The way to get this all-inclusive Spirit is to pray, and when you come to pray the first order of business is to offer the sin and trespass offerings. In the Old Testament, whoever came to the tabernacle to contact God had to offer the sin offering and the trespass offering. The first thing in our prayer that rises up or springs up within us is our sin. This is why we need to make a thorough confession of our sins. If you do not do this, you do not realize how many sins you have. But when you come to the Lord to contact Him, not being occupied with so many prayers for matters, things, and persons, to be filled with Him and to be a person wrapped up with Him, you will immediately have the deep sensation that you are wrong in so many matters. If you would confess your wrongdoings, one wrongdoing after another will rise up within you for your confession. It may take you one or two hours to get yourself fully cleared up and cleansed. When you get yourself fully cleared up in prayer by confessing your failures, your wrongdoings, your mistakes, your sinful things, your offenses, and your shortcomings, that will be the time you will be filled with the Spirit.
We all need to come back to the pure Word and make a thorough confession to God. If you feel that you are wrong with others or that you have wronged others, you had better make some restitution. Get yourself right with every person, and especially get yourself right with God. After your confession, that will be the time you are filled with the Spirit. We all need to have this kind of experience. You do not need to wonder what your feeling or sensation will be after you have made a thorough confession and are filled with the Spirit. There is no need for us to seek feelings, manifestations, or signs of being filled with the Spirit. We should drop these considerations and just go to the Lord again and again, making confessions. Every day we need this kind of clearing up. Then we will enjoy the infilling of the Spirit and the outpouring of the Spirit all the time. A number of saints can testify that when they practiced making a thorough confession to the Lord, they experienced the Spirit in a rich way. I hope that you would take this word and go to the Lord.
We may have heard much of the fellowship concerning the small group meetings, but if we do not have the adequate word plus the infilling and the outpouring of the Spirit, it will be hard for us to practice the small group meetings. At the most, all we will be able to have as the contents of the small group meetings is a little talk which we may term fellowship. That, however, is absolutely inadequate. In our small group meetings we should speak with the Word of God, and we should speak the Word with the Spirit. We do not speak the Word just by ourselves, but we speak the Word with the Spirit. Without the Word and without the Spirit, it is hard for us to utter anything in any kind of meeting. Even in a meeting of three or four it will be hard for you to speak. Without the Word and the Spirit, you will have no intention to speak. You will feel that you have no need, no desire, no burden, and no incentive to speak. But when you have the adequate word and the infilling and the outpouring of the Spirit, you have something urging, pushing, burdening you to speak. When you speak, there will be rivers of living water flowing out of your innermost being (John 7:38). This is the overflow of the rich word through the flowing Spirit. If we want to see the churches built up practically and in a rich way in all the localities, we must practice the small group meetings with the saints speaking in this way.
On the one hand, I believe that a number of us have found out that the small group meetings are really helpful. We have discovered that these small group meetings really work to bring people in, to touch people, and to take care of people. At the same time, I believe that some of us have found out that it is hard to go to the small meetings. Instead, some like to come to the big meetings because they feel that they do not need to speak since someone else will be speaking in the big meetings. However, if you go to a small meeting with less than ten saints and do not speak, you will be exposed. It may be that in your small group everybody is speaking, but you do not know how to speak and have nothing with which to speak. As a result, you are bothered and even afraid to go back to your small group meeting again. We are encouraged to go to the small group meetings when we are full of the Word and full of the Spirit. When we are full of the Word and full of the Spirit we like to flow out all the riches of our Christ to others that they may enjoy the divine dispensing.
We must remember these two crucial points: to let the word of Christ dwell in us richly and to be filled with the all-inclusive, life-giving Spirit. There is no need for you to discern whether you are experiencing the essential aspect of the Spirit or the economical aspect. These are two aspects of the one Spirit. All of us need to seek after the Word and to seek after the Spirit.
Both the Word and the Spirit require our earnest seeking. To seek after the Word we need to study the Bible and pray-read the Word. We also need to study the footnotes and the Recovery Version and the Life-study Messages along with some other helpful reference books. We need to accumulate all the good terms and expressions from all the Bible books and from other divine, spiritual books to enlarge our divine, heavenly, and spiritual vocabulary.
We also need to pray every day and not just once during the day. We need to pray to make confessions all the time in order to keep ourselves cleared up. Through our prayer we need to get ourselves fully and clearly empty from within. Then we will be fully cleansed, not only by the blood but also by the cleansing Spirit. Then this cleansing Spirit will fill us up. He is in us, but we are filled with so many other things. If a bottle is filled up with dirt, the air cannot get into the bottle. The more dirt that is poured out of the bottle, the more air gets into the bottle. In like manner, how much air gets into us depends upon how much dirt will be poured out of us.
Every day we have to spend some time to pray to get fully cleared up. We must get emptied every day. You may not feel that you are so sinful, yet you have to realize you are so filled up with things other than Christ. You are occupied with all kinds of things other than Christ. In the eyes of the Lord all the occupying things are sinful. Even good things, moral things, and ethical things that are occupying you from within are sinful in the eyes of God if they are replacements of Christ. You have to confess, “Lord, forgive me for letting this good thing occupy me to replace You within me and to usurp Your ground in me. I want to get this cleared up.” Every day we have to get ourselves cleansed, cleaned, emptied, and cleared up.
From the time that we rise up in the morning until the time that we retire at night, we need to wash our hands many times. Otherwise, our hands will be fully dirtied. As Christians who are walking and living on this earth, we must realize that no place, no person, and no thing we touch is clean. We get dirty by touching all these worldly things so we need to get ourselves cleansed and cleared up from within and from without. Every day we need some time to deal with the Word and we need some time to deal with the Spirit to keep us always prepared to speak Christ, to speak for Christ, and to speak forth Christ at any time and at any place. We need to be the speaking believers everywhere and at every time. In your home, in your office, and on the street you need to speak. You need to speak even the more in the meeting. We all have to learn to be a speaking believer. To do this we need to deal with the Word all the time, and we need to have the infilling and outpouring of the all-inclusive Spirit.
My prayer is that the saints would realize what their need is today. The Lord’s up-to-date move is to build up the church through the small group meetings, yet the small group meetings require all the saints to have the Word and the Spirit. To have the Word requires our study and to have the Spirit requires our being filled with Him. To have Him within us and upon us all the time means that we are really one with the Spirit. Then wherever we go and wherever we are we speak. We have the encouragement within, we have the material, and we have the Spirit. We have everything we need to be a speaking member of the Body of Christ. May the Lord burden all of us to seek Him in His present day move in this way.