When I was asked to have a little time with you young brothers and sisters, I understood that it was to be a time of questions and answers. But, to my surprise, I find that on the brochure it is called a message. So I do not know what to do. I also do not know what the other speaker is going to speak on, because he is the speaker.
But I waited upon the Lord. On the one hand, I felt that it should still be a time in which we could fellowship in questions and answers, of course with the help of my two brothers. Yet, on the other hand, I felt that perhaps it is of the Lord that I should share something with you.
So I waited, and the Lord gave me just one word. That is the one word for you: daily.
Again, to my surprise, I am the speaker booked for today. So evidently it is of the Lord that this is something we should consider together before Him.
Now, oftentimes we think that life is made up of crises. I like to read biographies. I do not know whether you like to read biographies or not, but that is my love. I collect biographies.
When you read biographies, of course, what you find in the life of any person is the crises of that life—the turning points. They seem to make up the life.
You remember that famous teacher, Campbell Morgan. He had a wonderful book on the life of our Lord Jesus, and the title of that book is The Crises of the Christ. It has chapters on incarnation, temptation, transfiguration, crucifixion, resurrection, and so on.
So oftentimes we think that life is just a matter of crises. But, as a matter of fact, crisis marks our life. It tells us of the different turning points in our life, different stages in our life, and different growth in life.
But the way we live our life is not by crisis. If every day were a critical moment of your life, I think we would become so nervous and tense that we would not be able to cope with it. Life is not lived by crisis. It is marked by crisis, but life is lived daily, day by day.
Crises are prominent, noticeable, and distinctive, so they are easily remembered. But day-by-day life seems very common, ordinary, and unnoticeable. For that reason, oftentimes we pay too much attention to crisis and too little attention to daily living.
For instance, we have come together for this retreat, and probably some of you hope that by this retreat something might happen in your life. I think it is good to have that expectation—that you do not just come for a day or two, but come with expectation. You hope that something might happen to you, to your spiritual life; that there might be a turning point in your life. Hopefully, it is a turning point in your life.
But, as a matter of fact, if you really expect a turning point—a crisis—in your life, then before you come, you have been preparing for it. It is our daily life that really prepares us for the time of crisis. How you meet the crisis, whether you succeed or fail, depends on your preparation beforehand.
Our daily life determines the way in which we meet crisis. So perhaps it is of the Lord that we should spend a little time, before the questions and answers, sharing together on this matter of daily, day-by-day living as Christians.
How do we live our daily life? What should we do every day? No exception, no holiday, but daily—what should we do?
If you go to the Word of God and use a concordance—you do not really need to use a Strong’s Concordance or Young’s Concordance; even a smaller concordance will do—you will find that the word daily occurs a number of times in the Word of God. For our time together, I would like to share a few of these things.
First, I feel that, as believers and Christians, we need to have a daily sacrifice. We need to offer a daily sacrifice. Turn to Numbers 28:3.
And thou shalt say unto them, This is the offering made by fire which ye shall offer unto the Lord:
he-lambs a year old without blemish, two day by day, for a continual burnt-offering.
Now, we know that consecration is the first Christian experience. After you are saved, your first Christian experience is to present your body as a living sacrifice.
If you read the letter to the Romans, you will find from chapters 1 through 11 the mercies of God—how the mercies of God come to us. After we have received all the mercies of God, the first thing to do is this:
I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service.
So far as Christians are concerned, our first Christian experience is consecration—that is, to offer yourself to God as a living sacrifice. I do not know whether all of you here have done that.
As a matter of fact, if after you are saved and have received the mercies of God, you have never presented your body as a living sacrifice to the Lord, you have never begun your Christian walk.
So I hope every one of you here has presented your body to the Lord as a living sacrifice.
In my young days, usually at a conference, the last day of the conference was always on consecration. But the consecration that the speakers usually presented to us was to offer yourself to be a preacher, a Bible woman, or a missionary. That was what was meant by consecration when I was young.
But if you read the Word of God, you find that consecration is for every brother and sister. “Brethren” does not refer only to preachers. Every brother and sister, every believer, has this first thing to do: offer yourself as a living sacrifice to God. This is your reasonable service; this is your spiritual worship.
