Our experience and enjoyment of Christ is for the church, and as we know Christ, pursue Him, enjoy Him, and experience Him we become His corporate expression in the church life.
Too many times, however, we don’t enjoy the Lord, we don’t open to Him, and we don’t experience Him, and therefore the church life is poor in expressing Christ in all His riches.
For the church life to be the corporate expression of Christ we need to have our soul subdued and saturated with Christ as the life-giving Spirit.
Since our soul is so active and ready to do things, say things and go places without checking with the Lord, we need to cooperate with the Lord and have our soul subdued so that Christ would have a way to saturate our inward being with Himself as the life-giving Spirit.
Firstly, Christ as the Spirit comes into our spirit, and from our spirit, He wants to spread into every part of our soul to fill our inner being with Himself.
Christ is the reality, the truth; He comes into us as the Spirit of reality to guide us into all the reality of what the Father and the Son is, and as we enjoy Him as such a One, we have the divine reality constituted into our being.
When we read the Bible and exercise our spirit to allow the Spirit of reality to guide us into all the reality, something of the divine reality is being constituted into us making us real and genuine God-men and affecting our walk, living, and behaviour.
Another aspect of God’s saturating our inward being is the matter of the spirit of man being the lamp of Jehovah (see Prov. 20:27). Christ as the light of the world came into our spirit as the lamp, and from our spirit, He wants to shine into every part of our being to eliminate any darkness and bring in His kingdom of light.
We were initially transferred out of the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of God’s light and were given an allotted portion of Christ with the saints in the light, but daily we need to continue to open to the Lord’s light so that any darkness in our being would be completely eliminated by His light.
The Spirit of Man is the Lamp of Jehovah, Searching all the Innermost Parts of the Inner Being
God created man not as an instrument or tool with which He can work to accomplish His purpose but as a vessel to contain God and express God. After God created man He didn’t give man instructions what to do but put man in front of the tree of life, showing that even though man was created in God’s image and with His likeness, man still needs God as life to come into him.
When God created man He breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul; this breath of life became the spirit of man, something close to God (who is Spirit). The spirit of man is an organ to contact God and a vessel to contain God.
When we heard the gospel, we received the divine light into our lamp (our spirit); now the light shining from within our regenerated spirit is God Himself (see 1 John 1:5).
Just as a lamp contains light and expresses it, so man’s spirit was created to contain God and express Him. For man to express God, God in Christ as the Spirit is the “oil” that “soaks” man’s spirit as the “wick” of the lamp, and together they burn bright for God’s expression (see Rom. 8:16; 12:11).
We need to realize first of all that God didn’t create us to DO things for Him or OBEY His law; God created us with the intention that we would be open vessels to receive God, contain Him, and express Him.
As vessels, we should just be open to the Lord and be filled with Him as light so that we would express His light to others. God doesn’t shine an intense light on us as if to interrogate us or burn us; He shines on us with a pleasant light in love so that all the darkness would be dispelled.
God is light; He dwells in unapproachable light, but Christ as the Lamb is the lamp to express God and make Him available and touchable. Now Christ as the Lamb-lamp is in our spirit as the Spirit, and He shines into all the parts of our inner being to search us and eliminate any darkness.
When we received the Lord Jesus as our Savior, we were transferred out of Satan’s kingdom of death and darkness into God’s kingdom of life and light. Now throughout our Christian life we need to keep coming to the Lord by exercising our spirit to have the divine light shine into our inward parts and eliminate any darkness.
Hallelujah for our mingled spirit, the lamp of Jehovah!
Lord, thank You for creating us with a spirit. Hallelujah, our human spirit is the lamp of Jehovah, and Christ as the Spirit is the light in our spirit to shine and dispel any darkness! Lord, shine in us and search all the innermost parts of our inner being. Eliminate any darkness from our inward parts. We open to Your shining. Lord, we turn our heart to You in love and we receive Your shining from our spirit into all our inward parts. Saturate us with the divine light and make us beings of light expressing You.
Being Open Vessels to the Lord’s Shining Within
For the sake of our going on with the Lord, for the sake of our family life, and for the sake of the church life, we need to be open vessels to the Lord’s shining within.
As we use our spirit to pray and contact the Lord, we need to allow the Lord to shine on all the parts of our soul. The Spirit wants to enlighten all our inward parts, shining on our thoughts, our feelings, our motives, and our intentions.
As the Lord shines on us, He supplies us in His love with His life. We simply need to be open to Him.
However, many times we close up to the Lord’s light and we don’t allow Him to enter into our emotions, our thoughts, our opinions, and our feelings. Many times we argue with the divine light and we don’t allow the Lord to shine in particular parts of our inward being.
But if we continue to touch the Lord and enjoy Him, He as the Spirit will shine from the lamp of our spirit and will enlighten our mind, emotion, and will. When the Lord shines in us it is good to just open to Him and tell Him,
Lord, I open my mind to You. Shine in my mind and expose my thoughts. Lord, I let You into my emotions and feelings. Shine on my emotions and let Your light remove any darkness. Lord, I surrender to Your light: shine in my will, expose my decisions and goals, and fill me with Your light.
