The Necessary Exercises to Obtain the Presence of the Present Christ Privately (1) CALLING, SIGHING & MORNING


	The Necessary Exercises to Obtain the Presence of the Present Christ Privately (1) Calling, Sighing & Mourning To Have the Present Christ, We Must Have His Presence by Means of a Living If you want to have the present Christ, you must have His presence. If you want to have His presence, you need to have a certain kind of living. Your proclamation that you are for the Lord's recovery means little. It is your actual enjoyment of the present Christ in His presence that means everything. The Present Christ is for His recovery, Not for Feeling or Doctrine The mystics are for their own experience of Christ. They seek after the Lord's presence because they need it and enjoy it. They take the presence of Christ as something that is primarily for them. Yes, the presence of Christ is for you, yet the present Christ is also for His recovery. If you only have the presence of Christ, and yet stop short of having the present Christ, you will only have something that is for yourself, not for the Lord's recovery. Of course, you need the presence of Christ to be for His recovery. If you are one who does not have the Lord's presence and yet tries to be for the Lord's interest, you will be like someone trying to accomplish some difficult goal without getting the nourishment necessary to carry it through. Those who care for the teachings will find a lot to talk about in these days, but without the reality of the present Christ, these teachings are all empty doctrines. They just become grist for the mill of your "fellowship." As those in the Lord's recovery we should not merely shout slogans or discuss doctrines. Examples from The New Testament of the Presence of the Present Christ In Second Corinthians 12:7, Paul entreats the Lord three times to take the thorn in his flesh away, to which the Lord responds that His grace was sufficient. If Paul were a mystic, he would have had a good message to give. This is the kind of thing that many of us are moved by. But Paul was a person in the Lord's presence for more than the sake of his own personal enjoyment. He was a person who was in the Lord's presence for God's economy. Out of his experience he was able to minister all the riches of Christ he enjoyed to the Body. He realized that it was when he was so weak that he needed to come to the Lord's presence more. Whatever his environment, he was able to operate for the Lord's interest by means of this grace. When the present Christ comes to us, it is not just to meet our need. When Paul was in a dangerous situation in Jerusalem (Acts 23), he resorted to telling a "white lie," proclaiming he was being set up because of the hope of the resurrection. That saved him, because the Sadducees and Pharisees began to fight and could not come to a consensus. If I were Paul, I would go to the Lord, praying, "Lord, what happened to me? You are able to keep me. Why did I weaken and resort to such a thing? What kind of a servant of Yours am I?" I believe it was as he was in the Lord's presence in this way that the Lord came and stood by him. I believe it was Paul's coming to the Lord's presence in prayer that enabled him to have the present Christ revealed to him. Christ stood by Paul and strengthened him, telling Paul that he would even appear in Rome for His sake. Thus, afterwards, he became quite bold, as he was when before King Agrippa. In Revelation 1, John says he was in spirit on the Lord's Day. It was because he was in spirit that he could turn and see the voice and receive the revelation of Christ walking as the Son of Man in the midst of the lampstands. It was by being in the Lord's presence that he was able to see the present Christ. Based on that seeing, revelation upon revelation came forth and John was able to write of Revelation. To have the Lord's presence is good for you, but to have the present Christ is good for the Lord's recovery. We Should Be Those Who Can Move God as Well as Being Moved by God In the recovery, I see something peculiar. On the one hand, we have a servant of the Lord releasing so many riches to us as he is with the present Christ. On the other hand, we have so many saints who do not even spend time in the Lord's presence. We all admire what the ministry is revealing to us. We all love our brother. We are all happy that we are here. But for some reason we do not care to fight for the Lord's presence. We are content to learn the terms and to miss Christ's presence. We should realize that if we do not have the Lord's presence, we cannot have the present Christ. Day after day we must learn to be in the Lord's presence. Only then can we be those who move with God's economy and even move God in His economy. Would you like God to move you, or would you like to move God? You must realize that God moves you so that you can move God! When God moves you, it is for you to move Him. You may enjoy the Lord's presence, but the Lord gives you His presence so that you might become one who moves His economy! Therefore not only should you desire that God would move you; you should desire to be one who can also move God. We are where we are today because