A LIFE OF MORNING REVIVAL AND DAILY VICTORY
A vital matter that is crucial to the practice of the church life in the new way is our living a life of morning revival and daily victory. We should not consider that to have a personal morning revival is difficult. To be revived is simply to be touched by the Lord anew. Whenever the Lord touches us, we are revived. In only two minutes the Lord can touch us and revive us. You may not have been revived for a long time, and you may feel that you are very far from the Lord. However, the Lord promises that, regardless of what we are, where we are, or how we are, He is always near to us. We may not have a pure conscience, but the Lord’s blood is ready to cleanse us. If we simply confess our failures, defects, wrongdoings, and shortcomings, the Lord will forgive us and cleanse us. Then immediately we touch Him, and He touches us. This is to be revived, and this kind of revival must be fresh every day.
We stress that this should be a morning revival based upon God’s natural law. Every twenty-four hours there is a morning to begin the new day. The sun rises anew every morning, and we also must rise up every morning. Therefore, it is good for us to go to bed earlier at night so that we can rise up earlier in the morning. Every morning we should get up, make our bed, and then spend some time with the Lord. If we can give the Lord ten minutes in the morning before doing anything else, surely we will be revived. If we normally get up at six o’clock, we should get up at five fifty. Then we could have ten minutes to contact the Lord and be revived.
In our time with the Lord, the main thing is to clear up our conscience, to get rid of our inner condemnation. This is done by making a thorough confession of all of our failures, defects, defeats, wrongdoings, mistakes, even sinfulness to the Lord. Then we can take one or two verses from the Holy Word to use in our prayer. This is pray-reading. Do not be concerned about too many things, and do not care that much for your understanding. Take care of calling on the Lord, contacting the Lord, and touching the Lord with a proper inner sense. This keeps you in a direct, fresh, intimate, loving contact with the Lord. Sometimes as you are enjoying the Lord in this way, you may have the sensation that the Lord is speaking to you. Then you can be silent, listening to His speaking. This is to fellowship with Him. In ten minutes you can do a number of things, yet you should not try to do too much. Use this ten minutes mainly to contact the Lord directly; then you will be revived. Because you have been revived, when you go to work, you will go with the Lord. In this way you will be victorious the whole day.
Because we have such a daily practice, we should help all of our new ones to do the same. Do not think that because they were just baptized, they cannot have morning watch or a morning revival. Everyone can have a morning revival. You only need to give them some simple instructions. We found out that a good way to help the new ones build up this practice is by using the telephone. You can encourage a new one to have a time of morning revival and explain what this means as I have done in this message. Then you can help him set a time for this. Many people do not get up early, so you may have to encourage him. If he usually gets up at seven o’clock, then you can say, “If you get up fifteen minutes earlier, you can make your bed, and then I will call you at six fifty. Then we can pray together over the phone.” If you practice in this way, you may be able to take care of two or three new ones every morning. You should also fellowship with them and select a book from the New Testament to go through in your morning revival times. When you begin to help them in this way, it may seem somewhat lifeless. However, after one or two days, this new one will be revived and become living. Whether he becomes living this morning, tomorrow morning, or the next morning, you should not care for that. If you are faithful to call him every morning, eventually, he will be fully revived. Through your example, he will learn to pray and to pray-read. If you will practice with him, he will learn. If you have a morning revival with an overcoming daily life, then you can take the lead to bring the new ones into the same practice.
(The Exercise and Practice of the God-Ordained Way, Chapter 28, by Witness Lee)
