7. Meditation: Chapter 6. The Nature Of Our Precious Faith

Chapter 6

The Nature Of Our Precious Faith

John 4

Christ Is The Fountain Of Living Water

Here is a scene of the beautiful encounter between Jesus and Samaritan woman. This woman came to draw water with her spiritual thirst. And Jesus sovereignly and mercifully broke into her daily routine and satisfied her spiritual need with Himself and His living water (words). We are just like the Samaritan woman. Our sinful and fallen nature propels us to draw the “dead water” from the well of the sins. However, praise the Lord! He knew our desperate conditions. And He came to seek us in order that we could drink in His living water of salvation freely (Isaiah 12:3). Therefore we experienced the joy of salvation when we believed in crucified Christ.

However, let us leave the word of the beginning of the Christ and go on to full growth. John 4:14: but whosoever drinks of the water which I shall give him shall never thirst for ever, but the water which I shall give him shall become in him a fountain of water, springing up into eternal life.(Darby’s Bible Version) The Christ is that endless and inexhaustiblefountain of living water. The indwelling Holy Spirit will supply and gush out Christ (by His words) as our spiritual living water. And the living stream will accumulate and gather into the ocean of Christ’s fullness. A beautiful old hymn thus wrote:

O Christ, He is the fountain, the deep, sweet well of love!

The streams of earth I’ve tasted more deep I’ll drink above:

     There to an ocean fullness His mercy doth expand,
     And glory, glory dwelleth in Immanuel’s land.

     (An excerpt from verse 2 of “The Sands Of Time Are Sinking”)

But how about our practical experiences as to drink in the living water of Christ? Do we really drink in and enjoy Christ’s fullness in our Christian life? Do we everyday experience living Christ by reading bible? Do ever Christ’s living water quench our spiritual thirst? These questions are very searching for the modern Christians. Honestly speaking, I feel that we are not superior to this Samaritan woman, though we have indwelling Holy Spirit and bible, but we are seemingly still thirsty. 

The Worldliness, Selfhood And Religious Routine 

Are The Well Of Dead Water

The problem lies in us, not our Lord and His faithful words. Jeremiah 2:13: For my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, to hew them out cisterns, broken cisterns that hold no water. Our low and desolate spiritual condition is the consequence of turning away from the crucified Christ and His words in the bible. 

In our personal life, we rely on the worldliness and allow its principle to manipulate our whole life. We forget the warning from apostle James:Adulteresses, know ye not that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Whoever therefore is minded to be friend of the world is constituted enemy of God.

How about the religious world in Christianity? Unfortunately many Christian denominations are going to marry the world. The assembly (church) should set forth the excellency and glory of Christ. But we fail to fulfill this divine ministry by succumbing to the world. Watch out! Love not the world, nor the things in the world. If any one love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. We are of God, but the whole world lies in the wicked. Today the modern Christianity is engrossed in developing many big and outward religious activities by the worldly entertainments, methods and principles in order to attract and gain people for Christ!? They are getting the praise from the religious world of Christianity and this evil world at the expense of the word of cross. Most of these activities have nothing to do with leading people in touch with the living God so that people could not be led into the knowledge of Christ’s truth more and more by the bible. These religious activities (confirmed to the worldliness) are the artificial and broken cisterns that hold no water in God’s sight! 

How about our spiritual life? In our life and services, we had rather trust ourselves more than our Lord. We are still self-confident and self-complacent. Our natural man is so strong. And we live and serve by the source of our natural abilities. There is no greater peril than controlling the God’s works by the uncrucified hands. The flesh and its lust had massively invaded into the realm of divine service in the assembly. These fleshly works not only destroy the true testimony of Lord, but also bring shame to glorious God. We have to remember that the origin of all the valuable services must be from God, and all that from ourselves (our natural zeal) will be burned out by God’s fire. For God alone can do His own works, and He need the crucified servants to cooperate with Him in “His works”. May God overthrow “our own works” so that He could do His own works in our spiritual life!

