Subject: God honors genuine prayer
Being a Christian and
The Practical Way to Be Filled with Christ -- Prayer."Being a Christian is not a matter of giving up movies or many other things. Being a Christian is simply a matter of being filled with Christ.
How then can we be filled with Christ? To answer this, we must have a further realization. On the one hand, we are empty vessels. On the other hand, we are occupied vessels. If we are full of Christ, that is wonderful. However, if we are occupied by something other than, Christ, we have a great need.
...When we find that this [being filled with things other than Christ] is our case, we simply have to come to Christ and tell Him that we are full of things other than Him. This is not so much a confession as it is simply telling the Lord our case. How we need to go to Christ to tell Him how much we have been filled with other things! Our need, I must repeat, is to simply tell Him how much our mind has been occupied by things other than Him.
...Sincere prayer is prayer in which we go to the Lord and tell Him how much we have been occupied in the past and how much we continue to be occupied at present. We need to tell the Lord the truth. We must tell Him, "Lord, I am still occupied by these things in my mind and by those things in my emotion and will." This is sincere prayer. If we pray in this way, the more we tell the Lord, the more the Lord will occupy our mind, emotion, and will. The more we pray to the Lord in this way, the more He will occupy our entire heart and make our heart a home for Himself." (The Practical Way to Live in the Mingling of God with Man. - Collected Works W. Lee. 1963 Vol. 1. p283-4).
Reminds me of some last lines from a Hymn...
-- Come and telling Jesus all.
-- Still tell Jesus, Tell Him all.
-- Go tell Jesus, Tell Him all.
Recently, I have come to realize that part of being honest with the Lord is being open to the other members (who are Him as the Body) concerning my present situation, as opposed to faking it or hiding it behind my man-made fig leaves. Like with Adam and Eve, the Lord often asks, "where are you?" not to condemn us, but to help us to see, and to give us the opportunity to acknowledge and admit where we are...and let Him in. This genuine opening unloads us and allows the Lord the space to come and occupy us. It's precious to realize that our being real, genuine, and sincere with Him results in such a positive exchange... being filled with Christ.
PS. will paraphrase it next time. :)