This is the first spiritual crisis after salvation in your Christian life. I will not spend too much time on this, but I really feel that unless you have done that, you have not started your Christian walk.
The best illustration I can think of is one given by Jessie Penn-Lewis. When she consecrated herself to the Lord, she said:
I present to You what I am, what I have, and what I am going to be.
In other words, you hand your whole life back to the Lord and say, “Lord, my life from now on is Yours. You have every right over me. I give up my right to myself because You have redeemed me. You have bought me with such a price. I am constrained by Your love. I cannot keep myself back for myself. I have to surrender, give my life over to You, and do with me whatever pleases You.”
You can see very clearly that this is the beginning of your Christian walk. Without this, even though you are saved, you are still walking your own way and doing your own things. But after we have presented ourselves to the Lord as a living sacrifice, remember: you are on the altar.
In the Old Testament, this is typified by the burnt offering. The burnt offering is the basis of all offerings. If you read the Old Testament, you will find that all the other offerings are offered upon the burnt offering.
The burnt offering is a whole offering. The whole lamb, without exception, is put on the altar. The fire of the burnt offering, the Bible says, never goes out.
In the morning, the priest puts the whole lamb on the fire and lets the fire gradually consume it, reducing it to ashes. Then, in the evening, another lamb is put on the fire, and this is consumed through the night. In other words, it is a daily offering, renewed morning and evening. The fire of the burnt offering never goes out; it is a continual offering.
So, brothers and sisters, if you have consecrated yourself to the Lord, do not think that it is a once-for-all matter merely because five years ago you consecrated yourself to the Lord. No. According to the Word of God, consecration is a crisis, but it is also a way.
You have gone through a crisis. One day you were constrained by the love of Christ, touched by His mercies, and you could not help but give yourself over to Him. Having had this crisis, you are then to begin to walk daily as a consecrated person.
You have to renew it day by day, every morning. When you open your eyes, you need to tell the Lord, “Lord, I renew my consecration to You. I put myself on the altar, and let the fire—that heavenly fire, divine fire, fire of love—burn and consume through the day.”
Every night, before you go to bed, renew your consecration to Him again. In other words, it is a daily matter.
Do not think that because you consecrated yourself five years ago, it is done. Today, you may not be on the altar. You may have climbed down already, and you may have started to live your own life.
So I hope, brothers and sisters, that in our daily life this is one thing we do every day. It is very easy for us to forget that we belong to the Lord. It is very easy for us to try to do our own will and walk our own way.
Therefore, it is extremely important—essential—for every one of you, when you open your eyes, first to say, “Lord, I give myself over to You for this day, and may Your will be done in my life throughout the whole day.” That should be the way to start your day.
The second thing our brother mentioned this morning: we need daily bread. You remember Matthew 6:11:
Give us this day our daily bread.
Of course, we may say that this refers to our physical food, how we need daily bread to sustain us through the day. But spiritually speaking, we also need daily bread. You cannot live on yesterday’s food. You have to eat today. The same thing is true spiritually.
In Exodus 16, you find that when the children of Israel were in the wilderness, they could neither sow nor reap. Throughout the forty years they were in the wilderness, early in the morning they had to get up to collect manna, the food of heaven.
Manna was upon the dew. If you slept late and got up late, the sun was already out, the dew evaporated, and the manna was gone. Throughout those forty years in the wilderness, the children of Israel had to rise early in the morning, before the sun came out and while the dew was still upon the earth, to gather the manna. If they did not do that, they would be hungry the whole day.
The manna could not be kept until the next day, because if it was kept until the next day, it began to stink and could no longer be eaten. Of course, because the children of Israel had to keep the Sabbath, God gave them a double portion on Friday, and only for the Sabbath could the manna be kept.
Manna was an absolute necessity to the children of Israel, a daily necessity. They had to gather it every day. Otherwise, how could they live through the wilderness?
Now, brothers and sisters, spiritually speaking, the world to us is a wilderness. To other people it may be a paradise, but to us believers the world is a wilderness. We are pilgrims passing through. The only way to sustain our spiritual life is by that heavenly manna.