Moreover, today the Christian religious routine and formalism becomes a dead bondage and legalism, and prevails among the people of God. There is a kind of spiritual deathly stillness hidden in most formal Christian activities. The stock procedure, numerous fixed rules and handed-down traditions make the Christian belief predictable and drear. People almost could know what things would happen in what time. We lost the spiritual alacrity, vitality, freshness and amazement of early assembly in epoch of apostles. In such poor condition, the Holy Spirit can’t perform His absolute sovereignty to do new things in His assembly, and the Holy Spirit is imprisoned by Christian formalism and legalism. May the Lord break our fetters of Christian traditions! May the Spirit of God release us into His freedom by His truth!

The worldliness, selfhood, lusts of flesh and religious routine are the wells and cisterns of “dead water” in God’s sight. May God block and break them so that we could return to and drink in the only true fountain of living water - the crucified Christ and His words! 

The Pathways To Drinking In 

Living Water Of Christ’s Fullness

On the other hand, let us consider the pathways to drinking in living water of Christ’s fullness. First, let us practice our prayers like this Samaritan woman: Oh! dear Lord! Give us this living water more abundantly! We thirst for You! Please let Your living water spring up richly in us, and let us drink in it fully until we don’t want to drink! Dear children of God, I appeal to you not to think lightly of our spiritual privilege. To drink in Christ’s fullness is our most precious portion. 

What is the reply of our Lord after the Samaritan woman said: “give me this water”? Strangely Jesus says to her: Go, call thy husband, and come here. We know that she had five husbands. Here “husband” is the key word. The wife needs the love of her husband (Ephesians 5:25). Isaiah 54:5: For thy Maker is thy husband: Jehovah of hosts is his name, and thy Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel. Our Lord seemingly say to tell the Samaritan woman: I AM your only husband, and my perfect love alone could satisfy your deepest need. I AM also your fountain, the deep, sweet well of love, and I have loved thee with an everlasting love; therefore with loving-kindness have I drawn thee (Jeremiah 31:3), and you can enjoy My loving fullness. Blessed be our Lord! The foundation of Christ’s fullness is His omnipotent love toward us. We could drink in the living water of Christ’s fullness because He loved us to the end. When we thirst for and pray to Him, He always answer us with His wonderful love.

Moreover, if we want to enjoy the Christ’s fullness more and more, we can’t neglect the essential exercise of reading the bible. Amos 8:11:Behold, days come, saith the Lord Jehovah, when I will send a famine in the land; not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of Jehovah. In the end-time, the assembly of the Christ must return to God’s words (the bible) seriously and earnestly. Today how could we be preserved and guarded away from the present apostasy of Christian religious chaos, and be established in Christ? There is no other secret but return back to the bible (2 Timothy 3:16; Acts 20:32;Ephesians 5:25-27). If we miss the words of God, we almost forfeit everything.     

There is a sense in which that today God don’t want us to develop many great works for Him with our natural zeal, and He rather wises us to sit down quietly before His feet to listen to his words, and to seek His will by reading the bible. Do you remember the story of Mary and Martha (Luke 10:39-42)? Who is the one whom Jesus approved of? The busy Martha? Or the quiet Mary who listen to the Lord’s words? Oh! Let us learn the Mary! And do we want to be the noble people in God’s sight? Let us work hard in reading the bible as the saints did at Berea (Acts 17:10-11).     

Furthermore, the cross must do the deeper works in us before we could enter into and draw upon the Christ’s fullness. The Holy Spirit will reveal the great and glorious Christ within us, and lead us to recognize the worthylessness, nothingness, barrenness, helplessness, foolishness, darkness, wickedness and vileness of ourselves. That is very painful and terrible process of discovering how glorious and grand Christ is and what we really are. Our self-confidence and self-conceit will be grounded into powder. We will cry out from the despairing pit just like the prophet Isaiahcried: woe unto me! for I am undone (Isaiah 6:5)! Our experience will be like Job’s: now mine eye seeth thee, wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes (Job 42:5-6). We will have the same horrible feeling like apostle Paul said: for I know that in me, that is, in my flesh, good does not dwell, o wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me out of this body of death (Rom. 7:18,24)?

