Prayer: Lord, we ask You to help us and strengthen us while we are speaking something concerning Yourself and the way to experience You as life. You know how much we need You in such a ministry. In the understanding of such a mysterious thing, we need Your anointing and Your help. Lord, at this very moment do cover us; cover our mind that we may not be confused by any kind of thought. We pray that You would impress us with the mysterious way to experience Yourself in our daily life. Grant us the necessary utterance to speak what is on Your heart. In Your name we pray. Amen.
In a previous chapter we saw that Christ, the Son of God, is called the Father (Isa. 9:6), and that He as the Lord is the Spirit (2 Cor. 3:17; cf. 4:5). Christ was also incarnated to be a man, and this man is Jesus. Therefore, Christ Jesus is the Triune God incarnated and mingled with man. Included in Christ Jesus are the three of the Triune God—the Father, the Son, and the Spirit—and man. When we receive Him, He comes into us not only as our Savior, our Lord, and our God, but even more as our life. The Gospel of John, in particular, tells us that when we believe into Him, we have eternal life (3:15-16; 5:24; 6:40, 47; 20:31). Moreover, it tells us that He is life and that life is in Him (11:25; 14:6; 1:4a). When we believe in Christ Jesus, He enters into us, that is, into our spirit (2 Tim. 4:22), to be life to us (Col. 3:4). This very life is the light (John 1:4b), the function of which is to enlighten and shine. All the time this life, which is the wonderful Christ, is shining within us. In addition, this life is the law that regulates us continually (Rom. 8:2).
Whether as the light shining or the law regulating, the divine life works and moves within us in a very quiet, normal, and ordinary way. Our human thought is that God is wonderful and great and that we need His help in a supernatural and miraculous way. We could never imagine that God would become a man. The first four books of the New Testament are a record of the wonderful God who became a man. His desire in becoming a man was that we would receive Him into us as life. Today the very Christ whom we have received as our life operates within us in a very quiet, ordinary way, without anything special or miraculous. If you are clear about this, it will revolutionize your concept concerning the way God deals with you. You will see that today the wonderful God works within you in a quiet, normal, and ordinary way and that you need to go along with Him. By cooperating with His inner working, day by day you will be saturated with Him and mingled with Him, and your whole being, that is, all your inward parts, will be transformed. This is very ordinary, yet it is very vital.
All the material things, including the food we eat, are types and figures of Christ and can help us to know Christ. Day by day we eat at least three meals. Rather than eating a great amount of food at one time, it is better to take a little in the morning, a little at noon, and a little in the evening. Life is a matter of living continually by what we take in day by day and time after time. There is no need of anything miraculous. There is no need for God to send the angels to feed us. Likewise, we should not expect an extraordinary Christ to come and help us. Rather, the Christ whom we experience is seemingly very ordinary.
Luke 24:13-35 gives us an account of two disciples who, after the Lord resurrected, left Jerusalem to go to Emmaus. The Lord came to them in a quiet, normal, and even hidden way, a way that was very ordinary. He was Christ, yet the two disciples did not recognize Him. It seems as if He pretended not to be Christ and asked them what they were talking about. He listened to them and did not rebuke them. Rather, He talked with them, walked with them, and stayed with them without telling them that it was He whom they were speaking about. Then at a certain time the two disciples realized that He was the Lord. At that point He disappeared from them. It is often the same in our experience of Christ. If we do not realize that it is He Himself, we sense His presence with us, but when we are clear about our experience, the sense of His presence is gone.
The Lord Jesus dwells within us as life today in just such a hidden, normal way, without anything extraordinary or special. We must learn to know such a Christ. We Christians always expect to experience something extraordinary, because we are not clear concerning the Lord’s way of life. The Jesus Christ who dwells in us today is the same One who walked with the two disciples on the way to Emmaus. He is within us in a quiet, normal, and ordinary way. Hence, we should not expect something special of Him. Day by day and moment by moment we must learn to know and experience this wonderful, profound, and marvelous Savior.