When we bring a person to the Lord, for the most part we should not start with the matter of life. We need to start from something else, such as sin, the vanity of human life, or another item. However, we must keep in mind the goal of life. We have to bring people to life and help them to realize that to believe in the Lord Jesus as our Savior is to receive Him as our life. Unless we help people to realize that they have received Christ as their life, our work with them is not yet completed. Therefore, after we bring people to the Lord, we need to continue to spend time to help them to realize how the Lord Himself is life to us. Here we must explain to them that the Lord is the Spirit (2 Cor. 3:17; 1 Cor. 15:45b). Today it is easy to use electricity or atomic power to illustrate what the life within is. We should explain that God is Spirit, Christ is the Spirit, and God and Christ are in the Spirit waiting for us to receive Him and contact Him as life. We should also help them to realize that we are vessels made by God with a spirit within to receive God.
We must learn to do this. I am afraid that we may bring people to the Lord, but they may be saved without realizing that they have received Christ as life, that they have been born again, and that they have One living within them. This requires more work after we bring them to the Lord. Of course, this also requires our own experience. We must experience Christ as life to us, and then we will know how to help people to realize the same thing. The proper burden is not only to bring people to the Lord to be saved, but to bring them to the Lord that they may realize that today Christ is life to them, that they have a spirit within them, and that when they repent and believe in the Lord Jesus, the Holy Spirit works in their spirit to regenerate them and to bring Christ as the life-giving Spirit into their spirit.
To help people realize Christ as their life requires not merely that we give them doctrine but that we have a certain amount of experience. Second, it requires that we have the adequate verses from the Scriptures, such as those we have pointed out. We need to spend time on these verses to read, re-read, meditate, and pray about them until they become living to us. Then, when we contact people and help them to realize that Christ is their life, we will be able to use all those verses in a living way.
As we have pointed out, to help people to realize Christ as life should not be the beginning of our gospel preaching. Rather, it is the end, the conclusion. With many people we should not start with life; we should start in some other way. However, whatever way we take, we need to remember that we must bring people to the goal of life. Unless we help people to realize that they have Christ within as their life, and unless they know how to exercise their spirit to contact Christ as their life, our preaching of the gospel is not complete.
Some may say that to help new believers to know how to exercise their spirit is too much. We have been helped to know this for a long time, but many of us are still not clear how to exercise our spirit. However, although it may not be easy for us, it is easy for new believers. Some new believers will go on very quickly, more quickly than we have. We may illustrate this with learning English. When many old Chinese come to America, they are slow in learning the language, but their children learn quickly. The grandchildren speak English in a marvelous way, but the old grandfathers still cannot speak well because they have been spoiled by their old way of speaking. Similarly, many of us have been spoiled by our old way. I hope this word does not disappoint you, but many have been spoiled by being taught too much. It would have been better if they had never been taught so much. However, it is precious that many of us still have a right heart. If someone does not have a right heart, we cannot do anything with him. Many of us do have a right heart, but we also have oldness. We need the newness.
When we go out to preach the gospel in this new way, we will see some newborn babes who will go on in a fast way. We must not pass on the old way to them. If we pass on the old way, we pass on oldness. Therefore, regardless of which way we contact them to bring them to the Lord, we must right away help them to realize life. Do not think, “To exercise the spirit is too deep. How can they know this?” In actuality, they will understand it better than we do. Perhaps they will exercise more than we do, and after two months they will come back to teach us something. This is like the Chinese grandchildren who come back to teach the grandfather.
We should not set up ourselves as the examples, because we may not be good examples. We should set up the example from the Scriptures, telling them that on the very day or night they repented and believed in the Lord Jesus they already exercised their spirit to receive Him. Now the Lord is living, available, and real to them, for He is in them, that is, in their spirit. Romans 10:6 through 9 says, “But the righteousness which is out of faith speaks in this way, ‘Do not say in your heart, Who will ascend into heaven?’ that is, to bring Christ down; or, ‘Who will descend into the abyss?’ that is, to bring Christ up from the dead. But what does it say? ‘The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart,’ that is, the word of the faith which we proclaim, that if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.” The reality of these verses is that today the Lord is omnipresent because He is the Spirit, and He is not only within the believers, but He is waiting for the unbelievers at their mouth. If they would exercise their mouth to call Him “Lord Jesus,” they will make a real transaction with the Lord.
We need to learn all these things in order to make a living transaction. We should not talk too much. We simply need to convince someone, open his understanding, and incline his heart a little. Then when we realize that he is more or less convinced, we should not speak any more. We should simply say, “Let us pray.” He may say, “I don’t know how to pray,” so we can tell him to call on the Lord Jesus with his mouth and from his heart. In this way we help him to make a real transaction with the Lord. Then after he prays, we must help him to realize that to believe in the Lord Jesus is not to receive a religion. In order to receive a religion, one must learn many things, such as regulations, doctrines, teachings, philosophies, and performances. Rather, we should tell him, “You are receiving and dealing with a living One, who is the very God of the universe in the person of the Son, the living Christ who gives life. Today this living Christ is the living Spirit. He is waiting here, so since you prayed and called on His name, He is within you. Now He is always within you. The only thing you must do now is take care of the inner sense of life.” I have done this many times. It is very easy, but we must experience all these things, and we must study the Word.
For this purpose, we must learn to use the Scriptures in a living way. We may compare using the Scriptures to serving chicken. In the Scriptures there are many matters, some of which are like the feathers. A chicken needs feathers to grow well, but when we help people, we should not minister the “feathers.” We must know which part we need to minister to others as life. We must learn how to use the proper verses.