For when by reason of the time ye ought to be teachers, ye have need again that some one teach you the rudiments of the first principles of the oracles of God; and are become such as have need of milk, and not of solid food.
For every one that partaketh of milk is without experience of the word of righteousness; for he is a babe.
But solid food is for fullgrown men, even those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern good and evil.
Let us underline the words, “their senses exercised.”
Exercise thyself unto godliness: for bodily exercise is profitable for a little; but godliness is profitable for all things, having promise of the life which now is, and of that which is to come.
Faithful is the saying, and worthy of all acceptation.
For to this end we labor and strive, because we have our hope set on the living God, who is the Saviour of all men, specially of them that believe.
Dear Lord, we do want to thank Thee for gathering us together again this afternoon. Lord, we know that we are in Thy presence. There is nothing that is hidden from Thee, because Thou art the One who knows our hearts and searches us.
Lord, we do want to be completely open to Thy light. We pray that this afternoon the light of life may shine within us, that we may know how to walk before Thee, perfect and pleasing to Thyself.
Lord, we do praise and thank Thee for the grace of our Lord Jesus, for the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit that is all unto us.
Now, Lord, make all this real, practical, and living in our daily life, that Thou mayest be glorified and Thy purpose may be fulfilled. We ask in the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.
I think, brothers and sisters, we all realize that the theme of this conference is the benediction in 2 Corinthians 13:14. In the morning and evening sessions, our three brothers share with us these three basic, very important truths: the grace of the Lord Jesus, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit.
Our God is a triune God, three in One. It is His desire that we know Him. And I believe, brothers and sisters, there is nothing more important than knowing our God.
It is through the grace that is bestowed upon us that we come to know our Lord Jesus. It is through the love that God has poured out toward us that we know the Father. And it is through the fellowship that the Holy Spirit extends to us that we come to know the Holy Spirit.
Put it another way: it is more than just grace, or love, or communion. It is God Himself that He wants us to know. This is our faith. We believe in God. We believe in His grace, in His love, and in His communion. This is the truth.
And thank God, this is something that God pours out for us. In a sense, we do nothing; we cannot do anything. It is all grace—grace upon grace.
In a sense, we can do nothing. It is God’s love. We do not have that love; we are unlovely. We are completely shut off from anything that is heavenly and spiritual. And yet it is the Holy Spirit who opens the door for us and brings us into that which is the reality of eternity.
So, brothers and sisters, we find that in the benediction it is all that God has done for us. We do nothing. We are just on the receiving side. And this is the truth, and this is our faith.
So, in the afternoon, these additional sessions are more on our response. After God has revealed Himself to us in such an abundant, glorious, perfect way, what should be our response? How do we respond to Him? How do we, in our daily life, practice what we have believed?
Our brother Christian has already shared with us for two afternoons on Bible study. God gives us His Word, and we need to study it. The only way to know the Word of God is through love. If we love Him, we will know His Word.
And God willing, tomorrow and the day after tomorrow afternoon, our brother Lance will be speaking on prayer. So here you find Bible study and prayer. These are our responses to the grace of our Lord Jesus, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit.
As I look to the Lord, I feel probably it is of the Lord that we share something on spiritual exercise, or exercise unto godliness.
We remember the word that the Apostle Paul wrote in 1 Timothy. He said, “Bodily exercise is profitable for a little.”
Now, brothers and sisters, I think it is very evident that we need physical exercise with this physical life. Even if we have food to eat and air to breathe, if we do not exercise, we will not be able to grow. Probably what we will have is more fat. We will not be healthy. We need bodily exercise.
And you know, the word exercise is gymnastics. In other words, with the Greeks, they were very careful. They paid much attention to the beauty of the body. In order to develop a perfect form, they had many gymnasiums, and people could go to these gymnasiums and exercise.
There would be instructors there, and these instructors would study your body and see which part of your body was weak or unbalanced. They would put you through different exercises.
The result is that, after much exercise—of course, when you go through exercise, you go through some pain—you have to stretch beyond your strength in order to develop the inherent strength within you. So you find that, at much hardship, endurance, and discipline, the end result is a beautiful body.
