For you to be a person who serves the Lord, the primary thing is not your way of doing things outwardly, nor your outward expression, but the kind of person you are. From the entire Bible, you can see that what God uses is not your methods, but your person. Actually your person is your methods. God did not call Moses until he was eighty years old. At that time God did not give him any methods; rather, God led him step by step, showing him that what He wanted was his person, not his methods. I do not mean that we do not need a method in doing things. For example, when you build a house, you must have good methods in order to build a house that is good for people to live in. In serving the Lord, you must also have methods. But you must see that serving the Lord does not depend on your methods, but on your person. You may have the same methods and experiences as others, but others succeed, while you do not. You do not succeed because you are not the kind of person that you must be in order to succeed. If you just learn the methods without becoming that kind of person, you still will not succeed. Therefore, the emphasis of this training is not on training you in some methods, but on perfecting you daily with life and truth in order to bring you into the consummated and completed Spirit of the Triune God. This Spirit is just the processed Triune God. Today He is right in your regenerated spirit. In this spirit you enjoy God as your life, and you live and move in this spirit. This is to walk only according to the spirit. Then you are the right person.
If you want to be a right and proper person, walking only according to the spirit, first you must have the vision, that is, you must have the revelation and the truth. The vision, simply speaking, is that God wants to be our life. This is God’s eternal desire. The life we originally had was the created life, which became fallen and was ruined, even usurped, by Satan. But God did not give us up; rather, He desired to come into us to be our life. The meaning of human life is God coming into us to be our life. If we have everything, such as education, position, wealth, houses, lands, and so forth, yet do not have God as our life, we are still empty. In the New Testament, our God is not only the creating God, but also the God who became flesh, passed through death and resurrection, and became the Spirit. The God we are experiencing today is the Wonder of wonders and the Miracle of miracles, and yet He is so normal to us.
At times the Christian life is sunny, full of the Lord’s presence, yet sometimes it is cloudy, even stormy and dark. At such times we may ask ourselves questions such as these: Is God real or not? Is regeneration real or not? Is the sanctifying and transforming work of the Spirit of God within me real or not? I believe that all of us have been in this kind of situation. But no matter what trials we went through, we discovered that there is something within us that cannot be annulled. We could not deny His existence. This morning all of us must see the vision that God is within us as life.
Second, we must see that as believers, the old man of our tripartite man has been crucified with Christ. Even before we were born, we were crucified. Third, we must see that the Spirit of the consummated and completed Triune God has now made our spirit life. In other words, the Spirit of the Triune God is now within our spirit as our life, enabling us to enjoy God as our all. We have this life within our spirit as the enjoyment of the firstfruit.
After seeing this vision, we need the following experiences. First, we need to set our mind on the spirit (Rom. 8:6b) without any mixed thoughts. Do not think about trying to improve or refine yourself by your self-cultivation. The best way to set your mind on the spirit is to pray and praise. This will make your mind life. Second, you must walk according to the mingled spirit (Rom. 8:4). Third, you must experience the Spirit of the Triune God, who passed through death and resurrection, giving life not only to your spirit and your mind, but also to your mortal body (Rom. 8:11). By these experiences, there is life in your spirit, in your soul, and even in your mortal body. The three parts of your being, the spirit, the soul, and the body, will have life.
Lastly, by the Spirit we must put to death the practices of the body (Rom. 8:13), which are the practices of the entire person. We live by putting ourselves to death. Concerning this point Paul’s words are very mysterious, deep, and complete. He says that we put to death the practices of the body by the Spirit within us. The body wants to go to the movies, to lose its temper, to joke, to love, to hate, to do good, or to do evil. All these need to be put to death. If you put to death the practices of the body, you will live. The Christian life is one that lives by dying. Madame Guyon wrote a book about this entitled Life through Death. The way to put to death the practices of the body is to remain continuously in the Lord’s death. John 15 says that we should abide and remain in the Lord. If you are to abide in the Lord, you must abide and remain in the Lord’s death.
Therefore, if we are to experience God as life, we must first see that the Triune God wants to be our life. For this, He terminated the old man of our tripartite man with Christ on the cross in order that He as the Spirit of the Triune God could come into our spirit, making our spirit life for us to enjoy Him. We should set our mind on the spirit so that the Spirit of the Triune God who is in our spirit may come into our mind and make our mind life. We also must live and move only according to the Spirit. If we do these things, the Spirit of the Triune God, who passed through death and resurrection, will give life to our mortal body, thus making our whole being—spirit, soul, and body—life. Then, by the Spirit we have to put to death the practices of the body and live. In this way we enjoy God as our life. In practice we must be watchful and careful, fearing that in some point of our daily affairs, whether big or small, we may not be according to the spirit. If in any point we are not according to the spirit, we are not proper. I hope that all of you will practice what has been presented in this chapter.
(A message given by Brother Witness Lee in Taipei, Taiwan on April 12, 1988)