CHRIST AS OUR EVERYTHING
The last main point concerns Christ being everything to us. Christ is not only everything, but everything to us. We must learn how to experience Christ as everything to us. Christ to us is our food and drink, and He is also our patience. Many times we are short of patience. When we are short of patience, we should realize that we are actually short of Christ. Christ is our patience. Do we desire humility? Christ Himself is our humility. Do we want to honor our father and our mother? The honor that we render to our father and mother must be Christ. Christ is even the way for us to honor our parents. There is no need for teaching concerning the way. If we love Christ and fellowship with Him, we will have Christ as the living way. We will know how to honor our parents, and Christ will become the strength for us to honor our parents. Christ is everything to us.
I believe that in these last days the Lord will recover His people to know Him not merely in doctrine but in a very experiential way. When we write a letter to a friend, our letter must be Christ. We must learn to experience Christ in such a way. Before we write the letter, we should fellowship with the Lord and be one with Him. We must tell Him, “Lord, You Yourself must be my words. I will not write anything besides Yourself to my friend. What I am going to write must be You.” We must try to experience the Lord in this way, applying Him as everything in our daily life. He must be everything to us. When we minister the word, that word must be Christ. Our message and ministry must be Christ, and the way to minister and our strength to minister must be Christ.
The book of Colossians was written because many of those believers did not know how to experience Christ in such a way. They were distracted from Christ to pay attention to other things. Colossians was written to tell them that they must realize Christ as their everything. We also must learn to experience Christ in such a real and living way. Even from our youth, we should begin to experience Christ. I thank the Lord that I was saved as a young man. However, I did not receive the proper help. I received great help in studying the Bible according to the letter, but I was not helped to know the Lord in a living way, to experience Him as my life and everything. After about seven or eight years passed, I began to receive help in knowing Christ in a living way. Praise the Lord that many of you who are still in your teenage years can receive this help now! You should not take this in a light way. You should appreciate that you are being shown the way to take Christ, experience Him, and apply Him as everything. I hope that the younger generation will pay their full attention to this matter. Then they will be the living witnesses, the living testimonies, of how dear, how real, how precious, how rich, and how living Christ is. Let us learn to experience Him in this way.
(General Sketch of the New Testament in the Light of Christ and the Church, A - Part 2: Romans through Philemon, Chapter 11, by Witness Lee)
