Electricity is a good illustration. With a small wireless microphone there are two wires, the antenna and the ground wire. In the Chinese language these are called the heavenly wire and the earthly wire. When these two wires work together you get the transmission of electricity. Today electricity is still a mystery. Although it is very real, material, and scientific, it is still a mystery. There is at least one point concerning electricity which no one understands. God is even more mysterious than electricity. Although electricity is mysterious, it is very real. Electricity is more than crucial for our daily life. In America almost everything depends upon electricity. It is mysterious, yet it is practical. This is a good illustration of our God. Our God is the pneuma, the Spirit, altogether mysterious yet very practical. How can this mysterious yet practical God be transmitted into our being all the time? By the Word and by the Spirit.
Now we come to the point of how to live Christ all the time. You must be plugged into the contact with these two wires, the Word and the Spirit. You must be kept in contact with these two wires. Although electricity has been installed into this building, if a certain utensil is insulated even by something small, it will receive no electrical current. If we are going to live Christ, we must have ourselves plugged into this current. We must have no insulation at all. There must be no stopping and no ceasing of the current. Now you understand what it means to pray unceasingly—it is to keep yourself plugged into that heavenly current. Once you are cut off from the heavenly current, you are through. It doesn’t matter how many years of experience you have in Christ. Although this room may have received electricity for fifty years, once it is insulated the current is cut off.
First Thessalonians 5:17 says pray unceasingly. Colossians 4:2 says pray continually or perseveringly. In addition to these expressions Ephesians 6:18 says pray at every time. This means praying at every second—not only praying at every hour, every minute, but every second. We have already seen that praying in the Bible is the spiritual breathing. Among all the matters which maintain our human life, our breathing never ceases. So the New Testament says pray unceasingly, pray continually, pray at every time, and pray at every time in spirit. How could we pray all the time? By putting Ephesians 5:17-20 and Colossians 3:16-17 together we can be clear. These two portions are parallel portions, sister portions. Ephesians says be filled in spirit. No doubt this surely refers to prayer. There’s no other way for you to be filled in your spirit. You cannot just sit and think and meditate and be filled in the spirit. You have to pray. To pray is to put more pneuma into you. If I don’t pray before I come here to speak, I am like a flat tire with no pneuma within me. I have to pray twenty to thirty minutes. If I pray, constricting my whole being to the spirit, twenty minutes might be sufficient. I get pneumatic, filled with the air, so that when I come to speak, I’m not flat. I have some pneuma within me.
Ephesians 5 also says, “Speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and psalming with your heart to the Lord, giving thanks at all times.” This word pins us down and exposes us. I believe many among us don’t give thanks to God more than ten times a day. If you are a person giving thanks at all times for all things in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, surely you are a person praying. You are singing, psalming, thanking all the day long. A well-known hymn says, “This is my story; this is my song, praising my Savior all the day long.” Thousands of Christians have sung this hymn, but few have ever practiced praising their Savior all the day long. Whoever practices praising the Savior all the day long must be the one who lives Christ. The way to live Christ is to praise Him. We have to sing: we have to praise: we have to psalm. Nearly nobody practices this. Although some may praise their Savior in a gospel campaign, they don’t praise Him all the day long.
In Colossians 3:16, it says, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly.” How do you let the word of Christ dwell in you? It should be in all wisdom teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to God. Then verse 17 says, “And in everything, whatever you do in word or in work, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him.” The very next verse says, “Wives be subject to your husbands.” This is a hard job. For years I have not liked to speak at a wedding. Nearly everyone who speaks at a wedding would say something so sweet, so pleasant, so colorful, and so full of scenery. I don’t like to say this kind of thing because, in some sense, it is a cheating. The marriage life may not be that straight, not that colorful, not that pleasant, not with so many beautiful pictures. So if I were to speak I might say, “Your wedding is a warning to you, the beginning of lamentation. This is not the beginning of your honeymoon but the beginning of your vinegar week.” Since I realized that nobody likes to hear this kind of word, I didn’t speak at the weddings. Forty-five years ago I spoke at every wedding and painted a picture so sweet, so pleasant, so joyful, and so beautiful. Eventually, after every wedding I regretted it. Later I still spoke, but I changed my tune. I said you have to realize marriage is not a thing so happy as you dreamed. Marriage causes you to put your neck into the yoke. I did this a few times and convinced them that my word was right, but in a wedding it is better not to say this, so I made a strong decision that I would not be a performing, acting, wedding, marrying pastor. Mostly I didn’t go to the weddings. Sometimes when I did go I wouldn’t speak.