That was quite a Greek outlook. They were willing to pay any cost. Even their diet, eating habits, drinking, and sleeping—everything could be sacrificed in order to achieve a beautiful form. Now, that is what the Greeks were after.
And the Bible says bodily exercise is profitable. In other words, all these labors are not in vain; they are profitable. But the Apostle Paul said bodily exercise is profitable for a little.
The “little” here does not refer to a little time. Now, in one sense, a little time is also correct, because if you pay so much attention to your body to get a perfect body, well, how long are you able to live? So it is a little time. But actually, “for a little” means for a small thing. Bodily exercise is profitable for a small thing.
In comparison with spiritual exercise—exercise unto godliness—it is profitable for everything.
Now, brothers and sisters, unfortunately with the Greeks, they paid all their attention to bodily exercise, and they neglected their spiritual being.
As we look into the world today, you will find how much attention people pay to their physical well-being. I think especially in this country, people have paid much attention in recent years to their diet and to exercise. Probably you do not see too much in Richmond, but if you go to California, you will find people running on the road all the time. They are exercising, they are exercising.
People pay lots of attention to their physical well-being. But unfortunately, the same thing happened to modern man as to the Greeks in ancient times. We pay lots of attention to a little thing, and we completely overlook that which is eternal and profitable for everything—for all time.
So the Apostle Paul, here in the letter, says, “Exercise unto godliness is profitable for everything.”
Now, brothers and sisters, do we have our daily spiritual exercise?
We say, “Well, we read our Bible every day. We pray every day.” But when you are reading your Bible, is there spiritual exercise? When you are praying, is there spiritual exercise?
In other words, exercise unto godliness means that we exercise that we may be godlike, that we may have His character in us, that we may have the beauty of Christ formed in us. We realize how unlike God we are. We feel that in every aspect of our spiritual life, we do not express or manifest Him as we should. So we need spiritual exercise.
But spiritual exercise is not just in the body. It is not just something you do physically. Of course, when you read the Bible, you do something physically. You use your eyes; you read. But though you may use your physical body to read with your eyes, is your spirit being exercised?
Your physical sense of seeing is being exercised, but is your spiritual sense also being exercised when you are reading the Bible?
Oftentimes we read the Bible. Maybe we are so busy and really in a hurry. We read it as a duty, because if you have not read the Word of God today, you feel guilty, so you have to read it. But you read it in such a hurry. Yes, you read; you see every letter. But after you read it, you close the book, and if somebody asks you what you have read, can you answer them?
How about it? It is all gone. Now, can you call this spiritual exercise? Your spirit is not exercised at all.
Now, you may read the Bible and try to memorize it. Our brother encouraged us to memorize the Word of God, and I agree fully with our brother that we should try to memorize the Word of God, that the Word of God may be stored richly in our memory, so the Holy Spirit at any time can just touch it and bring it back.
Especially for young people, I think memorizing is very important. When I first came to this country, I was in New York at that time, and once I tried with the young people. I asked them to memorize Psalm 119.
But I know the way you educate in this country is very different from the way we are educated in the Orient. In the Orient, especially with old-fashioned education, it is all memorizing. In other words, you memorize the whole classics. The master will not explain it to you; he just wants you to memorize it.
You remember a whole book of classics, and you would be called before him. He would start somewhere in that book, and when he started, you had to continue on by memorizing it. So in the Orient, from childhood, we learn to memorize. We have a habit of memorizing. But in this country, your education is very different. You do not memorize.
So when I first came to this country and worked with the young people, I felt that was something they needed. Once I suggested to them, “Why do we not try to memorize Psalm 119?”
You know, in England there was a great politician, a great statesman, Wilberforce. He was in Parliament, and after a long session in Parliament he was so tired. So he would walk in the park to relax, and while he was walking in the park, relaxing, he would recite by memory Psalm 119.
So I tried the young people. I am not a hard taskmaster. I said, “Well, probably it is too much for you, so let us divide into twenty-two groups, and each group just memorizes eight verses. That should be easy.”
I gave them the assignment, and on the day when I met with them, when they entered the meeting place, I saw such tense faces there. They were so tense—just eight verses!
