Maintain our Fellowship with the Lord through Confessing, Praying, and Pray-reading

If we want to be overcomers, we need to labour on Christ as our good land so that we may gain Christ as our enjoyment; we do this by consecrating ourselves to the Lord, spending time with the Lord, enjoying Him in His word, dealing with sins, maintaining our fellowship with the Lord through prayer, and redeeming the time.

In every situation and circumstance, we need to seek the Lord so that we may enjoy and experience Christ. Like Paul, we need to pursue Christ so that we may gain Him we need to pay the price to gain Christ by spending time with Him and laying hold of Him.

Christ laid hold of us and we need to lay hold of Him; this we do by “persecuting Christ” in a positive way, that is, by pursuing Him with all our heart so that we may gain Him.

What is behind us – we need to forget that, and we need to stretch forward to the Christ before; we don’t have yesterday, and tomorrow is not ours, but we have today, so today we need to gain Christ by maintaining our fellowship with Him through prayer.

In Song of Songs we see that the loving seeker is drawn to the Beloved, just as we are loving the Lord and drawn by Him; our pursuing power is actually determined by simply responding to His drawing, and His drawing power is our pursuing power.

We all need to tell the Lord to draw us, and we will run after Him. If we allow the Lord to draw us and we then contact people, they will be drawn to the Christ in us.

May we all pursue toward the goal to gain the prize, having as our goal the fullest enjoyment and gaining of Christ, and aiming to gain the prize which is the fullest enjoyment of Christ in the millennial kingdom! Amen!

As we gain Christ day by day, we will have something of Him to share with others as we meet with them; Christ in us can flow through us into others for the ministry of life, and when we come together each one has something of Christ to share.

Praise the Lord, we have Christ in us, we can pursue Christ, we can enjoy Christ, we can be filled with Christ, and we can minister Christ to others!

Spending Time to be with the Lord Privately and having a New Start Every Morning with the Lord

For us to be overcomers who enter into the enjoyment and possession of Christ as our good land, we need to consecrate ourselves sincerely to the Lord for the simple purpose of enjoying Him and experiencing Him (Phil. 3:13-14).

Every day we need to spend time to be with the Lord privately and secretly to have intimate fellowship with Him, just as the Lord did with the Father in Matt. 14:22-23 and as He told us in Matt. 6:6.

The Lord Jesus in His humanity – He as a man – had an intimate, private, and secret fellowship with the Father.

After feeding the five thousand, He sent them away; He didn’t linger in the accomplishment of this miracle nor was He excited about it, but He sent everyone away and went to spend time with the Father.

The Lord compelled the disciples to step into the boat and go before Him on the other side, while He sent the crowds away; all this was so that He could go up to the mountain privately to pray.

He really wanted to have more time with the Father privately to pray, so that He might be one with the Father and have the Father with Him in whatever He did for the establishing of the kingdom of the heavens.

If the Lord wanted more time privately to pray to the Father, how much more should we want this? The Christ who lives in us wants us to spend more time to pray privately to God.

So we need to enter into our private room, shut our door, and pray to our Father who is in secret, and the Father who sees in secret will reward us (Matt. 6:6).

We need to find a private place where it is just us and the Lord, and spend time with Him.

May we be those who speak to God face to face, being not only the friend of God (as Abraham was) but also His companion (as Moses was), sharing a common interest and enterprise with God.

As we spend time to be with the Lord privately in prayer, we will share in God’s interest, His enterprise will be ours, and we will have Christ growing in us, producing fruit through us, and spreading Himself as the kingdom throughout the whole earth!

At the beginning of every day we need to have a new beginning with the Lord; we need to enjoy the Lord in the Word every day early in the morning to have a new start every day.

As the psalmist said in Psa. 119:147-148, we need to anticipate the dawn, cry out to the Lord, and anticipate the night watches, so that we may muse on the word of God.

Every morning we can have a new start; according to God’s principle in His creation, He ordained to have a new year, a new month or a new moon, and a new day.

Even if we failed yesterday, we can have a new beginning every morning.

To have a new start with the Lord is not that hard; we simply need to rise up a little earlier and call on His name, O Lord Jesus! We don’t need to shout out loudly; we simply need to call on His name and contact Him.

It makes a big difference if we contact the Lord the first thing after we wake up in the morning, and it makes a big difference when we call on the name of the Lord in the morning.

After calling on the name of the Lord to breathe Him in, we should take some verses in the Bible pray over, to muse over, and to meditate over; we can enjoy the Lord with and in His word through pray-reading the word.

If we spend ten or fifteen minutes in the word, musing over it, prayerfully considering it, and praying it back to God, we will be revived and renewed, and we will have a good start for the day.

Lord Jesus, we aspire to be Your overcomers, those who labour on Christ as our good land to gain Christ as our enjoyment. We consecrate ourselves to You, Lord, to just enjoy You and experience You every day. We want to set aside time very day to be with the Lord privately and secretly, so that we may have intimate, private, and secret fellowship with You. Dear Lord Jesus, draw us to Yourself and keep us in fellowship with You every day! May we have a new start every morning by calling on Your name and pray-reading Your word, and may we have set times with You to enjoy You and pray day by day!

Dealing with Sins Thoroughly and Maintaining our Fellowship with the Lord by Living a Life of Prayer

For us to be the overcomers who enjoy Christ as the good land and labour on Him, we need to deal with sins thoroughly so that there is nothing between us and the Lord.

When we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to cleanse us of any unrighteousness and forgive us of our sins (1 John 1:7, 9).