You have to realize in the whole universe the hardest job is to be a wife or to be a husband. It’s not that difficult to be a teacher or a nurse or an electrician, but to be a wife needs the whole universe to sustain you. To be a husband is really hard. I have done many things, but not one of them is so hard as being a husband. But what shall I do? I have to be a husband. I have no choice. This is my destiny. So to be a wife you need the Triune God to be in you as your life, your nature, your disposition, your character, your daily living. If you don’t have the Triune God to be your life, nature, disposition, character, and living, you can never be a proper wife. It is the same with the husband. To be a good husband, we need Christ.
Colossians says, “In everything, whatever you do in word or in work, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God” (3:17). How could we do all things in the name of the Lord? There is no other way but by praising, thanking, and praying. When we do all things in the name of the Lord, that is to live Christ. When you do everything in His name you have become Him, and He has practically become you. If you are not one with Him, how could you do things in His name? If you do things in His name but are not one with Him, you are cheating people. If you are not one with me but you do things in my name, you are deceiving people. But if you become me, whatever you do, you do it in my name. This is to live me. The way to live Christ is to plug yourself into the Word, into the prayer, and into the singing, the praising, the psalming all the day long. If you remain in this plugging you live Christ. All day long you need not only to pray-read the Word, but also to sing-read the Word. It is not so adequate just to pray-read. You have to sing the Word.
The Psalms were written not mainly for speaking or reading, but for psalming and singing. If we only read Psalm 119 that may kill us and tire us out. But if we psalm this Psalm, singing it all the day long, the psalming will keep us in that plugging. Spontaneously, the heavenly electrical current will come through you all the day long. So you will just live Christ. An electrical instrument lives electricity. Whatever it does, wherever it moves, it acts electricity. This is the right way; there is no other way. Then you may think, we don’t need to do anything, we can stay home and kneel and pray and praise and do nothing. We can’t. God didn’t ordain it in this way. We have a lot of duties and responsibilities. But we have a good illustration that regardless of how busy we are, we still breathe. While you do things, you breathe. We must build up such a breathing habit. We all need a clear vision; we have to condemn our prayerless life; we have to condemn our praiseless life; we have to condemn our psalmless life; we must have a prayerful life, praiseful life, and psalmful life all the day.
We have the Spirit as the antenna wire and the Word as the ground wire. The antenna wire is in us, in our spirit, and the ground wire is in our hand; we just need to remain here with these two wires. Then we will get the transfusion and the transmission. We will get the permeation and the saturation; then whatever we do we will do it in His name. This is to live Christ. This is not a kind of teaching and doctrine. This is a little vision with some instruction. It altogether depends upon our daily practice. We must practice continual prayer and continual praising and continual psalming and singing and thanking because we are breathing Him in, making Him our saturation and making ourselves practically one with Him. Spontaneously we will live Christ. This is not a matter of doctrine and teaching, but a kind of practice. Everything apart from this is vanity.
The Life-study messages and even the study of the Bible are vanity if you don’t practice this. If the Bible remains letters of death killing you, it is vanity. The Bible could be living to you only when you breathe it, when you pray it, when you praise it, when you sing-read it, when you psalm-read it. All the lines of the Holy Writings will become the living God to you, the living pneuma, to you. Then you will get the transmission, the transfusion, the permeation, making Him everything to you and making you one with Him. Then whatever you say and whatever you do will be Christ. This is to live Christ. You must put this into practice.