Brothers and sisters, we need to exercise our minds. In other words, the more you exercise your mind to memorize, the easier it becomes.
Even if you can memorize the whole Bible, is the life in your spirit exercised? Your mind gets keener, but does your spirit get stronger? If you just memorize without exercising your spiritual senses, these are letters. Letters. The Spirit gives life.
Some brothers and sisters may be reading the Bible every day, but it can be only a bodily exercise, or it can be only a mental exercise. Your spiritual sense is not being exercised, and if that is the case, your spiritual life is not benefited, and your spiritual life does not grow properly.
The same thing is true with prayer. Now, we should pray every day. In the Old Testament, we find that they prayed three times a day.
Maybe when you get up in the morning, you say your prayer. Maybe in the evening, when you go to bed, you say your prayer. But when you are saying your prayer—whether you are kneeling, sitting, or lying down—is there spiritual exercise?
I remember what happened many years ago. A dear brother from India, Brother Bakht Singh, came to Richmond for the first time. I brought him from Washington to Richmond, and at that time we were meeting in a rented place. We were supposed to arrive for a meal together, and after the meal we would have our time with our brother.
I traveled with our dear Brother Bakht Singh, and usually when he traveled there would be a group of people following. So we had two cars driving from Washington, D.C., to Richmond. We started late, and I looked at my watch. I was a little anxious. But thank God, these brothers from India lived in eternity.
When we were approaching Richmond, we came to a place called Ladysmith. If you know the distance, you know Ladysmith is still a little distance from here. The brothers said, “Well, we have to rest.” I was so anxious because I figured it was already late. But they said, “No, we have to rest.” So we stopped and rested for half an hour.
When we arrived in Richmond, it was the time the meeting should have been dismissed. People should already have been dispersed. But fortunately, the brothers and sisters could not wait, so they had their meal and started singing. They were still there, singing and waiting and waiting and waiting. Finally, we arrived. Of course, we did not have time to eat anymore, so we started the meeting.
Our dear Brother Bakht Singh came and began to speak. But it is our brother’s habit that every time he spoke, before he really gave the message, he would speak half an hour on, “We have to pray on our knees.” So he used half an hour to exhort us that we must pray on our knees.
After he exhorted us, everybody got on their knees, and we started to pray. After we finished praying, he began his message. Now, brothers and sisters, to the Western world it was quite unusual, but to the Orient, that is what it is. You live every minute; you live in eternity.
But anyway, you can pray on your knees, or you can even prostrate yourself on the floor. But this can be physical exercise. If your spirit is not exercised unto God, will there be any spiritual growth?
In some places, we have prayer books. If you read the prayer book, the Anglican prayer book, these prayers are beautiful. Probably I will not say none of us, because some are more intelligent. But for me to pray such beautiful prayers as you find in the prayer book is just beyond me.
So what is the need of praying your prayers? Just read the prayer book. It is so beautiful. But brothers and sisters, you may read the most beautiful prayer, but if your spirit is not involved, will your spiritual life grow an inch?
How often we go through the motions of what we call spiritual life. We say our prayers, we read the Bible, we go to church. But do we have spiritual exercise? Are we exercising unto godliness, to be godly?
As our response to the grace of the Lord Jesus, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit, how do we respond to that? Do we daily exercise our spiritual senses, that we may grow, that we may be transformed, and be conformed to the image of God’s beloved Son?
That is what the grace of the Lord Jesus is for. That is what the love of God expects. That is what the communion of the Holy Spirit is working toward.
But on our part, we have a responsibility. There is something that God wants us to do. Now, it is true: it is all of grace. The Apostle Paul says, “By the grace of God I am what I am,” and it is absolutely true.
It is true that God loves us. It is true that only the Holy Spirit can communicate to us all that Christ has done for us on Calvary’s cross. There is nothing we can do. But, brothers and sisters, we who are on the receiving side have a responsibility.
We need to know how we should respond to the grace of the Lord Jesus, that we do not abuse or neglect His grace, and that we let His grace perfect its work. We need to know how not to despise the love of God, and to let the love of God perfect us. We need to know how to receive the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, that it will not be in vain.