We need to gather it every day. You cannot live by what you gathered yesterday. What is our heavenly manna? Of course, our heavenly manna is our Lord Jesus. But today we feed upon Him by the Word of God.
So this means that every day we have to read God’s Word. Our brother emphasized this greatly this morning, and I hope we have all heard it. We need to read the Word every day.
You cannot live on what you read yesterday, and you cannot keep it for tomorrow. Every day it must be fresh. You have to gather it. Gathering is laboring.
A Christian cannot afford to be lazy. We must be diligent, as our brother mentioned last night. We need to be diligent, to gather, to labor, to do some work there.
On the one hand, studying and reading the Word is a great joy and pleasure. When you receive a letter or an email from your parents while you are studying away from home, how eagerly you read it! It is a pleasure, a joy, and a comfort.
But, on the other hand, studying the Word of God requires labor. You cannot just glance over it and say, “That is it.” You need some laboring.
You remember Acts 17:11:
Now these were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, examining the Scriptures daily, whether these things were so.
To search is not merely to glance over something. To search is to look carefully. When you read the Word of God, you need carefulness. You need to search it, study it, meditate upon it, and pray over it until the Word truly comes into your heart.
I hope every brother and sister will develop that spiritual habit. In our small fellowship group this morning, we talked about this. After you believe in the Lord Jesus, there are certain habits you need to develop.
Life is a bundle of habits. Before we believed in the Lord, we developed through the years a number of bad habits. After you believe in the Lord, you have to shed these bad habits. Sometimes it is very difficult, but you have to let them go.
On the other hand, you need to cultivate and develop new habits. Studying the Word is one of the habits you need to develop every day.
It is not difficult if you start right away. If you delay beginning that habit, later you may find it a little difficult to begin. But if you start right away after you believe in the Lord Jesus, it is very simple and easy.
So I will not enlarge upon it. Our brother has already told us enough. That is the second daily matter.
The third daily matter is daily prayer. Turn to Psalm 86:3.
Be merciful unto me, O Lord;
for unto Thee do I cry all the day long.
And Psalm 88:9:
Mine eye wasteth away by reason of affliction:
I have called daily upon Thee, O Lord;
I have spread forth my hands unto Thee.
Prayer is a daily exercise. Your spiritual senses need exercise, and prayer is one of our daily exercises. We need to exercise spiritually and pray every day.
Of course, in Scripture it says, “Pray without ceasing.” Sometimes young brothers and sisters ask, “How can I pray without ceasing? Do I do nothing else but pray? When I am eating or when I am at school studying, how can I pray without ceasing?”
What it means is that you maintain a prayerful attitude without ceasing. Throughout the whole day, maintain a prayerful attitude, and at every occasion try to turn it into a prayer.
I remember when I was in college. In college, you change from room to room for different courses. Whenever I entered the room for the next class, the first thing I did was offer a prayer to the Lord. Then the next hour I changed into another room, and I prayed again. I prayed hour by hour through the day.
It was such a joyful thing, and you find great strength when you do such a thing. So, in other words, we need to maintain daily a prayerful attitude.
But that does not mean that because you maintain a daily prayerful attitude, you need not have a set time for prayer. Brothers and sisters, do not be too spiritual, thinking that because you pray all day and maintain a prayerful attitude, that is enough.
You need to develop a habit: have a set time of prayer. Do not say, “Whenever I have time, I will pray.” If you do that, the enemy will see to it that you never have the time.
You have to be before the Lord and set a time with Him. Say, “This is the time that is set apart for You. I am going to devote that special time just for You—to commune with You, to fellowship with You, to offer my prayer and praise to You, to worship You, to draw near to You, to be with You.”
Brothers and sisters, you have to set that time. Set the best of your time for this. If your best time is early in the morning, then that is the time for it.
Maybe for some others it is different; I do not know. But for me, when I get up in the morning, I am fresh and have not touched anything else yet. This is the best time, and I have to give it to the Lord. Before I talk to anybody, I will talk to the Lord.