As the Lord shines on us and in us through our fellowship with Him in His word, many things are brought to light, and the Lord will expose our sins.

So we need to admit in the Lord’s light that we did sin, and we need to deal with our sins by confessing them before the Lord until there’s nothing between us and Him.

In Ezek. 1:22 and 26 we see the four living creatures (as a type of the corporate Christ as the corporate expression of God among the human beings) having above them a clear sky, like the sight of awesome crystal, and above it there was a throne and someone sitting on it.

We need to have a clear sky between us and the Lord, a sky like the sight of awesome crystal; we need to tell the Lord to clear our sky, and on our side we need to confess anything that His light shines on until there’s nothing between us and the Lord.

When we have a clear sky between us and the Lord, we can be under the throne of God; He is enthroned in our being, and we enjoy the heavenly situation, condition, and atmosphere of the Lord’s ruling presence in us.

This is the highest point of our spiritual experience – having a clear sky with God’s throne above it.

We must allow the Lord to search us and cleanse us thoroughly; we must deal with sins and faults, making a full confession to the Lord in His light.

We need to maintain our fellowship with the Lord moment by moment, living a life of prayer (2 Cor. 13:14; Phil. 4:6-7; Lamp. 3:55-56; cf. Matt. 11:25-26).

We need to maintain our fellowship with the Lord by living a life of prayer.

In nothing we should be anxious but in everything, with prayer and petition with thanksgiving, we should make all our requests be made known to God.

By opening to the Lord and making our requests made known to Him with prayer and thanksgiving, we make a motion toward Him, we move toward Him, and He moves toward us by coming as the peace of God to guard our heart and our thoughts in Christ Jesus!

When we make a motion toward God, God moves toward us as the peace of God, and all our anxiety is gone; we simply experience and enjoy Christ.

The Lord Jesus was a pattern in having a prayer life; in Matt. 11:25-26 He answered and said… – no one asked Him anything, but He was in a constant communication with the Father, so He answered and said.

As we do this and that, as this and that happens, we need to always pray and give the Lord all things, maintaining our prayer life with Him.

Lord Jesus, keep us in a constant fellowship with You in all situations so that we may enjoy and experience Christ as the good land. We want to deal with anything that comes between us and You so that we may have a clear sky between us and have You enthroned in our being. Amen, Lord Jesus, shine on us and in us; we confess all that You expose, we agree with the light, and we enjoy Your constant and instant cleansing from all our sins. We want to maintain our fellowship with You, Lord, by living a prayer life. Amen, Lord Jesus, we refuse to worry but rather, through prayer and petition with thanksgiving, we make all our requests made known to God!

Redeeming our Time to be Saturated with God’s Word and to be Filled in Spirit

Especially in these dark and troublesome times, we need to redeem our time and spend our energy to be saturated and soaked with God’s holy word (2 Tim. 3:16-17; Col. 3:16).

As the Lord shines on us in our time with Him, we will repent for wasting our time and energy on so many useless and pointless things, and we want to redeem the time to be soaked and saturated with God’s word.

We should redeem the time to be filled in spirit by always rejoicing, unceasingly praying, and always giving thanks in everything (Eph. 5:18; 1 Thes. 5:16-19).

The will of God in Christ Jesus for us that we would always rejoice, unceasingly pray, and in everything give thanks; this is what it means to enjoy Christ.

These things are so important that we should even be legal about it, being strict with ourselves; rejoicing, giving thanks, and praying in all things should be our practice every day.

We may say that we can’t really thank the Lord for our spouse, for if you knew how bad he/she is, you would realize there’s nothing to thank about…But no matter what kind of spouse you have, you must rejoice and give thanks in everything!

We should rejoice for our spouse and give thanks to the Lord for our spouse. Don’t say that your spouse is difficult but thank the Lord that your spouse is forcing you to turn to your spirit!

And if we find ourselves unwilling to pray, rejoice, and give thanks, we need to ask the Lord to make us willing. We may even tell Him,

Lord, make us willing to always rejoice, unceasingly pray, and in always give thanks. Save us from wasting our time by doing all kinds of useless things and watching or reading pointless things. Dear Lord Jesus, we want to cooperate with You to redeem our time to be filled in spirit by rejoicing always, praying unceasingly, and giving thanks in everything! Amen, Lord Jesus, we want to redeem our time and spend our energy to be saturated and soaked with God’s holy word day by day!

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References and Hymns on this Topic

• Inspiration: the Word of God, my enjoyment in the ministry, the message by bro. Ed Marks for this week, and portions from, CWWL, 1988, vol. 1, “Speaking Christ for the Building Up of the Body of Christ,” chs. 3-4, as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, Crystallization-Study of Deuteronomy, week 6, Life in the Land and the Issue of the Land — the Church as the Temple, the Dwelling Place of God, and as the City, the Kingdom of God.
• Hymns on this topic:
  – Laboring on Jesus this practical way— / Praying His Word in the spirit each day, / Foll’wing His living anointing within, / Built up with others, the church life to win. (Hymns #1168)
  – We have the blood! Christ is our spotless offering, / Who gave Himself, our God to satisfy; / And so we come with boldness to the throne of grace, / And all day long, the precious blood apply. / Let’s take the land! O Christian brothers, / The land that God has given us. / Be strong and take it, for we can make it / And gain this land so glorious! (Hymns #1287)
  – Always rejoice; / Unceasingly pray; / In everything give thanks; / For this is the will of God / In Christ Jesus for you. (Scripture song)