We have a responsibility on our part, and brothers and sisters, our responsibility is in exercising our spiritual senses.
Now, spiritual senses are very different from physical senses. I think probably I have to go to the very beginning. When God created us, we were created as a tripartite being: spirit, soul, and body.
God used the earth, the red earth, to form our body. God breathed into the nostrils of that form the breath of life. In the original, we are told it is the breath of lives. And that breath of life entered into the earthly form, and that earthly form got up, becoming a living soul.
So, in other words, you find that our body is made of dust, and God breathed into that form. That breath of God, which came directly from God, became the human spirit, because God is Spirit.
Therefore, by God’s breathing into us, a human spirit was formed. When the breath and the body touched each other, the soul became alive. So here you find that we are created as tripartite beings.
Our body, being made of earth, gives us world-consciousness. We have five senses, and by the five senses we can communicate with the world; we know our environment.
Because we have our soul, a living soul, we have our will, our mind, and our emotions. Therefore, we have self-consciousness. We know that we are. As the Greek philosopher says, “I know I am because I think.”
Brothers and sisters, we are all different. Everyone is different because the way you think, the way you feel, the way you love or dislike, are different. We are conscious of ourselves.
And thank God, He gave us a spirit, a human spirit. That spirit enables us to communicate with God. In other words, it gives us God-consciousness.
Unfortunately, because of the fall of man, this God-consciousness was cut off. You remember, God said that of all the trees in the garden of Eden, man could freely eat, but there was one tree he could not eat: the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. In the midst of the garden there was also the tree of life.
God did not say that man could not eat of the tree of life. He said that all the trees could be eaten except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. In a sense, God was saying to our forefather, “Eat the tree of life,” because God wanted to give His own life to us.
We have a spirit, and we can receive God into us. That is what God’s will is. But unfortunately, instead of eating the tree of life, our forefather ate the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The word of God to them was, “In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.”
I believe that tree of the knowledge of good and evil was there for a number of reasons. One reason is that God wanted man to understand that even though man was created above all the other living things on earth, there was One above him.
By forbidding him to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, God reminded him that there was One above him. But man wanted to be on his own—his own head, not below anybody, not even his Creator. He wanted to make a god out of himself, so he ate the forbidden fruit.
The Lord said, “In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.” Yet Adam lived over nine hundred years. When man ate that tree of the knowledge of good and evil, something happened. Physically, he was still alive. He was able to live for nine hundred and more years. Soulishly, he was living, because he was able to have many children, family, and family life. But spiritually, he was dead.
His spirit was dead. Now, the word dead does not mean that he did not have the spirit anymore. The spirit as an organ was still there, but the proper use of that organ was gone.
What is death? It is the cessation of communication with its proper environment. When our physical body is dead, it ceases to communicate with its proper environment, which is the world.
When our spirit is dead, it ceases to communicate with its proper environment, which is God. God is the proper environment of our spirit. We are created to communicate with God, and yet when that was cut off, we became spiritually dead.
That is why the Bible in Ephesians 2 says that we are dead in sins and trespasses. Physically we are alive; soulishly we are alive; but spiritually we are dead. The organ is still there. People can still communicate with the spirit world, and people can communicate with evil spirits, but they cannot communicate with God, their proper environment.
Now, with a dead person, you cannot speak of exercise. Physically this is true, and spiritually this is also true. To an unbeliever, you cannot talk about spiritual exercise, exercise unto godliness.
People who do not believe in God may be very moral, very disciplined, but they only develop their soul life. Their spiritual life is dead.
But when we believe in the Lord Jesus, something tremendously important happens.
In John 3, it says, “That which is born of the Spirit is spirit.” He that is born of the Holy Spirit is a new human spirit. Our spirit was dead in sins and trespasses, but when we believe in the Lord Jesus, something happens within us. The Holy Spirit quickens, renews, brings it back to life, and makes it a new spirit.
A new human spirit is born within us, and immediately our communication with God is restored.
Before we were born again, we still had a spirit within us. The human spirit was spiritually dead, but thank God, there was still something of God remaining there.
