Only at this time, and only under such circumstances, can you truly return to the spirit. Only then can the spirit in you have the opportunity to let you touch its feeling. Thus, you can walk by the spirit, exercise the spirit, and serve God in spirit. One who serves God in spirit must be one who hates, condemns, and judges the self and who fears the self much more than he fears sin and the world. Thus, he will be able to serve God by contacting Him, touching Him, and fellowshipping with Him in spirit.
No one can contact God with the things of the soul. Since God is Spirit, if we want to contact Him, we must use our spirit. We can contact Him and fellowship with Him only in spirit. Whenever we live in our soul, we cannot contact God; instead, we lose our fellowship with Him. When we live according to our mind, emotion, and will, then we lose God. Thus, we must hate, condemn, and reject the things of our soul. If we are willing to do this, then we can return to our spirit to contact God and touch His feeling, thereby serving Him.
Our service must be the issue of our contact with God in spirit. However, this is not the case with most of our service. For example, when we preach, sometimes we speak only from our mind and our clear thinking, without having fellowship with God in our spirit and without touching His feeling. This kind of preaching, which is from the mind of the soul, does not require us to contact God and fellowship with Him. On the contrary, in this kind of preaching we have lost our fellowship with God and have become disconnected from Him.
There is another kind of preaching, however, which comes from God as the issue of one’s contact and fellowship with God. Every sentence gives people the sense of touching God. With this kind of preaching, it is a secondary matter whether the listeners are moved, but the speaker himself surely is moved, touches God, and speaks out of his fellowship with God.
With respect to these two different kinds of preaching, the first kind does not require the denial of the self, fellowship with God, hating of the self, or contact with God. It is possible that the speaker has gone for a long time without fellowshipping with God or contacting Him, yet he is able to speak a message according to his mind. This kind of preaching is similar to a worldly person’s making a speech; the only difference is the topic. The worldly people cover secular topics, whereas this kind of preacher covers scriptural topics. Just as the worldly speech-making is from the mind, so also this kind of preaching is from the mind. It does not require contact or fellowship with God because the mind is sufficient.
Before God, however, this kind of preaching is more filthy than sin! The reason is that this kind of preaching belongs to death. Before God death is more filthy than sin. The Old Testament shows us that the greatest offense to God is death. Sin offends against God’s ways, while death offends against God Himself. Therefore, when the Old Testament people touched death, they had to purify themselves for a long time. Any service rendered apart from one’s contact with God in spirit is dead in God’s eyes and is something belonging to death; hence, in God’s view it is very filthy.
The preachings and prayers according to the mind seem to be spiritual and holy. In God’s eyes, however, they all belong to death and come out of death, and they also come from man, from the soul. Hence, they are very filthy and void of God’s Spirit, life, or element. If we have been enlightened before the Lord, we will fear this kind of preaching and prayer more than we fear committing a gross sin. If we have the light before God, then we will fear the self doing anything of service to God more than we fear committing a sin.
Many problems of the children of God today are right here. Many services, works, preachings, and prayers have not passed through God. They are not of God, from God, or the result of the fellowship and contact with God. Moreover, it seems there is no need for them to pass through God or contact God. Rather, human cleverness, human thinking, human decisiveness, human perseverance, and human zeal are sufficient for man to do these works. Man does not need to contact God, fellowship with God, or depend on God in doing these works but is fully able to declare his independence from God. These works, however, are of the soul, of man, of man’s self, and in God’s eyes they are as filthy as death.
Our Lord says we can bear fruit only if we abide in Him and He in us, because apart from Him we can do nothing. This does not mean that we cannot do anything at all, but that even if we can do many things, they do not count before God. Whatever we can do by ourselves without needing to fellowship with God or to contact Him in spirit is neither of the spirit nor of life and is incapable of ministering life. Hence, it has no value and does not count before God. Not only so, it is even condemned by God. Therefore, we must learn to come out of this kind of work and turn within to contact God in spirit. Unless we do this, we would rather not do any work. We must force ourselves to such an extent that we absolutely must contact God in spirit. Otherwise, regardless of how much we can do, our work will still be condemned by God and will not be acceptable to Him.