Enjoying the Lord in our Daily Life and Meeting to Exhibit the Christ we Experienced

Whenever we come together to meet with the saints, regardless of what kind of meeting we are having, we should come with the Christ experienced by us as the surplus to be offered to God and exhibited by us; for this, we need to contact the Lord daily and bring a surplus of Christ to the meetings to exhibit Christ with the saints. Amen!

Our desire is to have non-stop fellowship with God, but many times we have to admit that we are in spirit for a little bit, and then we are out of the spirit.

Day by day we are learning to exercise our spirit and contact the Lord; this is a learning process, and in this learning, we make many failures, but we want to advance with the Lord and learn to experience Him.

It is good for us to open to the Lord and see where we are and what our condition is.

Humanly speaking, if we want to be in very good health, we want to know the condition of the health in our body, and we consult a physician or a specialist.

We entrust ourselves to a specialist to care for us and help us realize where we are; they may tell us what our situation is and what can we do to improve, what to consider.

Some people, however, hate going to the doctor to have a checkup, for they think they are doing fine and no one can tell them what their health is like.

We need to come to the Lord and have a health check with Him, and we need to come to Him, again and again, to allow Him to minister to us what He sees that we need.

We don’t do this in a formal way; rather, we come to Him by contacting Him, and we exercise our spirit to enjoy Him and experience Him.

This is to labor on Christ, that is, to exercise our spirit to contact the Lord and gain something of Christ in our experience of Christ.

Our Christian life is a life of laboring on Christ every day so that we may have a rich surplus of Christ to bring to the meetings for a rich exhibition of Christ.

May the Lord save us from not experiencing Christ, not enjoying Christ, and not gaining Christ. May the Lord save us from being degraded as most in Christianity are, and may we be rescued from having meetings in formality and according to a certain routine.

May our meetings be full of Christ – may our meetings be a rich exhibition of the Christ we have experienced and enjoyed!

May we break through our disposition and our mood and learn to exhibit Christ by flowing out the surplus of Christ that has been constituted into us through our experience of Him day by day!

Coming to the Meeting with the Christ Experienced by us as the Surplus to Offer to God and Exhibit Christ

Whenever we believers in Christ come together, regardless of the kind of meeting we are having, we should come with the Christ experienced by us as the surplus to be offered to God and exhibited to the whole universe and to the enemy, putting him to shame (John 4:23-24; Eph. 3:10, 17; 4:15).

Amen, our mouth shut up defeats us and wins the devil’s smile, so why not triumph over him by exercising our spirit to exhibit Christ in the meetings of the church!

There is a spiritual warfare going on, and the evil spirits mock us before God when we don’t experience Christ and function in the meetings.

When we realize that the battle is raging on all the time, we will bring glory to God and put the enemy to shame when we bring the Christ we experienced as the surplus to offer to God and exhibit Christ to the whole universe.

When we come to the meeting, we can offer Christ to God as the burnt offering, laying our hands on Him and taking Him as our absoluteness for God.

At other times, we may offer Christ to God as the meal-offering for His satisfaction and our nourishment before Him and with Him.

When we come to the Lord’s Table meeting, we can offer Christ to God as the peace offering for our fellowship with God and man in peace.

Realizing that we are still in the old, sinful nature, and that we are sinful in our deeds, we can apply Christ as our sin offering and the trespass offering.

In this way, we can offer the surplus of Christ to God and we can exhibit Christ to the whole universe, and our meetings are enriched and strengthened, for they are full of Christ (Col. 3:4, 10-11).

If we daily labor on Christ, if we daily exercise our spirit to contact the Lord and experience something of Christ, we will have a surplus of Christ to bring to the meetings to offer to God and exhibit Christ.

Such a church life in which the saints bring the Christ they experienced to the meeting to offer to God is an exhibition of Christ, an expression of Christ (Eph. 3:21).

We need to bring the surplus of Christ to every meeting so that we may exhibit Christ. However, sometimes when we come to the meeting we are empty-handed, for we did not experience or enjoy much of Christ that week.

Our Christian life is marked by failure, and we may feel that, since we failed so much, we have nothing to bring to the meetings.

Even if this is our condition, we must realize that we can still function in the meetings; we can come to the meeting and pray,

Lord Jesus, I am so poor, and I failed You so many times this week. Please forgive me, Lord, and have mercy upon me. When we pray in this way, we open to the Lord, and others will also be touched, for we genuinely want to experience the Lord, but we have failed so much.

We may also say, Dear Lord, I come to contact You and receive something of You in the Body and through the Body. I open to receive something of Your supply in the meeting of the church.

When we have such an attitude, when we open to the Lord in the Body and with the Body, we will receive a supply, and we will also supply others.

We may even open to the saints and, without giving too many specific failures or situations, we may share, Dear saints, please pray for me; I’ve been trying to live the Christian life, but I have failed the Lord again and again.

Please pray for me. If we open in such a way, bringing our failures to the meeting, opening to the Lord and to the saints, there will be a supply in the Body, and our failures will disappear.

If we experience Christ during the week, we can share our Christ during the meeting; if we fail during the week, we can open in fellowship and receive the supply in the meeting.

In this way, the meeting will be full of life, for Christ is exhibited, the Father is satisfied with the Christ being offered, and the saints are edified, strengthened, and enlightened.

