One thing have I asked of the Lord, that will I seek after: That I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, To behold the beauty of the Lord, And to inquire in His temple.
—Psalm 27:4
When Thou saidst, Seek ye My face; My heart said unto Thee, Thy face, Lord, will I seek.
—Psalm 27:8
Wait for the Lord: Be strong, and let thy heart take courage; Yea, wait thou for the Lord.
—Psalm 27:14
Let us have a word of prayer.
Lord, we thank You that we are gathered here in Your presence. Lord, we look to You that You may speak through Your Word by the Spirit. May our hearts turn to You.
We want Your Word to be enlarged in our hearts, that it may become our spirit and our life, so that while we live on earth, we may live a life of communion with You.
We commit our time to You. Man can do nothing, but You are the God of power. We want You to gain us according to Your will. Amen.
The theme for this conference is spiritual communion and the overcoming life. In the morning sessions, we will share on the matter of spiritual communion, and in the evening sessions, we will share on the overcoming life.
The word communion, in the original, means something common. It is partnership. It means that we share something in common.
Spiritual communion means that our spirit communes with God Himself. Our God is Spirit, and we use our spirit to commune with God. Therefore, it is something deep within; it is not something external.
To commune with God is the greatest privilege of Christians, and communion with God is the foundation of our Christian life. In this matter, we need to gain some knowledge.
When we speak about communion with God, we have to go back to the origin. Spiritual communion resides within God Himself.
The Bible begins with God Himself: “In the beginning, God.” He is the origin of everything. Whatever does not begin with God and originate from God is counterfeit, and it is very dangerous.
When we touch spiritual matters, we need to go to the origin of those spiritual matters. Even in this matter of communion, the origin must be God Himself.
God is the God of communion. Within the Godhead, God is triune. Though this is a great mystery and we cannot fully define it, we know that it is a reality.
God is three in one. Within the Godhead, the Father communes with the Son, and the Son communes with the Father.
From eternity to eternity, within God there is intimate fellowship and communion. There is no interruption. That communion is absolutely one and absolutely perfect.
Because our God is a God of communion, He desires us to commune with Him as well.
One of the natures of God is love. Love requires communion and fellowship. You cannot confine love to itself. Love seeks an object; love wants to give, not to keep.
Because God is love, He seeks the object that He can love, so that He may give Himself fully to the object of His love.
Even though our God is a mystery, He delights to reveal Himself to us. We cannot understand or know Him fully, because our capacity is limited. Yet according to our capacity, He willingly reveals as much of Himself to us as possible.
The reason He reveals Himself to us is that He desires to commune with us.
In Genesis 16, Hagar fled because she was harshly treated by her mistress. While she was wandering in the wilderness, the Lord appeared to her and asked, “Hagar, Sarai’s handmaid, whence camest thou? and whither goest thou?”
She answered that she was fleeing from the face of her mistress. The Lord told her to return, promised to bless her, and said that she would bear a son whose name would be Ishmael.
Hagar called the name of the Lord who spoke to her, “Thou art a God that seeth me.” He is the God who reveals Himself. He reveals Himself because He desires communion with us.
If you have no desire to fellowship with someone, you simply keep quiet. You keep everything to yourself. But whenever you desire to commune, you reveal yourself. To reveal yourself is to seek communion.
All of God’s works are His way of seeking communion with us.
When God created man, He created man according to His image and according to His likeness. Why did God create man in this way?
God created all things in the universe to declare His might and power, but His creation cannot commune with God Himself. God is Spirit; therefore, man must have a spirit.
When God created man according to His image and likeness, He not only gave us an outward physical body, by which we can contact our physical environment. He not only gave us a soul, by which we know our self-existence. He also gave us a spirit.
When God created man, He gave man a human spirit, and man became a living soul. Therefore, we can commune with God.
The purpose of creating man is that God might commune with man. Creation can manifest God’s power and His attributes, but it cannot commune with Him.
In the garden of Eden, God placed the tree of life. Man could eat of every tree in the garden, including the tree of life. But the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was forbidden, because in the day that man ate of it, he would surely die.
By forbidding the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, God was indicating that man ought to partake of the tree of life. His desire was that man would partake of that tree.
Once we eat of the tree of life, we partake of God’s very life. Then we have intimate fellowship and communion with God Himself. This was God’s thought for man.
Unfortunately, man sinned in the garden of Eden. Once man sinned, he feared to commune with God. Adam and Eve hid themselves among the trees of the garden. They were afraid to see God.
Whenever there is sin, communion is broken.
God came into the garden seeking man, and He asked, “Where art thou?” It was not that God did not know where Adam was. He knew that Adam was hiding. But from the depth of God’s heart, He cried out, “Man, where are you? I want to commune with you.”
