Life

Life

Our life is hidden with Christ in God. The life is hidden. There is no visible fruit without a hidden life. There are no visible victories without hidden battles. Without an inner work of the Spirit, there is no true outward work. Life is paramount. Watch over your life. Be active in supplication, in prayer, in thanksgiv­ing, and in worshiping. Be engaged in a living connection with God, and become godly.

Examine your life. Know yourself and know your need. Pay attention to your prayer in the assembly. Even though you were once baptized in the Holy Spirit, your prayer is heavy and labored. You even toil with finding words to express yourself in prayer. You are not anointed. You have not cultivated a relationship with God in the hidden. At the meeting you can manage to pray under the influence of God’s blessing, but your prayer is not natural—divinely natural—as is the prayer of someone who has advanced to living an anointed life with God in secret.

Have you learned to let the peo­ple go out of your mind and thoughts so that you can be alone with your God in prayer? Have you learned to be quiet before your God, so you can truly consider in whose presence you are?

We are to serve God in the new­ness of spirit

In a totally new way, which is in stark contrast to ourselves and our own nature. This new way has nothing to do with the old way. This new way bears life in itself and makes it possible for us to have life in ourselves—in Christ. All things have become new. That is the newness of the spirit which makes us godly according to the image of Christ.

The new life is a life of power. Power in prayer. Power in word and over one’s own words. Power in God’s church. Power against Satan. It is a divine life with an inner strength, an inner fullness, and an inner, vibrant activity. It is a life with God’s Word that is actively at work. The Word is alive and active in this work. It is constantly working. It is a conscious, concentrated work that opens up a wide view of God’s glory.

It is this continuous, uninter­rupted work that is characteristic of the new life’s work in us. And what is life without movement? Our old “I” is crucified, and we have been moved from our old, natural way of being into the newness of the spirit. The old manner of living was as a servant of the letter. In this newness, we become servants of the Spirit; that is where we live and walk, being renewed and transformed in that environment in which we are now living.

Now we are living; we live a hid­den life in the Spirit of truth whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him; but we know Him, for He dwells with us and will be in us. See John 14:17.

You, who are not living this life, agree to be crucified with Christ, to your entire old nature, and you will experience redemption in Christ by be­ing lifted into something completely new, namely into the newness of spirit. In this newness of spirit there is power and strength to live; there is the new covenant, its promises and glory. In this newness of spirit you receive power to walk on the way of the cross, following the Lamb, as your spirit is made increasingly alive, and is renewed as it grows and is equipped for the work of ministry.

What a blessed, anointed, and divine life this is!

Enter into it, and live for God. Do not be deceived by any wind of doctrine.