The Lord wants to shine from the lamp of our spirit on our thoughts, concepts, ideas, memories, fantasies, desires, feelings, and everything in our inward being. As He shines on us, He removes the darkness and brings in the divine light.
As the divine light shines in us, the divine life grows in us. As we allow the Lord to shine in certain feelings we have toward some people, He grows in us and saturates us with Himself. As we allow the Lord to shine in our preferences and desires, He grows in us more.
We should not introspect and “shine our own light on ourselves” – this is darkness unto darkness. We need to exercise our spirit to contact the Lord, and He will shine on our inward parts with His pleasant light, searching all the innermost parts of our inner being.
The more we pray with the exercise of our spirit, remaining in the Lord’s light, He searches our inward parts, removes any darkness, and causes His divine life to grow in us (2 Cor. 4:6-7). The result is that we become bright and transparent, beings full of the divine light and life.
In our daily life it is good to open to the Lord again and again and tell Him,
Lord Jesus, we open to You. We turn our heart to You and consecrate ourselves to You. Lord, we open to Your shining within us. Shine everywhere You want in our inward being and expose any darkness. Oh Lord, don’t leave any dark part in us. We want our whole being to be full of light so that Your life may grow in us and our inner being would be saturated with You! Lord, for the sake of the church as the expression of God, we open all our innermost parts to You for the shining of Your divine light within!
References and Hymns on this Topic
- Inspiration: the Word of God, my Christian experience, bro. Ron Kangas’ sharing in the message for this week, and portions from, Life Messages (vol. 2, chs. 68-69, 75), as quoted in, the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, The Vision, Practice, and Building up of the Church as the Body of Christ, week 4 / msg 4, Crucial Experiences in the Practice of the Church Life (1) – Our Soul Being Subdued and Saturated with Christ as the Spirit and Christ Being Released from the Imprisonment of the Soul.
- Picture credit for Prov. 20:27 and more spiritual quotes on this topic via, Christian Pictures blog.
- Hymns on this topic:
# The spirit of man / Is the lamp of Jehovah, / Searching all the innermost parts / Of the inner being. (Scripture Song, Prov. 20:27)
# Search all my sense, and know my heart / Who only canst make known, / And let the deep, the hidden part / To me be fully shown. (Hymns #407)
# Take time to behold Him, gaze oft on His face, / Receiving His Person, and grace upon grace. / By His pleasant shining, infused we will be; / Our faces will glow with His light, radiantly. (Song on Being under the Lord’s Light)
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According to my experience nothing pleases the Lord so much as for us to realize that He doesn’t want us to do anything. He only wants us to love Him, to open ourselves up to Him, and to let Him live from within us. This may sound quite familiar to you, but if you look into such a sentence, you will realize it is not so common. It is not so familiar to you. From the very beginning when God created man, God had no intention to ask man to do anything for Him. God’s intention was to create a vessel to contain Him and to express Him, so God only wants an opening of the vessel. If the vessel is open, God can fulfill His purpose, but if the vessel is closed, God’s purpose is frustrated. (Witness Lee, Perfecting Training, p. 259)
Amen! This reminds me of this wonderful song that we all enjoy singing both personally and corporately to the Lord,
1. Take time to behold Him,
Speak oft with Thy Lord,
Abide in Him always,
And feed on His Word.
Wait thou in His presence,
Submissive and meek,
Forgetting in nothing
His blessing to seek.
2. Take time to behold Him,
The world rushes on;
Spend much time in secret
With Jesus alone.
By looking to Jesus
Like Him thou shalt be;
Thy friends, in thy conduct,
His likeness shall see.
3. Take time to behold Him,
Let Him be thy guide;
And run not before Him
Whatever betide;
In joy or in sorrow
Still follow thy Lord,
And, looking to Jesus,
Still trust in His Word.
4. Take time to behold Him,
Be calm in thy soul,
Each thought and each temper
Beneath His control.
Thus led by His Spirit
To fountains of love,
Thou then shalt be fitted
His mercy to prove.
Here are a few videos to show the saints’ enjoyment of this song from https://www.hymnal.net/en/hymn/h/643,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFkZVI5rCC0
Amen. Lord Jesus, we come before You, under the covering of Your precious blood and open our whole being to You. We open our heart to You, allowing the divine light of the Spirit to shine and expose any darkness within, that we might shine You forth as the light of life. Shine within us Lord Jesus that we would reflect Your shining for all to see the glory of God. Shine from our mingled spirit to enlighten us in our soul, our mind to renew, our emotions to set on fire in love for You, and with a will to do Your will O God. We give You this day Lord Jesus, consecrating our self to You. Amen. O Lord Jesus! Hallelujah! Amen.