Month: September 2021

All spiritual people are emotional

/ livinglywrong

“Let us be clear about the matter of our emotions. We need to be emotional. Some say that we are too emotional. But no one can be like the apostle Paul if he is not emotional. Paul was very emotional: many times he spoke and wrote to the saints with tears. Once he said, “What do you want? Should I come to you with a rod or in love and a spirit of meekness?” (1 Cor. 4:21). Paul could be very emotional. At another time he said, “What is our hope or joy or crown of boasting before our Lord Jesus at His coming? Are not even you?” (1 Thes. 2:19). It is good to be emotional. If you can never be emotional, you can never be spiritual. But listen, not naturally emotional but emotional in the spirit; not emotional with strange fire but with heavenly fire. Our natural emotion must be consumed on the burnt offering altar. All the natural things must be consumed there. We need to offer praises, we need to be released, yet we still need to be dealt with; we need many dealings through the cross.

Do not think that to be noisy is emotional. If we can never weep publicly while preaching the gospel, I do not think we can bring many people to the Lord. I have read the biography of a brother who had no eloquence whatever. He was able to speak very little, but whenever he stood to speak for the Lord Jesus, his tears flowed down. Just by that kind of weeping, many persons were converted to Christ. All spiritual people are emotional. Learn to be emotional; then you will know how to be spiritual. Learn to laugh; learn to weep. Do not learn so much teaching, but learn the things that will help you turn to the spirit. If you exercise yourself overmuch in your mentality, you will lose the laughing spirit. Do not think you are so smart. Turn from your mentality to the spirit and praise the Lord. Learn to exercise your spirit and be happy and joyful. Rejoice in the presence of the Lord, and you will be much in the spirit.”

(How to Meet, pp.206-207)

What is the proper way to meet?

/ livinglywrong

“…In accord with the whole book of 1 Corinthians, the proper way for us as Christians to meet depends upon the proper living, the proper life. First Corinthians 14 is not the first chapter or the last chapter of this book. There are so many chapters preceding it, telling how Christ is everything to us and how we must exercise our spirit to enjoy and experience Him in so many ways. Following chapter 14, we still have two chapters, telling how Christ is the life-giving Spirit, how our spirit needs to be continually refreshed with Christ, and how we need to live, move, and do everything in love. If we are such persons, taking such a way to live day by day, we are qualified to meet together; then we have the right foundation, the right basis, for our meeting. Do not pick out a verse here and there in the book and speak about gifts, tongues, and healing, etc. That is not the message of 1 Corinthians. Where there are saints who mean business with the Lord, who have the real experience in their daily walk of taking Christ as their life, the meetings will be so proper and living. There is the life to support the meeting.

What is the proper way to meet?
(1) We must have the proper life. We must exercise our human spirit all the time to take Christ. We must be so accustomed to exercising our spirit. It is not just a matter of doing this in the meetings, but in our daily walk with our children, our husbands, our wives. We must forget about exercising our minds and turn rather to exercising our spirit. Then our spirit will be so strong, living, and aggressive. By taking Christ as our life and experiencing Him as everything day by day, we will have a spiritual savings account. We will continually deposit something of Christ into this account and have a rich surplus of our experience of Him. We will come to the meeting with a strong spirit and a rich surplus.

Then, (2) we only need to exercise our spirit to stand up in the meeting to function, to prophesy. It will be so spontaneous for us to do so; it will simply be an overflow of what we have been experiencing of Christ all day. There will be no strain; it will just be a continuation of our normal, daily experience of Christ. Whatever we do in the meeting will be living and rich with Christ in the spirit. Of course, it is also necessary in the meeting to drop all our old background. We must be delivered from the influence of thinking we are not capable of saying anything in the meetings, delivered from thinking we are not qualified, we are not committed with something from the Lord. No one else can function on our behalf in the meeting. We need to come to the meeting with a new concept, realizing that we are in something new, that we are out of the old Christianity. We need to come in a new and living way, accustomed to exercising our spirit, with Christ as our life and with a rich surplus of Christ. This is the way to meet.”

(How to Meet, pp.103-104)

To prophesy is not to wait until we are inspired

/ livinglywrong

“In so-called fundamental Christianity we are told that we must follow the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. In all the meetings we must wait and not act if we do not have inspiration. If you read all the fundamental writings regarding the inspiration of the Spirit in meetings, they all say the same thing. You must confess your sins and consecrate yourself, you must pray more, and you must wait more upon the Lord; then you will feel the Holy Spirit inspiring you, and you need only follow His inspiration. Let me check with you: Can you find such a verse in the Bible? Is there a verse telling us that we must meet in this way? No, there is not.

Read 1 Corinthians 12 and 14: you will see that we must desire to be in the spirit; we must desire to prophesy. To prophesy is not to wait until we are inspired. Read the context. To prophesy means to take the initiative to exercise our spirit. It seems that we take the lead, but when we do, the Spirit of God follows and flows out, because today the Holy Spirit is mingled with our spirit. With Him there is no problem. He is always waiting for us; the problem is with us. If we would just cooperate with Him, if we would take the lead, He would follow and come forth. He would work together with us. It is not a case of us waiting for Him; it is He who is continually waiting for us. Since the time He came into us and mingled Himself with us, He has been waiting for us all the time. He has taken the initiative already; He is waiting now for us.

I do believe that if you read all these passages to which we have referred, and not only read them but pray-read them again and again, your eyes will be opened. Praise the Lord, there is no need for us to wait for any kind of manifestation or any kind of inspiration. We need only to exercise our spirit and open our mouth to say, “O Lord, O Lord!” Do you see the point? Read the context of all these passages, and you will get the proper meaning. Just exercise your spirit and say, “Lord Jesus!” Exercise something deep within you to speak for the Lord Jesus. This is the exercise of the spirit. It seems that it is out from you, but it is really something of God, because the very Spirit of God today is mingled with your spirit.

When I was a child, I participated with the other children in a certain kind of race. We divided into pairs, and two of our feet were bound together so that each pair was forced to run with three feet. I believe that in America it is called a three-legged race. When I ran this race, the other one, my mate, was always waiting for me. Eventually, I would rise and get ready to run the race. Now tell me, who was the initiator, he or I? Apparently it was I, but in fact he was the real initiator. Now we are bound together with the Holy Spirit, and not only bound together but mingled with Him. But we are so slow and slothful; He has been waiting for us all the time. When we become aware of Him, we are still ignorant, for we say, “Lord Jesus, I have been waiting for You in my spirit. I have been praying for three days, and I do not have the inspiration.” Dear ones have come to me and said, “How is it that you have such inspiration, but it is so difficult for us to obtain it? It seems so easy for you to be inspired, but so difficult for us. Why?” The answer is that they have been carried away by the fundamental teachings. Read 1 Corinthians 14 again and again. It does not say that we must wait; it does not say that we must pray; it does not say that we must fast. It says that we must take the initiative; our human spirit must take action. It seems that we are always waiting, but actually the Holy Spirit has been waiting for us all the time.“

(How to Meet, p.82)