You need to decide before the Lord on a certain time and not allow anything to interfere with that time. If it means you have to get up earlier than usual, do it. You do not know what spiritual profit you will reap from it.
I hope you will have a set time for prayer, just to draw near to God and be with Him. Pray for yourself, pray for brothers and sisters, and pray for God’s interests, just as we have in the so-called Lord’s Prayer.
As to how much time you will spend in doing that, you have to decide it with the Lord. If you can spend more time, fine. If you cannot spend more time, then decide as much as you can—not as little as you can, but as much as you can.
Offer your daily prayer. That is something you have to do every day, until it becomes a habit. When it becomes a habit, it will be easy. Forming a habit takes time, and in the beginning it may not be easy. You have to discipline yourself. But after the habit is formed, you find that it becomes a very easy thing.
Number four: we need daily to wait upon the Lord. Proverbs 8:34:
Blessed is the man that heareth Me,
Watching daily at My gates,
Waiting at the posts of My doors.
Our brother mentioned this morning about hearing the Lord. He who hears the Lord is blessed. But how can you hear Him? If you are at a distance from Him, you will not be able to hear Him at all. You have to be near Him in order to hear Him.
Proverbs tells us that you have to watch daily at My gates. The “I” here refers to wisdom. In verse 12 it says, “I wisdom.” This wisdom is a personification of the Son of God, our Lord Jesus.
In other words, what Scripture is telling us is that we need to watch at the gate of our Lord, waiting at the posts of His doors. To put it another way, we need to wait upon Him—wait on the Lord. That is a daily thing.
The Lord says, “Draw nigh to God, and He will draw nigh to you.” He also says, “Abide in Me, and I in you.” Those who wait upon the Lord, Isaiah 40 says, shall renew their strength.
We need strength to do everything. The way to have our strength renewed is to wait upon the Lord and draw near to Him every day. Thus, every day we are renewed and refreshed.
Every time during the day when we draw near to the Lord in our spirit and in our heart, immediately we find a rushing tide of spiritual strength. Then we mount up with wings as eagles.
As we walk through our daily walk, sometimes we find obstacles and problems. We may even find a mountain standing in our way—difficulties. But when we meet with such obstacles, how are we going to rise above them instead of being crushed by them?
We need spiritual strength. The way to receive spiritual strength is to wait upon the Lord and draw near to Him. When you draw near to Him, you will mount up with wings as eagles. You will fly over it. You will run and not be weary, and you will walk and not faint.
So, brothers and sisters, this again is a daily thing. Not only in the early morning should you draw near to the Lord and spend some time with Him, but throughout the day learn to wait upon Him from time to time.
Especially when something happens during the day, that is the time you really need to watch and wait before Him.
In Psalm 123, we have a picture of the way we wait upon the Lord:
Behold, as the eyes of servants look unto the hand of their master,
As the eyes of a maid unto the hand of her mistress;
So our eyes look unto the Lord our God.
We need to look upon the Lord. In the early days of Oriental custom, servants were very well trained. When the master was going to have a feast and all the guests were sitting there, the servants would stand around the room.
They would stand watching, with their eyes upon the hand of the master. It was considered a disgrace to the master if he had to say something before the servants would do it. That meant they were not well trained.
The servants were so well trained that their eyes were upon the hands of the master. The master would make a gesture with his hand, without saying a word, and immediately they knew exactly what to do. That is the picture behind it.
How can we, throughout the day, do the will of God? Every day is an opportunity; every moment is an opportunity for us to do God’s will. That is what life is for. We are here to do God’s will. But how do we know what His will is if our eyes are not upon the hand of our Master?
So, in our spirit, we need to wait upon the Lord. The eyes of our heart need to concentrate upon the Lord. The Lord can lead us with His hand, and He can use the environment. We need to know what His will is, and then we will be doing His will.
The fifth matter may surprise you: it is the daily cross. Turn to Luke 9:23.
And He said unto all, If any man would come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me.
How are we going to follow the Lord? We are supposed to be followers of our Lord Jesus. The way to follow Him is to deny ourselves, take up our cross daily, and follow Him. Cross-bearing is a daily affair.
Do not be surprised. If you really follow the Lord, you will have a daily cross to bear.