When we sin, we suffer loss. But do we realize how great God’s loss is when we sin? God created us for fellowship and communion.
One great pain in sin is that the moment you sin, you become a very lonely person. Sin separates you from communion with other people. Externally, you may pretend something, but inwardly you become a lonely individual.
Sin separates us from God, but sin also separates us from our fellow human beings. You cannot openly express yourself. Like Adam, you hide yourself.
We lose a great deal because of sin, but we never realize how much God suffers because we sin.
What does death mean? According to a scientific definition, death is separation from one’s proper environment—the cessation of communication with that environment.
What is man’s proper spiritual environment? Our proper spiritual environment is God Himself.
When man became separated from his proper spiritual environment, he died spiritually. After Adam ate of the forbidden tree, he still lived many years and bore children. But in the eyes of God, he was already a dead person because he was separated from God Himself.
This does not mean that man has no spirit. The faculty is still there, but it is separated from communion with God. People may relate to evil spirits, but they cannot commune with the Holy Spirit because their proper spiritual environment has been cut off.
This is the greatest loss to man. Yet on God’s side, His loss is even greater, because our God is full of love and His heart longs for our fellowship.
Because we sinned, the righteous God could not commune with us anymore. But thank God, His heart still desired to commune with man.
God immediately prepared a way for man’s salvation. He provided the skin of an animal to cover Adam and Eve. The covering for Adam and Eve was the skin of an animal that had been sacrificed.
The way of recovery is by way of sacrifice.
God said that the seed of the woman would bruise the serpent’s head, and the serpent would bruise His heel. God immediately prepared a way for man to return to Him.
God wanted to redeem man back to Himself. We often say that God redeems us so that we will not go to hell and so that we may go to heaven. These are part of it.
But the reason God redeems us back to Himself is for the purpose of communion with us.
In the first man, communion between God and man was broken. Therefore, God raised up a second Man.
But when the fulness of the time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, that He might redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons.
—Galatians 4:4-5
The second Man is our Lord Jesus Christ. His name is Immanuel—God with us. In Him, God and man dwell together in communion and fellowship.
In the life of the Lord Jesus on earth, we see one special feature: there was uninterrupted communion with His Father. His fellowship with the Father was most intimate.
Though He came to this earth to be a man, His fellowship with the Father was never interrupted. In all things, He pleased His Father.
God opened heaven and declared:
This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.
—Matthew 3:17
In the first man, fellowship between God and man was broken. In the second Man, this communion was fully restored.
The life of the Lord Jesus shows us a life of communion with the Father. God desires that this fellowship should include all of us.
The Lord’s fellowship with the Father was never interrupted. But our fellowship with Him is often interrupted. Sometimes the interrupted period is longer than the time in which we truly commune with Him. This is not God’s desire for us.
God’s desire is that the communion between His Son and the Father should be fully expressed through us.
The Lord desired to please the Father in all things, and the Father declared, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” That fellowship was absolutely perfect and absolutely delightful.
There was no controversy in that communion. It was always, “Not My will, but Thy will.” This is the secret of how our Lord lived His life on earth.
He said, “He that sent Me is with Me; He hath not left Me alone; for I do always the things that are pleasing to Him.” That fellowship and communion were very beautiful.
Not only did the Lord commune with the Father in prayer; His communion with the Father was natural. Sometimes our prayer is unnatural. We make a speech.
Often, before we pray, we need a long quiet time because we have wandered so far away and need time to return to our home base. But when our Lord prayed, He prayed naturally, because His fellowship with the Father was never interrupted.
When the Lord was on the cross, He cried, “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?”
From eternity past until that moment on the cross, the communion between the Son and the Father had never been interrupted—not one minute, not one second.
From nine o’clock in the morning until noon, the Lord suffered greatly in His body. He wore the crown of thorns. His hands and feet were nailed to the cross. The suffering of the cross was indescribable.
Those around Him ridiculed and mocked Him. They said that if He was the Son of God, He should come down from the cross. As Psalm 22 describes, all the powers of darkness seemed concentrated against Him.
Yet even in that dire suffering, His communion with the Father was not interrupted. His fellowship with the Father was His strength. The Father was His comfort, His delight, and His strength.
Then the whole earth was covered with darkness, and He cried:
My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?
—Matthew 27:46
The fellowship between the Son and the Father was so intimate, so one in heart. Yet because the Father loves us and the Son loves us, They were willing together to make this sacrifice.
The Father was willing to crush His Son, but it hurt Him deeply. When the Son was rejected by the Father, the suffering of the Son was indescribable. This was the greatest pain in the universe.
In those three short hours, God the Father and God the Son paid the greatest cost in order to restore communion and fellowship.
At three o’clock in the afternoon, redemption was finished. The Lord cried loudly, “It is finished.”
