’s intention is to work Himself into us, we shall automatically eat and drink of Him. Mothers know that babies eat and drink automatically, not caring for any forms, manners, or regulations. Infants are better at eating and drinking than adults are. Our eating and drinking are often hindered by all the attention we give to table manners. Sometimes the more we pay attention to manners, the less we enjoy our food. I heard of a Chinese ambassador who attended a formal state dinner in Germany. Because he was so concerned about proper etiquette and table manners, he did not enjoy the food at all. He spent his time watching how others at the dinner conducted themselves and how they used their eating utensils. Table manners kept him from eating. Children are not like this. When my little granddaughter visits us, her grandmother often gives her something to eat. My granddaughter enjoys her food in a spontaneous and informal way. She is a good example of how we should pay less attention to forms and more to eating and drinking.
At the very time the Lord Jesus was speaking with the Samaritan woman, the priests in the temple were worshipping God in the formal, systematic, prescribed manner. But where was God at that time? Was He in the temple with the priests, or was He with the woman by the well in Samaria? As we all know, He was with the Samaritan woman. He met with her in the open air, away from the temple and the altar, without religious forms and rituals. Eventually, this Samaritan woman drank of the living water and offered real worship to God. At that time the true worship to God was offered not by the priests in the temple, but by the Samaritan woman who was drinking the living water. The priests worshipped God in vain; the Samaritan woman worshipped Him in reality by drinking Him into her being. The Spirit as the living water was infused into her. God was seeking real worship, and He received it from this Samaritan woman who drank of the Spirit as the living water.
Today’s Christians need to see what real worship is. They condemn those in the Lord’s recovery as heretical, when they themselves are heretical and ignorant of the truth. Like the priests in the temple, they are blind to what true worship is. In John 4 the Lord Jesus did not spend time talking to typical Jews according to the Old Testament way of worship. Instead, He conversed with an immoral, semi-heathen woman concerning the worship which satisfies God’s heart. This woman worshipped God in her spirit by drinking of Him as the water to quench her thirst. Thus, God was worshipped by her in a genuine way. How much different this is from formal, religious worship!
Throughout the centuries, most Christian worship has been like that of the priests in the temple. Only a small number have worshipped God in spirit by drinking of Him as living water. But as we have pointed out emphatically in this message, this is the proper way to worship Him.
We must admit that to a large extent our way of meeting is subconsciously or unconsciously still under the influence of our religious background. The more we enter into the real worship of God by drinking Him as the living water in spirit, the more we shall realize how short our practices have been. By the Lord’s mercy I have come to see the worship God desires. Because of the vision I have seen, I do not care for religion, nor even for our own practices. Actually, we have no need of practices. Our need is to see that our God today has passed through the process of incarnation, human living, crucifixion, resurrection, ascension, and enthronement to become the all-inclusive life-giving Spirit for us to drink. He is such a compound Spirit, and we have a spirit with which to drink of Him. In spirit we are one with Him. If we see this vision, the focal point of the divine revelation in the Bible, we shall know how to drink the Lord as the water of life.