As believers in Christ, we need to have set times to fellowship with God, rise up early in the morning to touch Him in our time with Him, draw near to Him, enjoy Him, and absorb Him; before we can do any work with God and for God, we need to keep God’s Sabbath by enjoying Him and resting in Him, taking Him as our satisfaction and rest. Amen!
In the Gospel of John we see that life – the divine life – meets the need of every man’s case; a lot of cases were selected by John to illustrate the Lord’s one-on-one contact with people to minister life to them.
We as believers need to enter into our personal and private room, shut our door, and pray to the Father who is in secret; we need to spend time in secret, privately, with our Lord, and He who sees in secret will reward us.
If we are just in a public way for the Lord and with the Lord, He is not happy with it; we need to practice spending time with the Lord to fellowship with God, and everything that is seen publicly about our relationship with God should be backed up by our prayer privately and secretly.
We need to find a time and a place to be with Him, spend time with Him, and enjoy Him.
In Matt. 14:22-23, right after the Lord fed the five thousand men (the women and children were even more!), He didn’t bask in His success but rather, He sent away the crowds and compelled the disciples to get into a boat and cross the lake, so that He would spend much time with the Father.
He did not remain in the success of His work; rather, He sent the others away so that He would have more time to pray privately to the Father, being with the Father and having the Father with Him in all that He did for the bringing in of the kingdom of God.
If the Lord Himself had such a need and desire, how much more we should have this!
We need to come to the Lord’s word, breathe Him in His word, and receive the word by means of all prayers and petitions; all Scripture is God-breathed, and we can breathe in the breathed out word of God.
On one hand we exhale what we are and have, and on the other, we inhale what the Lord is and has done for us.
We need to Set aside Time to Fellowship with God Daily, seeking God and Absorbing Him
The best time for us to spend with God is in the morning, before we start the activities of the day; we should set aside a specific time very day to contact the Lord and fellowship with God.
This means that we need to go to be early and not stay up late, for if we stay up after 11pm, it will not be easy to wake up in the morning to spend time with the Lord.
Our fallen nature encourages us to stay awake, and especially at night there are so many things to watch, to do, to read, or just to waste time on.
We need to fight against our fallen nature and realize that we need to go to bed early so that we may rise up earth to draw near to God and fellowship with Him.
It is recommended not to go to bed after 11pm, in normal circumstances, and even going to bed at 10pm is better, so that we may wake up at 6am to spend time with the Lord.
Of course, everyone has their own situation and circumstances, so we need to come to the Lord even concerning our time with Him, asking Him to wake us up in the morning while we set our alarm clock, and telling Him to draw us to Himself to fellowship with Him.
We should spend at least twenty minutes to fellowship with the Lord every day; the best is to have at least half an hour in the morning to draw near to God, strengthen our spirit, and enjoy the Lord.
Spending time with the Lord has great benefits for our spiritual life, for the sanity of our mind, and even for our physical body, for the Lord supplies us and nourish us, and He will make us the proper persons according to what He wants as we fellowship with God.
Drawing near to God in the morning and fellowshipping with Him is good not only for our spirit (who is fed) and our soul (who is nourished and renewed) but also to our body, for it causes our body to be healthy.
May we repent before the Lord for going to bed so late that it was very hard to wake up in the morning to spend time with Him.
And may we communicate with Him concerning this, telling Him of our desire to spend personal time with the Lord, even asking Him to increase our time with Him.
We can’t do this on our own; our time with the Lord is a matter of fellowship with God, so we need to fellowship with Him concerning how much time we spend with Him, when should we spend our time with Him, and what should we do during this time.
May our first order of business in the morning be to make our soul happy in the Lord by praying the word of God, praying the songs, singing, praising the Lord, and enjoying Him in our fellowship with God!
As we rise up and fellowship with God, we absorb Him. If we find it difficult to spend time with God or be consistent in our time with Him, we need to find another brother or sister who has the heart to practice this in order to remind and encourage one another; we may even want someone else to call us and remind us of our time with the Lord.
Our time with the Lord in the morning is important, and the place where we spend time is also important; we may not have a lot of space where we live to spend time with the Lord, but we can do such things as going outside to pray or finding a corner in one of the rooms to focus on the Lord.
Where there is a will, there is a way; our fellowship with God in the morning is not only a matter of time and our spirit, but also of a place, so we need to set up a time and a place to be with the Lord.
And in our time with Him, we should just open to Him and voice what we feel and are and go through; we should speak of our sadness, tell Him of the pressure we’re under, and confess our sins before Him.
We should speak genuine words from our heart, not pre-composed prayers and made-up sentences. He knows what we are, what we go through, and what we feel; we should simply trust in Him at all times and pour out our heart before Him, for God is a refuge to us (Psa. 62:8).
We need to come to His word and just pray His word back to Him; when He says, Seek My face, our heart should simply respond, Your face o Lord will I seek (Psa. 27:8).
May we truly enter and live in our fellowship with God day by day so that all our problems would be resolved, we would be properly nourished and supplied, and we would be empowered, enlightened, and enjoy rest.
As we fellowship with the Lord day by day, having set times to absorb Him and be filled with Him, we overcome the trials and temptations and hardships, and we are comforted in our Christian life.