A cross is something you can either take up or bypass. It is when your will and God’s will cross each other, or when your flesh and the Spirit cross each other. Then you have to decide whether you will take up the cross or bypass it.
If you take up the cross, you have to deny yourself. It costs you something. The cross costs you—it costs you yourself, what you want. You have to lay it down: “Not my will, but Thy will be done.” Not according to the desire of your flesh, but according to the Father’s will and the Spirit.
If you really follow the Lord through the day, you will find there are enough crosses for you to bear. You do not need to try to find crosses.
I remember a story about Madame Guyon. Madame Guyon was a lady who loved the Lord very much. Because of what the Lord had shown her, she was persecuted and exiled. She was in the Catholic system, and the Lord had shown her concerning prayer from the heart—not merely prayer of the reason.
One day, when she was being exiled on a boat, she had a little girl with her. The little girl made many small crosses and put them on her body. Madame Guyon spiritually realized that more crosses were waiting for her.
But you do not need to make crosses. Do not make crosses for other people, nor even for yourself. As the Holy Spirit leads you through daily life, you will meet enough crosses.
Something will cross your will. Something will cross your feeling. Something will cross your thought or your opinion. That will be enough if you follow the Lord. Whenever such things happen, learn to take up the cross and follow the Lord, because this is the only way you can follow Him.
Cross-bearing is a daily matter. It should not surprise you. Do not think you need a big cross before it is cross-bearing. If you do not bear your small crosses through the day, when the big cross comes, you will not be able to bear it.
It is in the daily details of your life that you bear the cross and follow the Lord.
In connection with that, another daily matter is found in 1 Corinthians 15:31. Paul said:
I protest by that glorying in you, brethren, which I have in Christ Jesus our Lord, I die daily.
This dying to self is a daily matter. It is true, if you read Romans 6:6, that our old man was crucified with Christ. Galatians 2:20 says:
I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I that live, but Christ liveth in me:
and that life which I now live in the flesh I live in faith, the faith which is in the Son of God,
Who loved me, and gave Himself up for me.
It is true that when Jesus died on the cross, our old man was crucified with Him because we were in Him. That is the truth. We need to believe that we were crucified with Christ. We need to stand on the finished work of Christ.
But so far as our daily experience is concerned, we must die daily. Every time the old man tries to raise his head within us, when our flesh tries to rise up again, the Holy Spirit who dwells in you immediately gives you a warning.
The Holy Spirit within you will touch you and warn you that something is trying to raise its head. When that happens, you need, by the power of the Holy Spirit, to put to death the deeds of your flesh. We need to die daily.
In other words, the way to live our Christian life is by dying to ourselves. Do not think it is something done once for all, and do not think that this dying experience is merely occasional. We need to be ready to die every day.
The apostle Paul said, “I die daily.” That is the way to live a normal, victorious Christian life. Is it not strange? To live is to die, and to die is to live. That is a secret of Christianity, and it is a daily matter.
Finally, our brother already mentioned Hebrews 3, and I had this in mind too. Hebrews 3:13:
But exhort one another day by day, so long as it is called To-day;
lest any one of you be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.
Encourage yourselves daily. In some versions, it says, “Encourage one another daily.” To me, encouragement is a daily matter.
With the early church, as you read Acts 2, you find that the early Christians met every day, daily. Today, with modern life, we are not able to meet every day. But when there is opportunity, we need to encourage one another.
We are passing through a wilderness. We are living in a very perverse and wicked generation, and we need one another. We need to encourage one another. We need to warn one another, lest we forget and fall into sin.
This is another thing we need to do daily. Not only should we encourage one another; in another sense, we need to encourage ourselves. Stir yourself up before the Lord every day, that you may hear His voice.
To-day if ye shall hear His voice,
Harden not your hearts.
We need to have such encouragement.
These are the few things I would like to share with you. They are very basic and common, but necessary. If, according to the Word of God, we daily do these things, then when crisis comes, you will be able to make the right turn instead of turning in the wrong direction.
This is just a little that I would share with you. We will sing a hymn, and then we will go into the questions and answers. Let us stand up.