According to the context of the verse which says that we need to pray unceasingly, we should not quench the Spirit. This means we should live Christ. It is not to pray unceasingly for your business affairs, for good food, for good blessings, for this, or for that. No! To pray unceasingly is to pray that the Spirit within you would never be quenched. This simply means that Christ lives within you. You need to pray that the Christ in you would live and you would live Him. For this we need to pray all the day long. This is breathing. Our breathing never changes. Twenty-four hours a day we breathe in the same way. We don’t change the subject in our breathing. We may change our diet many times, but we never change our breathing. Even while I’m speaking, I’m breathing unceasingly in order to stay alive. You have to pray this kind of breathing prayer unceasingly in order to keep you living Christ.
This is an encouraging word. The only way to deal with your peculiarity is to live Christ. When you live Christ, you don’t live yourself. Then your peculiarity is gone. As long as you live yourself, peculiarity is there. When you live Christ, you don’t live yourself; spontaneously peculiarity is terminated. Whether you are straight, peculiar, common, or general, don’t deal with your peculiarity. As long as you don’t live Christ, your peculiarity is there. Forget about the peculiarity. Just practice one thing—to live Christ. Paul said, “To me to live is Christ” (Phil. 1:21). If you get into the spirit of Paul in his writings, especially in Ephesians, Colossians, Philippians, and Galatians you can see he surely practiced to live Christ. He made this his habit. Before he got saved, he practiced to live the law. Wherever he was, he was found in the law. But after he was saved, he aspired to be found in Him. How could he be found in Him? There is no other way but just to live Him. When he lives Christ, surely he is found in Christ. We may be good Christians, yet when people find us, they don’t find us in Christ; rather, they find us in culture, in politics, in education, in dollars, in business, or in other matters. They may find us in many things, but not in Christ.
But if we do live Christ moment by moment from morning to evening, wherever people find us and whenever people find us, they will find us in Christ. By Paul’s words you can see that he was serious and desperate, so he, no doubt, practiced this habit a lot. From this point in the Perfecting Training I would give you one charge, that is, we all have to receive this word—to live Christ. Go practice this one thing. Every day, every hour, every minute, even every second, in whatever you are doing, you must practice the living of Christ.
This must be by the unceasing prayer. All the time you have to pray, “Lord, live through me. Lord, live through me.” At work, in your kitchen, doing your laundry, pray, “Lord, live through me.” We all need to practice this. When children are learning to play the piano, they need the proper daily practice. They don’t need that many lessons, but they need much practice. To become a good pianist requires one to practice many hours a day. Some top pianists may practice as many as fifteen hours a day. If they were to miss three days of practice, an expert could tell from their playing that they had missed the practice. We need to practice not fifteen hours a day but twenty-four hours a day to live Christ. What we’re speaking in this Perfecting Training is like a lesson. The crucial thing is that you need to go home and practice. Paul says, “To me to live is Christ...that I may know Him...that I may gain Him... that I may be found in Him.” This is his aspiration for his practice of living Christ. For many years I tried this way or that way in order to go on, but now I can tell you that the crucial thing is for you to practice living Christ. Take this lesson and practice. Let us take the next half hour for you to ask questions.
Question: When did Brother Paul first learn the lesson on living Christ?
I don’t know, but anyhow, he learned the lesson. In a sense you don’t need to find out these things. He practiced it, so you can practice it. To ask this question means you’re like a theological student, studying time, geography, and so forth. Don’t ask these theoretical questions. Ask some practical questions.
Question: Brother Lee, I believe that when you say we need to practice living Christ, it is the same as saying to practice exercising your spirit. The problem is, although we have known this for several years, and we know we should exercise our spirit, we don’t. What can cause us to want to exercise our spirit?
Truthfully, you have to pray, “Lord, send me twelve angels to remind me minute after minute that I have to exercise my spirit, that I have to live Christ, that I have to practice Christ.” My experience in this is exactly the same. I knew that I should live Christ, and I knew that I should exercise my spirit, but every day I didn’t practice it adequately. But after many days of practice, my habit is better. This does not mean that I’m so successful. Even when Paul wrote Philippians, he said that he had not obtained, that he was still pressing on. The matter of living Christ is not so simple. Although the Apostle Paul never told us that he was not successful, his writings indicate that he was not absolutely mature in this matter. Nearly every morning I have prayed, “Lord, remind me all the day that I have to live You.” One of the psalmists asked the Lord to set a watch to keep his mouth (Psa. 141:3). This means we need a reminder from the Lord. It is so easy for us to forget this practice. We must be desperate to build this kind of habit. We need much prayer. “Lord, live through me.” We need to practice.
