LEADING THE NEW BELIEVERS TO KNOW
THAT THE LORD, OUR SAVIOR, IS A LIFE-GIVING SPIRIT
AND THAT WE HAVE A SPIRIT, REGENERATED
Many Christians today do not know that the Lord Jesus Christ, our Savior, is a life-giving Spirit and that we have a regenerated spirit (1 Cor. 15:45b; Rom. 8:16). Thus, the first meal we have to feed the new believers with is that our Savior today is a life-giving Spirit and that we have a spirit. Even about thirty years ago when I came to the United States, people told me that they had never heard that they had a human spirit. We need to help the new believers by showing them this truth in the Bible.
HELPING THE NEW BELIEVERS TO REALIZE
THAT THE LORD AS THE SPIRIT LIVES
IN THEIR SPIRIT AND THAT THEY SHOULD
ALWAYS EXERCISE THEIR SPIRIT BY PRAYER
TO CONTACT THE LORD, THE SPIRIT
We also need to help the new believers realize that the Lord as the Spirit lives in their spirit (Rom. 8:11, 16). This should be ministered to the new believers immediately after they are baptized. They also need to realize that they should always exercise their spirit by prayer to contact the Lord, the Spirit (Eph. 6:18a). Even those of us who have been Christians for many years neglect the exercise of our spirit. We are weak and low in our spiritual life because we do not continually exercise our spirit by prayer to contact the Lord. When we pray we may subconsciously have the thought that the Lord is merely sitting on the throne in the heavens. Although this is true, we should also have the consciousness that we are praying to the One who is in us and who is one spirit with us (1 Cor. 6:17). This kind of consciousness will change our prayer life.
(Elders' Training, Book 11: The Eldership and the God-Ordained Way (3), Chapter 9, by Witness Lee)
