This message was given during the second meeting of a conference on Practicing to Live with the Present Christ, given by Titus Chu in Chicago, IL on the weekend of April 1-3, 1994
To Have the Present Christ, We Must Have His Presence By Means of a Living
If you want to have the present Christ, you must have His presence. If you want to have His presence, you need to have a certain kind of living.
We Should Be Those Who Can Move God As Well As Those Being Moved By God
Would you like God to move you, or would you like to move God? You must realize that God moves you so that you can move God! When God moves you, it is for you to move Him. You may enjoy the Lord’s presence, but the Lord gives you His presence so that you might become one who moves His economy! Therefore not only should you desire that God would move you; you should desire to be one who can also move God. Do you desire to be such a one that could cause God to move? Then give yourself to the Lord and practice to be in His presence.
Calling, Sighing, & Mourning
These sound like simple matters, but they all have a real and profound impact. Calling is something towards the Lord. Sighing is something in relation to yourself. Mourning is with reference to the generation we live in. To be in spirit, we need to learn to practice to call, to sigh, and to mourn.
A. To be able to enliven our spirit, strengthen our spirit, and even be filled in spirit by:
1. Calling
Calling is a simple matter. If you call somebody by name, he comes to you. The Lord lives right within us, yet for some reason He often seems far away. When we call, however, He comes to be with us wherever we are. Don’t be as the dumb worshipers of dumb idols. We should be those who are calling on our living God! When the living Person of the Lord is with you, all His riches are with you. He is rich to all who call upon Him.
Learn to call in all different manners. Sometimes we need to call sweetly with affection, telling the Lord how we love Him. When you are provoked by your situation or frustrated by some limitation, you need to call strongly. Call with sighing when you are convicted under the Lord’s shining or when confronted with a problem which is beyond you. Learn to exercise in this way, whether by yourself or with the saints. If you call for even just one or two minutes, you will sense a real washing and refreshing.
2. Groaning
In Second Corinthians 5:4, Paul said that as he was in his mortal body, he groaned. He groaned because in his body he was faced with so many problems, limitations, and frustrations. He realized that he was a corrupted human being who had to day after day live in the flesh.
Groaning is primarily in relation to our having to bear about with us this present inferior and frustrating earthly tabernacle of our flesh. In such a situation you groan. With your weaknesses, with your limitations, with your decay, with your sinfulness, with your inabilities, with your frustrations, and with all the things related to your mortal body, you have no choice but to groan.
How do you groan? You just pick the deepest thing from your heart. As I groan my whole person is washed, regardless how sinful I am, how dead I am, how frustrated I am, or how limited I am. I encourage you all, especially the older saints, to learn to kneel and, out of all your physical weakness, groan before the Lord. Romans 8 tells us that the Spirit, too, groans with us as it abides with us in our body. The entire creation is groaning for the redemption of our body. Therefore we should learn to groan.
3. Mourning
In Mark 8:12 the word translated “groan” is actually a different word in the Greek than that translated “groan” in Romans 8. We will use the word “mourn” to distinguish between them, since the Greek word has this sense, although they are both of the same root.
What prompts our mourning? It is our seeing of the situation around us. Each class of human beings, each race, each nationality is rejecting Christ. We should mourn for those people who are rejecting the Lord Jesus. Why is it that the Caucasian and the Black races are so resistant to this message, while the Chinese and Korean are less so? We shouldn’t just be cold about it. We should be full of feeling. “Eight million in Chicago rejecting Christ! Lord, have mercy!” The church in Chicago should have the experience of mourning over the situation in their city.
We often just accept the situation as it is, but once we see the tragedy of it, we will mourn. We will call upon God to have mercy on this generation and to save them.
Call for your own enjoyment of the Lord. Groan because of your mortal body. Mourn because of the situation of this generation we live in. May the Lord have mercy.