Question: It seems as though sometimes when you try to live Christ, you don’t and at other times spontaneously you just live Christ. I don’t understand that experience. Yesterday I was trying to speak to someone. I really wanted to flow something of life out to her, but I was so dead. I was trying to exercise and to get myself into the spirit, but nothing came out. But today when I saw the same person, without even trying something spontaneously rose up. Was that from my prayer of yesterday?
According to my limited experience I would say this: If we try to live Christ beyond or apart from praying we cannot make it. If you try to live Christ without praying you will fail. Don’t try to live Christ, but pray. It is only by a continual living prayer, a breathing prayer, that we spontaneously will live Christ. If we make up our minds to try to live Christ, that is actually the living of our self. This is why Paul charges us to pray unceasingly. To pray unceasingly simply means to stop our own effort. If you don’t pray, yet you try to do something, that is your own effort. This point is like a small screw in a large machine. When a large machine works, it depends upon some small screws. Not to try to live Christ, but to pray is a small thing, yet it is very crucial. Don’t make up your mind to try to live Christ, but all the day long pray, “Lord, live through me.” Don’t have an intention to live Christ before someone. Simply have an aspiration to live Christ. This needs prayer all the time.
Question: The kind of work I do requires a lot of concentration. A lot of times I get into the Word, but I find that I’m out of my spirit and not living Christ. What do we do when we discover that we’re working or studying and we find ourselves out of Christ? How do we keep this kind of living prayer going on while we’re concentrating on our work?
Again we need the practice to pray. Regardless of how busy we may be and how heavy a burden is upon us, we must practice to pray. While you are under the burden of the work, you have to pray. Practice this. Of course this is not habitual to us; this is why we need to practice. Regardless of how busy you are, you don’t stop breathing. So we must practice this kind of prayer regardless of how much work we have. Even while I am speaking I must keep a kind of contact and prayer with the Lord—a kind of praying spirit. Learn to practice this. This is very, very crucial. The real holiness, the real victory, the real spirituality is here. Even the real church life is here. When we practice this way we will live Christ, and then we will have the victory. So no matter what kind of situation we are in, we have to practice this kind of breathing prayer.
Question: How much is the matter of growth in life related to the living of Christ? You said that transformation is just to make us flexible. Is that only a kind of outward working upon us, or is there still the aspect of being saturated and permeated with the Lord? This aspect of transformation seems a little different from what you have shared with us in the past.
When we practice living Christ, no doubt we give the Lord much ground and much opportunity to change our being. You have to realize our natural being is so raw and so wild. Our natural being just doesn’t fit the living of Christ. As a new learner, it is hard because your being is raw and wild. Even when you pray, your being is wild and raw. But if you would practice and continue to practice, the Lord will gradually do something to transform your natural, raw, and wild being. Then your being would become so fitting in the living of Christ. This is the proper definition of transformation. We may have thought that transformation was just to change our nature. Although this is correct, the purpose is also for us to live Christ. Transformation is not just to change us, but to adjust us to fit in to the living of Christ. The key is to practice. If you practice the living of Christ, all these things will transpire in your being. Gradually things will be happening to you if you practice Christ.
Question: Brother Lee, would you share more to guide us so that our practice may not turn into a form of self-improvement or a kind of behavior? Otherwise we may decide to pray without ceasing and set our energy to do it. Then we will get into the cycle of trying and failing and being condemned and giving up. I find there is such a capacity in our being to distort what we hear and to turn it into a kind of behavior. Is there anything you could share with us that would help us to take the word in a simple and pure way? Otherwise, we may try to behave as if we’re living Christ.
You don’t need to make up your mind, and you don’t need to make a strong decision. You don’t need to think to try to improve yourself. Forget about all these things. You only need one thing—to pray. Learn to pray all the time. Learn to contact the Lord. To make up your mind in this matter doesn’t work so well. To make a decision always becomes a failure. If you try to behave yourself, you may make it for three weeks, but eventually you will fail. Forget about these things and simply practice one thing, that is, to pray. Practice to pray all the day long.
The basic foundation for us to pray is that we love the Lord. We just love Him. Therefore, we seek Him, and we like to contact Him, and we like to pray to Him. We like to call upon Him. The basic stone is the loving of the Lord. I just love the Lord. Here you can remember the Song of Songs. In the Song of Songs the seeker became so desperate that she only knew one person, and she was only seeking after that one person. The Song of Songs shows us this. Even the Song of Songs is full of prayer. All the time the seeker was praying to her beloved. There was a kind of praying atmosphere. The most helpful thing to us is to pray the unceasing and breathing prayer. But we must have a foundation of loving the Lord.