Today’s religious system has distracted us from the enjoyment of Christ. Religion has teachings, rules, and rituals for people to worship God, to serve God. The teachings in religion deal with how to adjust a person’s character and how to improve his behavior. In today’s Christianity there are many teachings and gifts, but the sad thing is that the central thought of God revealed in the Scriptures has been greatly missed and even lost. The central thought of God is that God wants to be our enjoyment. We have to partake of Him and enjoy Him, not just to know Him with a certain amount of objective knowledge but to know Him in our subjective experience. We have to taste Him as David charged us to do in Psalm 34:8—“O taste and see that the Lord is good.” In Psalm 36 we are told that we need to be abundantly satisfied with the fatness of the Lord’s house, enjoying the fountain of life in the Lord’s light. This describes the enjoyment of the Lord and the experience of the Lord Himself. It is not enough to have some objective knowledge about the Lord and to learn many doctrines and teachings concerning the Lord. We must experience the Lord and taste the Lord.
The seeking one in Song of Songs said, “As the apple tree among the trees of the wood, so is my beloved among the sons. I sat down under his shadow with great delight, and his fruit was sweet to my taste” (2:3). This indicates how precious the Lord is to the seeking one. He is like an apple tree providing the seeking one with shade and rich fruit. We can rest under His shadow and enjoy His fruit, which are all His riches for our enjoyment. The apple tree is not for the scientific study of the seeking one but for her to rest under its shadow and enjoy the fruit. We need to experience and enjoy the Lord in such a way.
For many years I have been taught, helped, and even strengthened to enjoy the Lord in such a way. This is why we should not focus on the doctrines, the teachings, and the gifts, but we should focus our entire being on the Lord Himself. We should learn to enjoy Him, to contact Him, to eat Him, to partake of Him. The Lord said, “He who eats Me shall also live because of Me” (John 6:57). We must learn to know the Lord in such an experiential way, day by day tasting Him and being satisfied with Him. We need to be satisfied with the fatness of His house, saturated and permeated with His sweetness.
If we enjoy the Lord in this way, this enjoyment will create a deep hunger within us for the Lord’s heart’s desire, His dwelling place. This enjoyment will stir us up to pray, “Lord, bring me fully into the experience of the church life. Keep me in Your courts and in Your house all the days of my life.” The enjoyment of the Lord will bring you into the church life, and the church life will cause you to enjoy Him even more as the fountain of life and the source of light. Sometimes people would ask us where we received all our light from. They wondered what books we studied to get this light from the Word. Actually the light we have received is from the living Lord Himself in the church. In the church the Bible is an open book. The church is typified by the tabernacle. Within the tabernacle is the showbread table which is the source, the fountain, of life, and the lampstand, which is the source of light. Life and light are both in the house of the Lord, in the church, God’s building. This life and light are inexhaustible in the church. In the Lord’s house the light even floods in, as the psalmist said, “In thy light shall we see light” (Psa. 36:9).
The issue of the enjoyment of the tree of life is the tabernacle, the house of the Lord. If we enjoy Him in such a living and real way as the tree of life, we will have the tabernacle and we will be in the house of the Lord. At that time we will be able to say that we are satisfied with the fatness of the house of the Lord. We will enjoy Him as the fountain of life and the source of light. We will only desire to dwell in His house all the days of our life and will have a full realization that one day in His courts is better than a thousand. We will be like the sparrow who has found a house and the swallow who has found a nest for her young in the altars of the house (Psa. 84:3). The church life will be our resting place and a nest to take care of the younger ones whom we have brought to the Lord. Thank and praise the Lord for the fatness of His house.