Before the Meeting

You desire to be blessed in the meetings, but do you come blessed to the meeting? Coming with blessings is greater and more honorable for you. Are you a “meeting Christian” who leads a slothful life at home and then goes to the meetings only to be blessed? Think if everyone acted like you! Then everyone would come to the meeting without bringing any blessings from the Lord. Is it any wonder that the meetings then would become what is called “dry”?

Take note of how Paul came. He says, “But I know that when I come to you, I shall come in the fullness of the blessing of Christ.” Rom. 15:29. And David says about the person who has a pure heart, that he will bring with him blessings from the Lord, and righteousness from the God of his salvation. Ps. 24:5.

What do you bring with you to the meetings? Suspicion, a bad mood, self-love, demands on the others, dullness and passivity of spirit, or what is commonly called sluggishness, a closed ear so it becomes “hard to explain” the Word?

The Lord said to Moses, “Command the children of Israel that they bring to you pure oil of pressed olives for the light, to make the lamp burn continually.” Lev. 24:2. A believer who is conscious of his responsibility before God and his brothers will do the same in these days. He will allow himself to be crushed and humbled, so he can provide oil for the light that is to shine in the church. Because the church needs light. You receive light from pure oil. Sermons and practiced oratory will no longer suffice. After hearing such sermons, a church can get up and quarrel, but the anointing is like oil in a machine.

Therefore let us keep the feast, not with the old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and ungodliness, but with the unleavened bread of purity and truth. 1 Cor. 5:8. A meeting is to be a feast in the spirit where God’s children come together to be built up as living stones on their most holy faith. It is normal to wash and dress oneself properly before a feast as is customary. What do you do before you go to the meeting? Paul said to put on therefore the Lord Jesus. Come with Him, and come as He is: anointed. Or as Paul says in Colossians 3:12, ff: “Therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, put on tender mercies, goodness, humility, meekness, longsuffering; bearing with one another, if anyone has a complaint against another; even as Christ forgave you, so you also must do. But above all these things put on love, which is the bond of perfection.” Come to the meeting dressed like that! Let it be a true feast. Purge out the old leaven, because our Passover, which is Christ, has been sacrificed. Eat Him! Come, filled with Him! Come with a fullness of the blessings of Christ.

But how is it? Do you come with spots on your conscience, defiled by your thoughts and the words that came over your lips? Do you come with an inner judgment over your slothful life and in an argumentative and envious spirit toward the brothers? This is the old leaven of malice with which you cannot come to the feast. Jesus relates a parable about a man who had come to a wedding without wedding garments, and who consequently was cast out. Why do you dishonor the church of God by coming like that; do you not know that it is to be a feast? See Isaiah 1:13.

Blessed is everyone who continuously lives in the obedience of faith; he is always anointed, because he lives a hidden life with God. He is always feasting before God’s face. When such people come together, the meetings become feasts.