In other words, our spirit has three essential senses: first, conscience. Conscience is the feeling of the spirit. Second, intuition. Intuition is the direct knowledge of the spirit, just as our mind is the faculty of knowledge in the soul. Then we have communion, which is like the will. So you find that in our spirit there are three essential senses: conscience, intuition, and communion.
Even though our spirit was dead in sins and trespasses, brothers and sisters, the conscience was still there. But because it was cut off from God, what kind of conscience remained? A guilty conscience, a wicked conscience.
That is the reason why, when Adam and Eve heard God coming into the garden, what did they do? Formerly they would run toward God, but now they ran away from God and hid themselves among the trees. Why?
When God said, “Adam, where art thou?” Adam said, “We are naked.” Brothers and sisters, that is conscience—a conscience made wicked because it rebelled against the law of God.
The conscience is still there, but you carry a guilty conscience all through your life. People try to appease their guilty conscience, and that is where all the religions and all the good works in this world come in: trying to do something good to appease a guilty conscience and silence its voice.
In Chinese, we have a proverb: “When a man is dying, his words are good.” In other words, when he is dying, he will say something good. Why? Because he knows he is going to meet his Maker. His conscience begins to bother him.
With that guilty conscience, he can only run away from God rather than run to God. The longer men live, you will find that their conscience is no longer governed by God. Their conscience is molded by customs, habits, and traditions.
These begin to govern the voice of their conscience. Sometimes you meet a person who says, “Well, I do everything according to my conscience. I have a pure conscience.” Now, is that conscience dependable? No, because that conscience has already lost its standard. It is no longer governed by God; it is governed by tradition, habit, and society.
What society considers right determines it. If, in this country, you eat somebody, I believe your conscience would bother you. But in some remote places, when cannibals eat people, does their conscience bother them? No. They think that if they eat the enemy they slay, they will be stronger.
So you find that the conscience of an unbeliever is undependable. Some people say, “I have a good conscience. I do not need to believe in the Lord Jesus. I can go to heaven because I have a good conscience.”
What happens when you believe in the Lord Jesus? The first work of the Holy Spirit is to touch your conscience. That is why the Bible says the seed falls upon the heart. When the Word of God comes and you are convicted of your sins, you are convicted that you have sinned against God, and that brings you into repentance.
The blood of our Lord Jesus cleanses and purifies your wicked conscience. So you find in Hebrews 10:22, “Having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience.” It is the blood of the Lord Jesus that cleanses our conscience.
When you believe in the Lord Jesus, oh, what beautiful feelings toward God! The blood has been sprinkled upon your wicked conscience and made it clean.
I remember when I was a boy. I was raised up in a Christian family. We had family worship every evening. I always felt that I was not perfect, but I was better than most people in the world.
Especially when you are a student, what could you do? All you can do is make little mischief. That is all you can do. Compared with people in this world who kill and do all these bad things, I always felt I was all right. I knew the gospel. Probably I could sing hymns in my mother’s arms.
I always felt, “Well, Jesus is the Saviour of the world, but I really do not need Him. Let those sinners go to Him. I am too good.” I always had that kind of feeling—not until I was fourteen years old.
Something happened. The Holy Spirit began to work on me. Nobody told me I was a sinner, and yet somehow, for a whole year, I was under deep conviction. I felt I was so sinful. My whole being, from my head to my feet, was filthy.
Nobody told me that. The Holy Spirit began to convict me. Sometimes when I was alone, I wept. I knew I needed a Saviour. I knew Jesus was the Saviour, and during that year I sought Him.
Whenever there was a revival meeting, I was there. I wanted to be saved. I knew I needed Him. That load was heavy upon me, because somehow salvation evaded me. For a whole year, I was under conviction.
But one day, thank God, I knelt and prayed. I had prayed before that. I knew how to pray. But one day, I really prayed from my heart. I confessed my sins. I believed Him as the One who was able to save.
When I finished my prayer, I got up, and a preacher was by my side helping me. He asked me, “Are you saved?” He had asked me before that, and I had said, “I hope I will be saved.” But after I prayed that prayer, I got up and I knew.
He said, “Are you saved?” I said, “Yes.” He said, “How do you know you are?” I said, “There is such peace in my heart. That sin—the Lord has washed it away.”
