We need to change the subject of the Perfecting Training from the matter of peculiarity to the matter of habit. We need to see that we must build up a habit to live Christ. For some time now I have been bothered that it is so hard to have a habit to live Christ. All of you love the Lord. Your being here is a sign that you love Him. Because you love Him you have been stirred up to seek how to live Him and to practice the one spirit with Him. According to my experience the hardest thing is to get into the habit to live Christ and to practice the one spirit with Him.
Years ago I learned the fact that he who is joined to the Lord is one spirit (1 Cor. 6:17), but I never realized that this should be an experience to us. It should not be just a doctrine remaining there in the Bible and in our apprehension. It should be an experience. But when I began to practice this matter I discovered it is hard. Why is it hard? Because seemingly there is nothing sinful and there is nothing wrong if you don’t practice the one spirit with the Lord. You can still be a good person; you can still be a “proper” Christian. No one would condemn you, and even you would not condemn yourself. We are all unconscious of this matter. It is something beyond our thinking and beyond our memory. In the morning you may have prayed concerning practicing one spirit with the Lord. After that you went to breakfast, and right away that matter was in the air, not in your living. Not until the night came did you realize you didn’t practice the one spirit with the Lord. Then you confessed your failure and the next morning you prayed again concerning living Christ.
It’s really hard to build up such a habit of living Christ. To build up a habit of living Christ in our experience is not only in the air, but just like the air. It is altogether not solid. You don’t need to intentionally forget it; you just forget it. It is easy to pick up the doctrine of living Christ. We started to use this term about two years ago. Before that time we used the terms live by Christ and live out Christ. We never used such a direct expression—to live Christ. Since that time we learned this term, and we put it into our doctrinal memory. Yet it is very little in our practice. Although you may have appreciated this term very much, yet you have never put it into practice. It is hard because it is an all-day-long matter. It is like breathing and living. Both breathing and living are continual. To live Christ is just living, and to practice the one spirit with the Lord is just breathing. These two matters should be lifelong and all the day long. Yet our experience is altogether different. Occasionally we live Christ in the morning. Then we die for twelve hours, or at least we sleep for twelve hours. Later we wake up for awhile and live Christ for a short time. From my experience I’ve fully realized this is the hardest thing to practice. Whenever I have a little time I contact the Lord: “Lord, I surely would like to learn the secret that I may continually live You, that I could live You without interruption and without ceasing.” Nearly every day I have had this kind of prayer.
Today as I went to the Lord concerning this matter of the secret of living Him, I had the inner feeling that it has something to do with the matter of watching, of watchfulness. So let us read a very familiar verse, Matthew 26:41: “Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation; the spirit indeed is ready, but the flesh is weak.” In this verse the word weak means sleepy. The word watch has at least two meanings: the first meaning is to look at, to observe, or to see; the second meaning is not to sleep, to stay awake. M. R. Vincent, in his Word Studies in the New Testament, says that the word watch is related to habit. He says that it is derived from a word composed of two parts. The first part means to hunt or to seek. The second part means sleep. Thus, it means to hunt sleep. It means you are addicted to sleep. You are a sleeper. Because Peter was sleeping and pursuing his sleep, the Lord Jesus said, “Watch!” When the Lord Jesus went to pray, Peter and the others went to sleep. When the Lord Jesus told them to watch, He meant don’t sleep! Wake up! According to the context, it means their spirit was willing, but their flesh was sleepy and weak. So Vincent says that this matter of being watchful must be a habit. The Lord Jesus joined these two words, watch and pray, together.