Every day we need to be watchful by paying the price to buy the Spirit as the golden oil so that we may supply the churches with the Spirit for the testimony of Jesus and be rewarded by the Lord to participate in the marriage dinner of the Lamb.
Our urgent need today is to gain more of the Spirit; we need to live a life of buying an extra portion of the Spirit to saturate our entire being.
Day by day we need to live such a life, a life of paying the price to gain the Spirit not only in our spirit but also in our soul, being saturated with the Spirit in our vessel. If we have a day when we don’t pay the price to gain the saturating Spirit, that is a wasted day; we do not want to have any wasted days!
In Matt. 25 we see that there were five wise virgins and five foolish ones, for the foolish ones did not take extra oil in their vessel, and when the bridegroom came, they did not have enough oil to light their lamps.
In the aspect of life, we believers in Christ are like a virgin to the Lord, being betrothed to Him through the ministry of the age, and learning to love Him and be filled with Him.
We have returned to the Shepherd and overseer of our souls, the Lord Jesus, and He takes care of the welfare of our inner being and the condition of our real person (1 Pet. 2:24). He is overseeing our souls, and He wants us to gain more of the Spirit in our soul, more oil in our vessel.
Furthermore, those who are one with the Lord to oversee the souls of the saints also are concerned for this matter, that the saints would not only enjoy the Lord and attend the meetings, but that they would gain an extra portion of the Spirit in their soul every day.
For us to gain more of the Spirit in our soul we need to pay a price; we need to pay the price of giving up the world, dealing with the self, loving the Lord above all things, and counting all things loss for Christ.
Day by day we need to pay the price of losing our soul life and denying the things that we want to do so that we may pray more, even persevere in prayer and watch unto prayer, so that we may gain more of the Spirit.
If we don’t pay the price to buy the oil today, we will have to pay it after we are resurrected; sooner or later, we will have to pay the price – so why not today, why not in this age?
Loving the Lord above all and Counting all things Loss on Account of Him to Gain Him
May we be those who every day are watchful by paying the price to buy the Spirit to be saturated with the Spirit in our soul.
There are many ways that the Bible reveals for us to buy the Spirit as the golden oil, and the first one of them is loving the Lord above all. Thank the Lord that He has commanded us to love Him!
We need to love the Lord above all, having our eyes opened to see His supreme preciousness (see Matt. 22:37; Phil. 3:8; 1 Pet. 2:4; 6:7; 1:19).
We have not seen the Lord, but we love Him, and we rejoice with joy full of glory! He wants our first love; this first love is not merely the love with which we loved the Lord when we first got saved, but giving the Lord the preeminence in our whole being, in everything related to us, and making Him everything to us.
When we give the Lord the first love, there will be some works that issue out – the first works. But if we don’t repent and come back to the Lord as our first love and do the first works, He will remove our lampstand from our midst.
This is very sobering, for if we don’t love the Lord, we may have an outward form of meeting on the ground of the church, but we may not have the inward reality of the church, which is the testimony of the Triune God (Rev. 3:18).
We need to count all things as loss on account of Christ so that we may gain Him, be found in Him, and know Him (see Phil. 3:7-10). Things from our natural background and our natural ability, even good things and abilities that we may possess, everything needs to be put aside so that we may gain Christ.
Even the things that seem good and may be an attainment needs to be counted as loss on account of Christ, that we may gain Him and be found in Him. When we love the Lord with our first love, loving Him above all things, we will count all things as loss on account of Him, so that we may gain Him.
We will willingly suffer the loss of all things and even count them as refuse so that we may gain Christ, win Christ, and be found in Him. This is what it means to be watchful by paying the price to buy the Spirit as the golden oil in this age today.
Apart from Christ everything else is refuse, drags, filth, rubbish; because we treasure Him and love Him, we are willing to put everything else aside to just gain Him.
Lord Jesus, we love You; we return to You from any other thing, and we want to love You even more, that is, love You with our best love, love You above all things. You are the most precious One. We repent for loving other things, and we give You the preeminence in our whole being and in everything related to us. Oh Lord, Your love strengthens us to be those paying the price to buy the Spirit and be saturated with the Spirit. Anything else apart from You is rubbish – You are the most precious One!
Enjoying the Lord every Morning, Dealing with Sins, And Redeeming the Time to be Saturated with God’s Word
For us to pay the price to buy the Spirit and be saturated with the Spirit we need to start in the morning; we need to enjoy the Lord in the Word early in the morning to have a new start each day.
Like the psalmist in Psa. 119:147-148, we need to anticipate the dawn, looking forward to the waking up time to spend personal time with the Lord.
And when we contact the Lord, we need to muse on His word; we need to worship the Lord with the word, converse with ourselves and with the Lord with the Word, and even sing the word to the Lord.
We need to take in the word of God by means of all kinds of prayer, and we need to speak His word aloud, tasting it and enjoying it through careful considering.
As the Lord shines on us, we need to deal with our sins thoroughly; as 1 John 1:7, 9 says, the blood of Jesus, the son of God, cleanses us from every sin when we confess it.
As we fellowship with the Lord and give Him the first place, He shines on our sins, and we confess them; the Lord is faithful and righteous to forgive us of our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
We need to abide in the fellowship with the Lord daily and hourly. The fellowship with the Lord is actually the flow of the eternal life within us. We have received this flow at the time of our regeneration, and we need to daily be in the flow of life, not losing the flow but giving the flow the preeminence in our being.
With regards to our time, we need to redeem our time and spend our energy to be constituted and saturated and soaked with the holy word of God.