A guilty conscience is sprinkled. I had a clear conscience before God. I could call God, “Father.” From that day onward, that communication has always been there.
Brothers and sisters, God restores our conscience to its proper function. God is now the standard of our conscience. Do not neglect your conscience. Our conscience is extremely important to our spiritual walk.
Since the day you are saved, your conscience is purified, and God becomes the standard of your conscience. The Holy Spirit, who lives in your spirit, begins to touch your conscience and enables you to know how to walk before God.
You need to exercise your conscience. Brothers and sisters, do you exercise your conscience every day? Spiritual life is an inner life.
The Holy Spirit, who lives in our new spirit, touches our conscience, the feeling of our spirit. He enables us to feel how God feels.
I think it is very clear. After you believe in the Lord Jesus, something begins to happen. Before you believe in the Lord Jesus, perhaps you were very careless in your speaking. You were very talkative. You liked to talk.
The more you talk, the more you are prone to sin. You like to say idle words, not only idle words but wicked words. You curse. You tell lies. You may not have black lies, but you have white lies, and you consider that very clever.
But after you believe in the Lord Jesus, when you are in the midst of your friends and begin to talk and talk and talk, things become more and more heated, and words begin to flow—bad words, evil words, criticizing words, boasting, exaggeration, falsehood.
Brothers and sisters, after you are saved and you are in the midst of your friends talking, does anything happen to you? When you are beginning to speak, suddenly you feel there is a check within you: “Stop. That is enough. If you continue on, you will sin against God.”
Do you have that kind of experience? When you are hearing your friends speaking evil words or cursing, how do you feel? Are you able to continue to hear them? Does your conscience bother you, trouble you? You have to walk away.
That is exercising your conscience. But unfortunately, more often, when you are talking and talking, suddenly you find there is a check within you saying, “Stop,” but you cannot stop. You continue on. What happens afterward? You feel guilty.
Brothers and sisters, you find that your relationship with God suffers. You find that you want to hide from Him. You do not run toward Him. Your conscience is working. The Holy Spirit is working on your conscience. He is the standard.
Your conscience is no longer governed by the world, by the opinion of this world, by customs, or by habit. No. Your conscience is now under the government of the Holy Spirit.
If you exercise your conscience and stop, the more you exercise your conscience, the more sensitive your conscience will be. If you neglect your conscience and try to continue on against your conscience, your conscience will become less and less sensitive to God.
I believe it is very, very important to maintain a good conscience before God. Our conscience should be clear every moment of the day.
Whenever our conscience is pricked, repent immediately. Do not wait until the evening. Do not wait until the next day. Clear it up right away. Confess to the Lord. Repent and confess to the Lord, that your conscience may be clear before Him.
That is the way we walk our Christian walk. Now, brothers and sisters, are you exercising your spiritual senses?
Lots of Christians today do things without being bothered by their conscience. They should be bothered, but they are not. Why? Because they have not exercised their spiritual sense, their conscience, in their daily life.
You remember the Apostle Paul in 1 Timothy 1:19. He says, “Holding faith and a good conscience; which some having thrust from them made shipwreck concerning the faith.”
Brothers and sisters, we need to maintain faith and a good conscience. But if you neglect your good conscience, you make shipwreck of your faith. In other words, your faith will leak out.
When you go to the Lord, you have to go to Him with a good conscience. How can you go to the throne of grace? How can you go into the holy of holies when you carry a guilty conscience? Your faith leaks out.
We need to maintain a good conscience. Today, lots of God’s people have consciences that are too insensitive. We are able to do many things, and our conscience does not seem to bother us. The Holy Spirit is not able to speak to us. Why? It is because we have neglected His voice again and again.
Our conscience can come to a point where it is so hard, it is seared and cauterized, and that leads to apostasy.
If you read the life of the Apostle Paul, you will find that he always maintained a good conscience before God. In Acts 23, when he was before the Jewish council judging him, what did he say? He said, “I have lived before God in all good conscience until this day.”
When he was judged by the Roman governor Felix, he said that he exercised himself to have a conscience void of offence toward God and men always. Because he had such a clear conscience, he had such a good testimony.