We will know that all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags (Isaiah64:6) and our only way of coming near to God lies in His precious blood. God is going to re-construct us upon the Rock (Christ), and the cross compel us to forsake and leave all our own ground, so that we could be transfered unto Christ’s ground and absorb Him as our all in all, and be rooted and built up in Himself (Galatians 2:20). Gradually we will experience the great and glorious reality: the indwelling Christ in us is the our hope of glory. Christ is all that we need, and He is our hope, answer, righteousness, and our all. 

In addition, let us recognize a fact that the possession of Christ’s fullness is a costly thing. The apostle Paul underwent and endured the suffering, loneliness, loss, labour, persecution and other kinds of tribulations as the costly and inevitable price in order to gain Christ’s fullness for himself and the assembly (Philippians 3:7-16; Colossians 1:24). But its reward is so sweet and huge beyond our imagination. May Lord’s love constrain us to pay the price in order to gain Christ!

The Worship Is A Inward And Spiritual Matter

Before we consider the meaning of worship, we could have some knowledge about the components of a human being. After knowing them, we would understand more the worship in epoch of new testament. There are three major components existed in a human being: the body, the soul and the spirit. The body is our physical flesh. The soul includes our thought, emotion and will. The spirit is the most inner part of a human being and the very organ of communicating with God. And the spirit has three functions: conscience, intuition and communion toward God. 

Blessed be our Lord! We once died in the offences and sins, and our spirit is also dead. After we accept Jesus as our saviour, the Holy Spirit quickened our dead spirit and united Itself to our spirit (1 Corinthians 6:17). And our spirit is alive, and it has latent ability to operate the three functions toward God. And the first action of our alive spirit is to cry: Abba, Father (Romans 8:15-16). We have a quickened spirit and a new relationship of life with God as His children by salvation through the reality of Pentecost (the indwelling Holy Spirit). And now we had acquired an important position: “in Spirit” (Romans 8:9). 

Here Jesus wants to tell the Samaritan woman that my very hour is coming, and my salvation and the indwelling Holy Spirit will open a whole new epoch. In this very epoch, everything will be in Spirit. And the worship, service and other divine things are all inward and spiritual. The true worship will have nothing to do with location, place, day, season and posture. The true worship will happen in the deepest part and inner man (spirit) of the children of God. And the worship is invisible to fleshly eyes of men, but visible to spiritual eyes of God. 

The Worship Is A Divine Relationship

Worship is also an eternal, profound, strong, intimate, loving and practicable relationship between the children of God and God Himself. 

The most important element of worship is love. As the child loves his father so the children of God love our heavenly Father. Do we love the Lord our God with all our heart, and with all our soul, and with all our might? Do we desire God like David (Psalms 42:2)? Do we admire our precious Lord like the apostle Peter (1 Peter 2:4)? Do ever the excellency of knowledge of Christ capture our heart like the apostle Paul (Philippians 3:8)? May the Lord open our eyes to behold His sweetness, beauty and glory so that we could be His passionate adorers!

God is a spirit, and therefore true worshipper must also practice his spirit (the very organ) of communicating with God. That is spiritual exercise. Our conscience should often be awakened and enlightened by reading God’s words. 

Sometimes the Lord’s dealing and leading for us is so usual, mysterious and sudden, and all our natural rationality opposes them, but there is a intuition and a small still voice in our inner life, and this intuition (from God) often controls and guides us into His appointed way, when we obey His guidance by implicit faith, we feel the peace reigns over us even we don’t have much knowledge about His divine providence in our mind and head. That is the function of intuition in our spirit. The intuition also keeps our spirit sensitive to God’s feeling about all things. The more our spiritual life grow, the stronger the function of intuition would be. We need to practice this important function in our spirit. 