Paying the price to buy the Spirit and be saturated with the Spirit means that we pay the price to allow the word of God to dwell in us richly in all wisdom (Col. 3:16), and we do this by breathing in the breathed out word of God (2 Tim. 3:16-17).
We need to be men of God with the breath of God; every day we need to “inhale God in His word” by praying over the word of God, and when we minister to others, we “exhale” the word that we have inhaled into them.
In Gen. 2:7 we see that God breathed into man’s nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul; the breath of life here is man’s human spirit, and the Hebrew word for breath (neshamah) is the same as in Prov. 20:27 which is translated as spirit.
Then in John 20:22 the Lord breathed into His disciples and said, Receive the holy breath, the Holy Spirit. Finally, the Scriptures are the breathed out word of God, and we need to exercise our spirit to receive the breath of God.
May we pay the price daily to redeem the time, realising that the days are evil, and enjoy God in His word by exercising our spirit to receive the Spirit embodied in the God-breathed Scriptures.
Lord, may we have a new beginning with You every morning, even anticipating the dawn so that we may spend time with You in Your word to enjoy You. We treasure our time with You and we want to be infused with You through Your word. Amen, Lord, shine on us and in us, and wash away all our sins and iniquities. We want to abide in the fellowship with the Lord daily, remaining in the sweet flow of life in our spirit. Lord, may we daily redeem our time and spend our energy to be saturated and soaked with God’s holy Word. Amen, may the Word saturate us and become the breath of God to us through the exercise of our spirit so that we may be the men of God with the breath of God.
Paying the Price to Buy the Spirit and be Saturated with the Spirit by Praying and Watching unto Prayer
The most important way for us to gain the Spirit is prayer; we need to be those paying the price to buy the Spirit and be saturated with the Spirit by being watchful unto prayer (Eph. 6:18).
On one hand we need to receive the Word of God by means of all prayer and petition, and on the other we need to pray at every time in spirit, even watch unto this in all petition and perseverance concerning all the saints.
This means that we need to be watchful, on the alert, for our prayer life. We should not allow our time with the Lord to be reduced or be of low quality; rather, we should have a quality time with Him where we touch Him and He touches us.
We need to persevere in prayer, watching in it with thanksgiving. Starting in the morning, we need to tell the Lord, Oh Lord, I take You as my sin offering and trespass offering, and I believe that Your blood is washing me and cleansing me. Lord, I need to be filled up with You; fill me with the all-inclusive Spirit within and without! Amen, Lord I need Your saturation and Your soaking!
We need to pray in this way every morning, asking the Lord to fill us and saturate us with Himself as the Spirit.
Our Christian life is not a life according to some rules and regulations; rather, it is a life of paying the price to buy the Spirit as the golden oil, so that we may be saturated with the Spirit in our soul.
We may say that we don’t have time to buy the oil, but we do have time to watch TV, YouTube, check Facebook, play games, and so many other things. We may not have time to pray, but we do have time to play sports, go to the gym, travel, and be on our phone mindlessly.
We may think that these things are not sinful…but they take the time we should spend with the Lord! There are a lot of “yets” in our life with the Lord; we don’t have time to pray or to spend with the Lord in the word, yet we have time for this and for that.
We need to realise that, yes, we did receive the Holy Spirit in our spirit as our lamp, but if we want to enter into the wedding feast of the Lord, we need to pay the price in dealing with our soul, and for this we need to spend time with the Lord in prayer.
So we need to consider what we do, what we say, where we go, and how we react to others; are these things conducive to buying more oil, that is, being saturated with the Spirit in our soul?
When we exchange words with our spouse, do we gain more of the Spirit? When we go to certain places, say certain words, and talk to certain people habitually, do we gain more of the Spirit?
We must repent before the Lord of so many things we have said and did, for these things caused us to waste our time and not buy the oil. May we be those who watch unto prayer, being on the alert for our prayer life (Eph. 6:18).
May we have the realisation that the way we gain the oil in our vessel is by spending time in prayer with the Lord; in this way we are paying the price to buy the Spirit and be saturated with the Spirit.
Amen, may we redeem the time in these evil days to be filled in spirit by speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, by giving thanks to the Lord at all times for all things, and by being subject to one another in the fear of Christ (Eph. 5:14-17)!
Lord Jesus, forgive us for not being watchful unto prayer. Forgive us for spending time to do, write, read, play, and waste on other things but not on our prayer life. Oh Lord, we want to be those paying the price to buy the Spirit as the golden oil in our vessel. We want to pay the price to pray and watch unto our prayer life with You. May we be those watching unto our prayer life, paying the price to deal with our soul, and learning to stop from doing other things so that we may pray! Amen, Lord Jesus!
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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, “The Way to Practice the Lord’s Present Move,” ch. 8 (by Witness Lee), as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, The Development of the Kingdom of God in the Church Life and the Christian Life (2019 spring ITERO), week 7, Being Watchful in Life and Faithful in Service.
- Hymns on this topic:
# Lord there’s none in heav’n nor on earth / That I desire but Thee. / Though my heart and flesh faileth, Lord, / Thou ever my portion will be. / All is vanity, all is dung; / I count all other things loss; / Everything else drains my love / But You have captured my heart. / Lord, I’ve seen Thy preciousness, / Thy worth, Thy reality. / Now, my Lord, I must confess / My heart is only for Thee. (Song on, Mary poured out her love offering)
# Lord, help us to redeem these golden moments; / Our vessels fill with ointment from above; / Help us amen each trial and tribulation; / Increase in us; make us abound in love. (Hymns #1307)
# Pray with one accord in spirit, / Pray and watch persistently; / For God’s kingdom and His glory, / Pray and watch in harmony. (Hymns #779)
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