What I speak to you this morning may surprise you. However, if you have some deeper knowledge of the Bible and have experience in the spiritual life, you will know that what I am transfusing into you is accurate.
Let me begin with my testimony. I was saved when I was nineteen years old. At that time, I was not clear regarding my salvation. Only afterward did I know that I was saved. At that time, I had a natural imagination within me that salvation should be an extraordinarily miraculous thing, and that some great things should happen to me. Although I did not express it, I had the concept that some extraordinary and unusual miracle should happen to me. Otherwise, how could I be considered saved? At that time, I pursued the Lord fervently. I read in the Bible that when the Holy Spirit came upon men, men began to speak in tongues (Acts 2:4; 10:45-46; 19:6). I then thought that if the Holy Spirit came upon me, I would also have some special manifestations. Some time later, I also read in Acts and the Epistles of Paul that the Holy Spirit wants to fill us within. I thought that this must also be an extraordinary thing. Therefore, I spent time to pursue the matters of experiencing salvation and the filling of the Holy Spirit. I pursued to the point of not sleeping or eating. I did not sleep well, nor did I have the desire to eat. I wanted to know whether I had actually been saved. However, no matter how much I tried, I did not obtain any extraordinary experience. Besides this, regarding being filled by the Spirit, I also pursued in a serious manner. I was hoping that one day some great thing would happen to me. But after I had passed through many experiences, I had never had anything extraordinary happen to me. Instead, all that happened in my spiritual experience concerned merely normal matters. Today, over half a century has gone by. The more I have experienced, the more I feel that these matters of spiritual life, which are matters in God’s New Testament economy, do not have anything that may shock people outwardly; rather, they all appear to be normal occurrences. When I first was saved, I was not clear concerning this point. But the more I experienced, the more I felt normal. And now, I see clearly that as far as spiritual matters are concerned, the more normal they are, the more proper and real they are. And the more normal they are, the more rich they are.
In the Bible there is a principle that the Lord uses the visible, tangible physical things to signify the invisible, intangible spiritual things. Every good Bible student admits this matter. God uses the tangible physical things in the universe to signify, represent, and describe the invisible spiritual things. In the past few decades, I have had several serious illnesses. I have discovered that our body is truly an organism full of the organic function. If you are ill, you do not depend only on taking medicine, but you must also depend on the organic function of the body itself. The human body is indeed wonderful. It is first conceived in the mother’s womb; after development, the members of the body gradually become formed, and then the baby is born. During the development from a baby to a child, then to a young person, then to a middle-aged person, and then to an old person, many things take place. Yet these things that happen are altogether a matter of organic function. Every one of us is born with all the organic functions of our entire body; these functions are even the same in all of us. The organic functions of our physical life are real to us; in the same way, according to the revelation of the Bible, the life we obtained through regeneration is also real. This is not imagination or superstition. We can have this assurance, primarily not by our experience, but by the word of the Bible.
I can testify to you that the most valuable and superior book in the world is this Bible. If there were no God, human beings absolutely would not be able to write such a book. Throughout the generations, not one book of wisdom written by the philosophers could compare with the Bible. All the wonderful expressions, words of wisdom, and mysterious points in the Bible adequately prove the existence of God in the universe. They also prove that the spiritual life given by God is real. Moreover, from the viewpoint of experience, I can truly testify from more than sixty-three years’ experience that the spiritual life of God within us is a reality. This is not the physical life created by God, but God coming into us, born within us, to be our life. Our outward man is the God-created life; our inward man is God being our life. Christianity has nearly discarded the aspect of God becoming our life within. They have also made the matter of the Holy Spirit coming upon men and the Holy Spirit filling men a rare and strange thing. In fact, this spiritual matter of God coming into us to be our life is a very normal matter. To be saved is a very normal matter. However, everyone who desires to be saved or who has been saved considers it as an extraordinary event and expects something unusual to happen to him when he is saved.
In 1938, I was preaching the gospel in my school in my home town. In the audience was a judge who also taught classes there; he became very interested as he listened. He came to me and said that he was willing to believe, but he did not know how to believe. I told him that he should simply kneel down beside his bed after he went home and pray to the Lord. After he went home, he did what I suggested. He told me afterward that while he was praying, he was preparing for something to happen to him. Although he waited quite a while, nothing happened. He thought that if believing in Jesus could cause one to be saved, then something had to happen. But why was nothing happening? He was afraid that what he had done did not work. Because he felt that his prayer did not work, he went to bed disappointed. The following morning, on the way to the courthouse, without any reason he suddenly sensed that the sky was beautiful, and the earth was also lovely. Formerly, whenever he saw a cat or a dog, he was disgusted. But now when he saw the dogs and cats running around on the street, he instead felt very interested in them. Whatever he saw, he felt it was lovely. After he went into the courthouse, his colleagues saw his face overflowing with smiles and asked him whether he had made a fortune, or why he was so happy. He could not tell how this had happened. While he was working, in his heart was happiness. After he went home from work, it was still like that. It was only after a few days that he realized that he was saved and that the Spirit of God had entered into him. At the time of his believing and prayer, nothing special had happened. It was in this way, however, that he was saved.
When I was a young person, eighteen or nineteen years old, what I liked the most was to play soccer and watch the Peking opera. Once I believed in the Lord, I did not do those two things again. Formerly, watching the Peking opera was really enjoyable, and playing soccer was really exciting. But after I was saved, although no one forbade me or taught me, I spontaneously lost my taste for those things. At that time, what I liked the best was reading the Bible, then prayer, and also preaching the gospel. I remember very well that at that time I loved reading the Bible to the point that the Bible never left my hands. When I lay in bed at night, I still would read a few more verses before turning off the lights. As soon as I woke up in the morning, even before I crawled out of the blankets, I took the Bible next to my pillow and began to read. No one had taught me; I simply loved reading the Bible, praying, and preaching the gospel. In the past sixty years, I have experienced a lot. The principle is the same. I have spoken all of these things with the intention of changing your natural concept that you may see that the matters of spiritual life are normal matters of spiritual life.