Brother Lee has given a way for God to move, and has coached us into this move of God. Do you desire to be such a one that could cause God to move? Then give yourself to the Lord and practice to be in His presence. Calling, Sighing & Mourning These sound like simple matters, but they all have a real and profound impact. Calling is something towards the Lord. Sighing is something in relation to yourself. Mourning is with reference to the generation we live in. To be in spirit, we need to learn to practice to call, to sigh, and to mourn. A. To be able to enliven our spirit, strengthen our spirit, and even be filled in spirit by: 1. Calling Calling is a simple matter. If you call somebody by name, he comes to you. The Lord lives right within us, yet for some reason He often seems far away. When we call, however, He comes to be with us wherever we are. Don't be as the dumb worshippers of dumb idols. We should be those who are calling on our living God! When the living Person of the Lord is with you, all His riches are with you. He is rich to all who call upon Him. Learn to call in all different manners. Sometimes we need to call sweetly with affection, telling the Lord how we love Him. When you are provoked by your situation or frustrated by some limitation, you need to call strongly. Call with sighing when you are convicted under the Lord's shining or when confronted with a problem which is beyond you. Learn to exercise in this way, whether by yourself or with the saints. If you call for even just one or two minutes, you will sense a real washing and refreshing. All the saints need to do this. Why are so many saints in deadness and why are so many of our gatherings in deadness? Simply because we are not exercised in this way. There are so many saints among us who are faithful to come to the meetings and carry out the services. Without exercising to touch the Lord, however, we are just faithful and dead. 2. Groaning In Second Corinthians 5:4, Paul said that as he was in his mortal body, he groaned. He groaned because in his body he was faced with so many problems, limitations, and frustrations. He realized that he was a corrupted human being who had to day after day live in the flesh. When I was young, a brother told me that I should treasure my time more than anything else. It was not until I was much older, though, that I began to understand the value of time. Now that I am nearly sixty, I see how my human life is fading. I can no longer remember things as I used to. I wake up during the night and cannot fall back to sleep. As an old man, I groan, being entrapped in this body. Groaning is primarily in relation to our having to bear about with us this present inferior and frustrating earthly tabernacle of our flesh. In such a situation you groan. With your weaknesses, with your limitations, with your decay, with your sinfulness, with your inabilities, with your frustrations, and with all the things related to your mortal body, you have no choice but to groan. Young people have fewer reasons to groan. They haven't even become as experienced in sin as older people are. To a young person, to lose one's temper is a sin. Older people are more sophisticated than that; they often have attained to another level of sinning. Furthermore, younger people are energetic and, as a rule, are free of the diseases that come with age. They can eat plate after plate of food without worrying about what it is they are eating. The older your are, the more you sense the limitations which come upon you because of your body. How do you groan? You just pick the deepest thing from your heart. As I groan my whole person is washed, regardless how sinful I am, how dead I am, how frustrated I am, or how limited I am. I encourage you all, especially the older saints, to learn to kneel and, out of all your physical weakness, groan before the Lord. Romans 8 tells us that the Spirit, too, groans with us as it abides with us in our body. The entire creation is groaning for the redemption of our body. Therefore we should learn to groan. 3. Mourning In Mark 8:12 the word translated "groan" is actually a different word in the Greek than that translated "groan" in Romans 8. We will use the word "mourn" to distinguish between them, since the Greek word has this sense, although they are both of the same root. What prompts our mourning? It is our seeing of the situation around us. Each class of human beings, each race, each nationality is rejecting Christ. We should mourn for those people who are rejecting the Lord Jesus. Why is it that the Caucasian and the Black races are so resistant to this message, while the Chinese and Korean are less so? We shouldn't just be cold about it. We should be full of feeling. "Eight million in Chicago rejecting Christ! Lord, have mercy!" The church in Chicago should have the experience of mourning over the situation in their city. We often just accept the situation as it is, but once we see the tragedy of it, we will mourn. We will call upon God to have mercy on this generation and to save them. Call for your own enjoyment of the Lord. Groan because of your mortal body. Mourn because of the situation of this generation we live in. May the Lord have mercy.