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. :)

I was very encouraged by a quote sent to me by a friend regarding serving...

"You must be aware that the enemy, the subtle one, will beguile you by tempting you to serve the Lord. You may say that you are learning how to serve the Lord, but the Lord does not need you to serve Him. The Lord needs you to love Him. On the seashore of Tiberias, the Lord Jesus asked Peter, "Simon Peter, do you love Me? Do you love Me more than all the others?" (John 21:15). The Christian life is not a matter of work for Him or of serving Him. Forget about all this. Satan, the subtle one, would come in to beguile you by tempting you to serve the Lord. Today in this generation the Lord Jesus does not need a lot of young people to work for Him. He needs many young ones to love Him desperately. If you love Him for just half a day, you will be crazy. Today the Lord Jesus needs many crazy lovers" (from "Crazy Lovers of Jesus" in The Living and Practical Way to Enjoy Christ).

So today I am encouraged not to try and push through another day of "serving" as I so offen do, but rather, turn my heart and let the Lord draw me to love Him more.

I read something on a bathroom stall wall the other day that said:

"A man must learn to love the woman he's attracted to, and a woman must learn to be attracted to the man she loves."

Interesting philosophy, huh?

Miss MleJane is living someone else's life.

Yesterday while talking with a friend I realized that all my childhood til present I denied my own life to live for my parents, to please them and not give them the grief I had previously observed them to suffer. And in most accounts this action cause a kind of death to the life I may have wanted to live forming the self-sacrificing self that has now become who I am today. Yet not only that, but now at present that very self that I once denied has become the very self that I have to deny today.

It's like things have turned inside-out.

Under the law I once lived not barely living, and now under grace I must die once again, not living the life that was built by living according to the law for that life is not Christ, but I. And henceforth it's end must be seen in order that it become: not I, but Christ that lives in me.

"He that findeth a wife findeth a good thing."

It's a proverb. Let the man find you.
When he makes the moves, you just respond.
Not overly, just accordingly.

I just keep telling Him...

"Lord they say You are the great Shepherd... as such You are always cherishing and nourishing Your sheep. Open my eyes to see that what You are arranging and allowing in my life is actually a Cherishing from You."

So, what is a Christian?

A Christian is not someone who tries to do something; a Christian is a person who always enjoys and experiences Christ. We are not called by the Lord to do things to please Him. We are called to enjoy, experience, and participate in Christ. Never try to do good by yourself. Just remember that you are in Christ and that the Spirit of Christ is in you. If you need electricity, there is no need for you to do anything but turn the switch on. Saying Hallelujah is the way to switch on to enjoy and experience Christ. If you try to be good by yourself, he switch will be turned off. Always remember to praise the Lord, for his is the way to switch on. This the way to be a victorious person who is in Christ and who walks according to the Spirit. We are set free from sin, death, and bondage simply by saying Hallelujah and walking according to the Spirit.

Collected Works of W. Lee Vol.1 p252.

Keepin' it real.

Last week in my Friday home meeting it seemed the fellowship and sharing camped out on the matter of 'keeping it real" with the Lord. Learning to be honest with where we are at, not shying away from how we are feeling and our present condition with Him. All in all, we are finding that the Lord really honors our honesty and that some how it's more direct way to letting Him into our weak and sick condition. Keeping it real is exposing, it's true. We have to own that in ourselves we are not... but this saves us from pretense and allows us to be touched by Him. Of course this is not merely a monologue with the Lord, but as we remain in His presence, His shining actually warms us up and in the end somehow we find that we actually do love Him. Through the fellowship I think we determined that it's because we are infused with Him as love and aren't putting any confidence in ourselves to love Him apart from Him. So we just go on, learning more and more what it means to keep it real with Him. :)