In 2 Corinthians 1, he says, “Our rejoicing is this, the testimony of our conscience.” Our conscience can either accuse us or excuse us. Unfortunately, most of the time our conscience accuses us instead of excusing us. But the normal conscience should excuse us. That is the testimony of a good conscience.
The only way to serve God is to serve Him with a pure conscience. We can serve God with mixed motives. We can serve God and serve Mammon at the same time, serve God and serve ourselves at the same time. We can only serve God with a pure conscience.
Brothers and sisters, our conscience is very, very important. Do we exercise our conscience?
It is true that we should not have a weak conscience. We should have a strong conscience, but not a weak conscience. In Romans, you find that some people’s consciences were weak because they were used to worshiping idols. When they ate meat that had been offered to idols, their conscience bothered them.
If you have knowledge, then your conscience will not be so weak. But we cannot live merely by our strong conscience; we have to live by love—love toward those who have weak consciences.
But anyway, conscience is one of the spiritual senses that we have to exercise in our daily living. Otherwise, we cannot walk perfectly before God.
My time is almost up, and I am afraid I have just begun with the first thing. But anyway, the second is intuition. We need to exercise our intuitive sense.
What is intuition? Intuition is direct knowledge from God. Our mental knowledge is knowledge collected through the years from outside. We collect it, analyze it, and use it. But intuition is direct knowledge. The Holy Spirit speaks directly to our spirit. That is intuitive knowledge.
The New Testament, the new covenant—one of the blessings of the new covenant, in Hebrews 8:11, is that you do not need anyone to tell you, “Know the Lord,” because every one of you knows Him within yourselves, from the least one to the greatest one.
Under the old covenant, you needed someone to teach you, “Know the Lord.” This knowledge was objective knowledge. You knew there was a God; you knew God was holy; you knew that He was righteous; you knew these were His commandments; and you were told that you needed to keep these commandments. You needed somebody to teach you. Everything was external, and even your knowledge of God was external.
But under the new covenant, it is entirely different. Everything is internal; it is inward. You do not need anyone to teach you, “Know the Lord.” Why? Because inwardly you know Him already. From the least one—that is, the newly born—to the most mature one, they know.
How do they know? They know intuitively, because the Holy Spirit—the anointing within you—will teach you in all things. In 1 John 2:27, the anointing within you teaches you in all things: big things, small things, everything. Whatever He teaches is true, and it is not false. If you obey the teaching of the anointing, you abide in Christ.
Brothers and sisters, it is true: when you are young, you know, and what you know may be limited. As you grow up more, you know a little bit more. That is true. But you know.
You remember in Matthew 11, our Lord Jesus said, “Father, I thank Thee because Thou didst hide these things from the wise and understanding, and didst reveal them unto babes.”
Children live by intuition. They intuitively know. Grown-ups live by their mind, by reasoning. The more grown up you are, the more you live by your intellect; you do not live intuitively.
Now, we need to be childlike—not childish, but childlike. We need to be childlike spiritually. We live by intuition. We learn to walk an inward way of life. Inwardly, we know God’s will.
Oftentimes brothers and sisters come and ask, “Brother, or sister, can I do this? Is it all right? Is it sin if I do that, if I go there?”
If you are wise in helping them, do not tell them, “Go,” or “Do not go”; “Right,” or “Wrong.” You tell them, “What is your inner life telling you? Why do you ask?”
Is it because something is bothering you, telling you, but you do not like it? So you want to find someone who will tell you, “It is all right.” You know it already. Intuitively, you are led by the Spirit of God.
And communion: of course, God gave us this place to commune with Him. It is heart to heart, spirit to spirit—communion.
The more you commune with Him, the more you know His character, the more you are drawn, the more you will love Him.
Brothers and sisters, prayer is not just asking for something. Prayer is communing with God.
Do you commune with Him day by day? When you have your morning prayer, are you just asking something from Him, or are you just being with Him for a while?
During the day, do you lift your heart? Even in your business, you may be busy doing things, and yet you can lift your heart and just pray for a second.
Brothers and sisters, the more you exercise your communion power, the more you are able to commune with Him. So these are spiritual exercises, and these exercises will bring us into godliness.