This stage is the goal of this training. Praise the Lord! Some day you will grow up. You cannot remain young. I do believe that at least the majority of us are seeking and are growing. We may be foolish, and we may waste a lot of time, but the Lord is not foolish, and He has never wasted our time. One day we will thank Him for His preservation and His recovery. The Lord’s recovery is not just to recover the one church in one city. The Lord’s recovery eventually is to recover Himself as our real experience. Then you may ask about our ups and downs. We have to leave these until later. For right now, we have to realize that on the one hand the Lord is growing within us, and on the other hand He is reducing us. He is not killing us; He is reducing us. You must realize that you don’t need to pray that much, and you don’t need to love people that much, and you don’t need to endeavor that much. The Lord is adding Himself into you, and He is also reducing you. You had better come to Him and stay with Him; this is what we call the proper prayer. You don’t need to endeavor to pray that much. You need reducing. But you cannot reduce yourself. This needs time. What you need right now is simply to tell Him all the time, “Lord, I love You. I want You. I need You. I like You. I want to get with You.” This is very active. Yet you don’t do anything; this is passive. This is what I call active-passive. This is: “Be saved” (Acts 2:40, Darby).
In 2 Timothy 2:1 Paul said, “Be empowered.” The King James Version renders this verse in a very self endeavoring, active way: “Be strong.” Be strong is very active, but Paul said be empowered. You do not need to be strong, and you cannot be strong. Even if you are strong it means nothing, because John 15:5 says apart from Him we can do nothing. We still can do a lot of things, but whatever we do doesn’t count, so it means nothing. Apart from Him we can do nothing. But we need to be empowered. How could we be empowered? We have to be calmed down, and He has to replace us. Once we are calmed down and He comes in to replace us, we are empowered.
Likewise, the Bible doesn’t tell us that we can sanctify ourselves. In the Old Testament we are told to be holy (Lev. 19:2). But you have to realize according to the New Testament sense it is not a matter to be holy, but to be sanctified (John 17:19; Heb. 2:11). In principle, to be holy is just like to be strong, and to be sanctified is just like to be empowered. We cannot be holy, but we need to be sanctified. Someone is within us sanctifying all the time. We cannot be holy, but He can sanctify us. In the New Testament many points like this have been either translated in the wrong way or understood in the wrong way. Actually, in the New Testament we are told not to be something, not to do something, but to be saved (Acts 2:40), to be empowered (2 Tim. 2:1), and that we may be sanctified. This means on our side we are reduced, and we are calm. Then on the Lord’s side, He is active, He is living within us, He is living for us, and He is living with us. This is what He wants, and this is what will work.
We have to pray. We have to enter into the prayer and then gradually we will be reduced, and He will be added in to replace us. But there is the need of some measure of life to bring you into this stage. At this point you will spontaneously realize something. This is to live Christ. To live Christ is not that we live Him, but it is actually to let Christ Himself live from within us. So we need the reducing. As long as you can pray so much, you had better pray that much. But one day you simply will not be able to pray that much. You cannot imitate me, nor can I imitate you. In the spiritual life you may have some pattern which gives you a principle. But if you imitate the pattern apart from the principle, it doesn’t work. It doesn’t mean that now you need to stop praying for your friends and for your relatives. If you can stop, you don’t need to stop; you just don’t pray. If you cannot stop, you just pray.