Lord Jesus, we love You. Grant us to experience You day by day as we exercise our spirit to contact You. We want to have a surplus of Christ to bring to the meetings of the church to offer to God the Christ we experienced for His satisfaction. Amen, Lord Jesus, we offer You to God as our burnt offering, the One who is absolute for God. We offer You as the peace offering, the One who made peace and became our peace. We offer You as the meal-offering for the Father’s nourishment and our supply. We take You as our sin offering and trespass offering, and we offer the Christ we have experienced to God for His satisfaction in love. Amen, dear Lord, we want to labor on You every day and bring something of Christ to the church meetings so that we can enjoy Christ with God for the exhibition and exaltation of Christ!

Enjoying the Lord in our Daily Life and Meeting to Exhibit the Christ we Experienced

We need to enjoy Christ in our daily life and come together to exhibit Him (1 Pet. 1:8). We may be familiar with the phrase, enjoying Christ, but do we enjoy Christ?

Man was created with the need for enjoyment and pleasure, hence the reason God put Adam in a garden called Eden (pleasure) after He created him. It is one thing for us to experience Christ, which happens mainly in our spirit, and it is something else for us to enjoy Christ, which happens mainly in our soul.

We experience the all-inclusive Christ as the life-giving Spirit in our spirit, for our experience of Christ is in our mingled spirit.

Whenever we are one spirit with the Lord through the exercise of our spirit, we spontaneously experience Him. However, we may experience Christ without enjoying the Christ we have experienced.

This can be illustrated with us eating certain kinds of foods because we have to eat them, but we don’t really enjoy them; we may have to eat our vegetables because we have to, but we may not enjoy them.

We can and we actually do experience Christ more than we realize, but we may not enjoy Him very much in our soul.

Our soul is the organ for expressing Christ and enjoying Him.

This is why the Lord said that the overcomers are willing to lose their soul-life in this age to follow Him, and then one day they will experience the salvation of their soul by entering into the joy of their master.

If today we deny the soulish enjoyment in the world for the Lord’s sake and experience Christ, we will gain the enjoyment in the soul at the Lord’s return.

However, even today we can enjoy the Lord in our soul, but it takes time and practice. May the enemy not rob us from the enjoyment of Christ in our soul; may we learn to deny the life of the soul yet exercise our spirit to experience the Lord and learn to enjoy Him also.

We need joy; we need the enjoyment of Christ, for the joy of the Lord is our strength. May we have a taste for enjoying the Lord day by day!

For us to have a proper Christian meeting, we need to contact the Lord daily in our personal life, and then we need to come to the meetings with the realization and understanding that we are coming to exhibit Christ and share Christ with others (1 Cor. 14:26).

We need to have a governing vision of why we are coming to the meetings; we come together with companions, in small groups, in vital groups, in home meetings, in district meetings, in blending meetings, in whole church meetings, in conferences, and in trainings to just exhibit Christ.

If we are enlightened by the Lord to realize that we are there to exhibit Christ, we will bring a surplus of Christ to the meeting for the corporate exhibition of Christ in the church.

For us to have a proper Christian meeting, first all the saints need to seek and contact the Lord in their daily life, and second, we must forget about any forms and rituals and just exhibit Christ.

May the Lord save us from any ritual, form, routine, program, or regulations in the meeting, and may we just exhibit Christ.

Even though we are during the pandemic right now and we can’t really meet in person, when the in-person Lord’s Table Meetings are recovered in full and we can come together to remember the Lord in person, the meeting will be the indicator of our living and experience.

May we advance with the Lord in our experience of Him until He gains a corporate and rich exhibition of Christ in the church!

Lord Jesus, we give ourselves to You to enjoy Christ in our daily life and come together with the saints to exhibit Christ! Amen, Lord, we exercise our spirit and abide in You to experience Christ, and we want to learn to enjoy Christ in our soul. Save us from not enjoying You every day. Save us from not experiencing Christ. May we be those who seek and contact the Lord in our daily life to gain a surplus of Christ to bring to the meetings of the church. Yes, Lord, we want to be those who contact You daily in our personal life and then come to the meetings with the realization that we come together to exhibit Christ and share Christ with the others!

References and Hymns on this Topic

• Sources of inspiration: the Word of God, my enjoyment in the ministry, a message given by Ron Kangas on this topic, and portions from, Christ as the Content of the Church and the Church as the Expression of Christ, Chapter 4, by Witness Lee, as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, Meeting God’s Need and Present needs in the Lord’s Recovery, week 5, entitled, Our Need to Walk in Newness of Life, to Serve in Newness of Spirit, and to Be Renewed in Our Inner Man Day by Day.
• Hymns on this topic:
  – Laboring on the good land, laboring in the morning, / Laboring through the noontime to the early eve, / Laboring for a harvest, reaping all the produce, / Coming to the meeting, bringing in the sheaves. (Hymns #1167)
  – The testimony and the prayer, / And all the fellowship we share, / The exercise of gifts, whate’er, / Should just exhibit Christ. / The Father we would glorify, / Exalting Christ the Son, thereby / The meeting’s purpose satisfy / That we exhibit Christ. (Hymns #864)
  – This land includes so many things: / Wheat, barley, vines, deep-flowing springs, / Fig trees and never-failing bread— / O what a land before us spread! / To have the produce and abound / We daily labor on the ground; / Then to the meetings we will bring / The topmost Christ, our offering! (Hymns #1165)