May we be before the Lord concerning this and ask Him to strengthen us into our inner man so that we may fellowship with God, contact Him, seek Him, and be filled with Him in our time with Him, and may we ask Him to be our diligence as we spend time with Him daily.
Lord Jesus, we love You; we want to draw near to You and fellowship with You daily. Wake us up in the morning, Lord, to spend time with You in secret and be infused with You. We come to seek Your face. We come to spend time with You to absorb You in Your word. Oh Lord, we pour out all our sorrows, problems, griefs, and situations before You, and we pray over Your word to breathe You in and absorb You. May there be an absorbing of God’s element as we spend time with You. May we have a regular daily time with You to just fellowship with God so that our entire being be strengthened and nourished. Amen Lord, may we realize that our living as Christians depends entirely on our fellowship with God; may we enter into this fellowship and live in this fellowship daily. Hallelujah, when we fellowship with God we’re empowered, enlightened, we enjoy rest, we rejoice, and we overcome and are being comforted!
Keeping God’s Sabbath by Enjoying God, Resting in Him, and being Satisfied in Him as the Fountain of Living Waters
In Jer. 17:19-27 we have a word about keeping God’s Sabbath; for us to keep God’s Sabbath is for us to enjoy Him, rest in Him, and be satisfied in Him as the fountain of living waters (2:13).
A similar word is found in Exo. 31:12-17 where, after a long record concerning the building up of God’s dwelling place, there is the repetition of the commandment to keep the Sabbath. The reality of our Sabbath rest in the New Testament is Christ Himself (see Col. 2:16-17; Matt. 11:28-30).
We need to keep the Lord as our Sabbath. God desires that we not only work for the Lord and with the Lord but also rest with Him; actually, if we only know how to work for the Lord but don’t know or practice to rest with Him, we are acting contrary to the divine principle.
The divine principle is seen in the creation of man: God rested on the seventh day after He finished His work and was satisfied, and man’s first day was a day of rest (Gen. 1:26, 31; 2:1-2).
God’s glory was manifested because He had man in His image, and His authority was about to be exercised for the subduing of His enemy, Satan; as long as man expresses God and deals with His enemy, God is satisfied and can rest.
God’s eternal purpose is to have a corporate man in His image who is filled with Him to express Him, and this one would also represent Him to have dominion over all the earth.
Later, the seventh day was commemorated as the Sabbath (Exo. 20:8-11); God’s seventy day was our first day, for after we were created, we didn’t join in God’s work first but rather, we entered into God’s rest.
We were created not to work first but to be first satisfied with God and rest with Him; we were made to fellowship with God first to enjoy Him and be happy with Him, and then we can work with Him.
With God it is a matter of Him working first and then resting, but with man it’s a matter of resting first and then working; it is a divine principle that after a full enjoyment of God, we may work together with Him (see Matt. 11:28-30).
A good example is seen in Acts 2:4, 12-14, where the disciples were first filled with the Spirit and after they were filled with the enjoyment of God, they began to work with God in oneness with Him.
If we don’t know how to enjoy God Himself and how to be filled with God, we will not know how to work with Him and be one with Him in His divine work. Oh Lord!
May we come to Him with all our burdens and toils, may we find rest in Him, and may we just enjoy Him and rest with Him in our fellowship with God!
May we take Him as the fountain of living waters, be filled with Him, and enjoy Him (John 4:14; 7:38); may we stop our work and receive Him as the living water for our enjoyment so that we may be filled with Him!
After we enjoy God, rest with God, and are satisfied with God, we can work not merely for God but with God, even in oneness with God.
Lord, we want to first enjoy You, rest with You, and be filled with You in our fellowship with God. Thank You that we were made not primarily to work for God but to enjoy God, be filled with God, and rest with God, for we first need to keep God’s Sabbath and then we can do anything for God and with God! Hallelujah! Fill us, Lord! Fill us to the brim! We give ourselves to You to enjoy You and rest with You. May we learn to first stop all our doing and working and just enjoy You, and then out of this enjoyment and rest with You we would work with You, even by being one with You! Amen, Lord, we thank You for not asking us to work for God until we first had a good enjoyment of God, until we first rest and are satisfied with God!
References and Hymns on this Topic
- Sources of inspiration: the Word of God, my enjoyment in the ministry, the message by Ed Marks for this week, and portions from, Life-study of Exodus, msg. 172 (by Witness Lee), as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, Crystallization Study of Jeremiah and Lamentations, week 8, God’s Economy with His Dispensing in the Book of Jeremiah.
- Further reading: we would recommend reading lessons 22-24 from, Lessons for New Believers, by Witness Lee.
- Hymns on this topic:
– 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. (Hymns #643)
– Begin the day with God, He really wants you to / Hoping you’ll let Him come and spend the day with you. / Rise up! Don’t wait! You’ll miss the Son. / It’s the best part of the day. / His taste is sweet, to all who meet / Him in the morning when He’s fresh and new. (Song on, Begin the day with God)
– Lord, I believe a rest remains / To all Thy people known; / A rest where pure enjoyment reigns, / And Thou art loved alone. / A rest, where all our soul’s desire / Is fixed on things above; / Where fear and sin and grief expire, / Cast out by perfect love. (Hymns #424)
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