The function of communion in our spirit indicates that man could befriend God just like Abraham is the friend of God. To be God’s friend is not small thing! May we all know how to be His best friends! 

The benefit of practicing our spirit is that we could be the spiritual people. What is the spiritual people? The people whose soul (thought, emotion and will) is delivered from the regime of self (by the cross) and surrendered under the sovereignty of the Holy Spirit is the spiritual people. The spiritual people could have and share the same mind, feeling and intention of his Master. But to be harmonic with the Lord in realm of our soul! What a searching challenge to us all!

Our Faith Is First-Hand Or Second-Hand?

Here is the record of Samaritans believing in Jesus. Let us rethink the nature of our faith. The Samaritans have an open and hungry heart for the Lord’s words and the spiritual things, therefore God’s spirit could operate in their hearts. Their faiths have a tremendous change: from second hand to first hand. They are no longer satisfied with the report of the Samaritan woman, and they desire to experience Jesus for themselves (John 4:41-42). 

We could find that the principle of “first-hand” works violently in the apostle Paul. The vision of Damascus overtook the Saul of Tarsus individually (Acts 22:9). And he once said: But I let you know, brethren, the glad tidings which were announced by me, that they are not according to man. For neither did I receive them from man, neither was I taught, but by revelation of Jesus Christ (Galatians 1:11-12, 15-19). 

In this dispensation of Holy Spirit, we have unction in us (1 John 2:27; 1 Corinthians 2:12; Jeremiah 31:33-34), therefore we need to cultivate a direct, intimate, individual and personal relationship with Lord Himself in our private and public life. That is one of the most important characteristics in new testament. Moreover, this important principle also could be applied to us who live in the end-time. The assembly (Christians) should have the living messages from God with the authority of His words and clear understanding for spiritual conditions in this peculiar time. The second-hand Christian religious traditions will not be able to satisfy the Lord’s desire, the spiritual need of hungry saints and the spiritual thirst of the world. The Lord demands and needs more because the Lord’s intention for the assembly is fresh and infinite fullness. Therefore the first-hand knowledge of Lord Himself from God for the end-time is very precious, but costly.       

Our Faith Is Based On God’s Words Or The Signs?

Let us also rethink more seriously what is the foundation of our faith through the second sign which Jesus did. The faith of Christians should be based on all the words of God in whole bible. In this chapter, we have good sample of faith in this courtier (John 4:49-50) and the Samaritans (John4:41-42). They all believed the Lord’s words in simple faith. And they don’t say to the Lord: Oh! Jesus! I need your big signs and divine healing to confirm my faith, and I need to see your outward signs so that I could believe in you. They just believe in His words. That is all! Blessed they who have not seen and have believed! (John 20:29)

What a reminder and warning to the modern Christians who pursue after the miracles, signs and divine healing. Jesus once said: A wicked and adulterous generation seeks after a sign, and a sign shall not be given to it save the sign of Jonas the prophet (Matthew 13:39-41). For the most important sign in the universe had already happened: the Lord’s resurrection from the dead (1 Corinthians 15:3-4). Our precious faith is based on this mighty and profound fact. The apostle Paul said: I did not judge to know anything among you save Jesus Christ, and him crucified (1 Corinthians 2:2). Moreover, let us directly face the Lord’s warning about the signs in end-time: For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall give great signs and wonders, so as to mislead, if possible, even the elect. Behold, I have told you beforehand (Matthew 24:24-25; Mark 13:22-23; Revelation 13:11-14). The Lord plainly says He will not trust Himself to those who pursue after signs (John 2:23-25). And the Nicodemus probably also saw many signs (John 3:2), but he entirely know nothing about the salvation and kingdom of God. 

Dear children of God, watch and pray, that we enter not into snare and seduction! Why don’t we return back to the words of God? The bible is the only core, criterion and foundation of our precious faith. Oh! Dear Lord! thy word have we hid in our heart, that we might not sin against thee!