Then He said:
Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit.
—Luke 23:46
His communion with the Father was restored.
In those three short hours, communion was cut off. The Lord Himself bore our sin on the cross. He was cut off from fellowship with God for us.
But when the redemptive work was finished, He gave His spirit back to God. Communion was restored.
Not only was fellowship between the Son and the Father restored, but because He did this for us, fellowship with God was restored also to all who believe in the Lord Jesus.
This is great redemptive grace. We were dead in sins, cut off from God, with no communion, no hope, and no God. Now we are restored to commune with God.
When we repent and believe in the Lord Jesus, the Holy Spirit quickens our dead spirit. The spirit that was dead becomes a new spirit, and the Holy Spirit comes to dwell in our spirit.
The Spirit Himself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are children of God.
—Romans 8:16
From the depth of our spirit, we cry, “Abba, Father.” Communion is restored.
This is the beginning of a life of communion. We have been born again; therefore, we can commune with God. This is indeed the greatest blessing.
What is God looking for? What is He after in His people? He is looking for our communion with Him.
Often, after we are saved, we try to love God by doing many things for Him every day. We go here and there. We become very busy, thinking that doing many things is the way to love Him.
But we can become so busy that we have no time to draw close to Him and no time to be quiet before Him.
Without realizing it, God may look at all that we do and be sad in His heart. He may say, “My child, you do not know what is in My heart. I do not need you to do many things for Me. What I want is you. I want you to be with Me. I want you to be near to Me.”
In Luke 10, the Lord told Martha, “Martha, Martha, thou art anxious and troubled about many things.” These were good things. She wanted to treat the Lord well. But she was distracted by many things.
Mary had chosen the one thing that was needed. She sat at the Lord’s feet, listened to His Word, and beheld His heart. Her heart was drawn to the Lord.
There is nothing that pleases the Lord more than our sitting at His feet. Fellowship and communion are far more important than anything else. They are foundational.
We see the saints of old and how they communed with God. Consider Abraham.
When the God of glory appeared to Abraham, he obeyed by faith and followed the Lord. Wherever he went, he built an altar.
The altar was the place where he called upon the name of the Lord, communed with Him, and drew near to Him. Because he was near to the Lord, he lived in a tent as a pilgrim on the earth.
Abraham was not seeking the pleasures of this world. Fellowship with God Himself satisfied him. He wanted to live as a stranger and pilgrim because he was seeking the city which has foundations, whose builder and maker is God.
Whenever Abraham became weak and looked at his environment, there was no altar and no tent. He went into Egypt. But when he was recovered, he returned to the altar and called upon the Lord.
In Genesis 18, when the Lord appeared to Abraham and he saw three men coming, he recognized the Lord immediately. He welcomed Him and said, in effect, “Please remain for a while with Your servant.”
The Lord accepted Abraham’s hospitality. Do not think that whenever we wish to welcome the Lord, He is always willing to come in that way. Lot was willing to entertain the Lord, but the Lord did not remain with him as He did with Abraham.
The Lord delighted in Abraham’s hospitality. After they had eaten, Abraham accompanied them on their journey. Scripture calls Abraham the friend of God.
God said, “Shall I hide from Abraham that which I do?” God unveiled His heart to Abraham, and Abraham understood what God was about to do. Then Abraham took up intercessory prayer for Sodom. That is fellowship.
Because Abraham had such communion with God, he was able to offer up Isaac. He knew that all God’s promises would be fulfilled through the seed, and that all nations would be blessed through that seed.
Consider David. He also lived a life of communion. Scripture tells us that he was a man after God’s own heart, who would do all His will.
How could David do all God’s will? Because he inquired of God in all things. Whenever he went out, he asked God. Even when he went into battle, he inquired of God. He was not controlled by the environment; he was controlled by God.
David lived in communion with God. In the evening and morning, he inquired of the Lord. Seven times a day, he praised the Lord.
The psalm that represents David’s heart is Psalm 27: “One thing have I asked from the Lord.” He was seeking one thing.
Do we ask for this one thing? When we pray, we ask for many things, yet we often neglect this very important thing.
David not only asked; he sought. He asked, and then he sought.
Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.
—Matthew 7:7
Often we ask and then forget about it. We think we never receive an answer. But after we ask, we need to seek.
What was David seeking? One thing—because this one thing is far more important than all other things.
He desired to dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of his life. Why? Because he desired to behold the beauty of the Lord.
If you want to behold someone, you must be close to that person. You cannot be far away in another place and behold that person’s face. You need to be together.
If you love a person, you can simply behold that person’s face. You do not need to say anything. Wordless fellowship is the sweetest fellowship.
David beheld the beauty of the Lord, and then he could inquire in His house. In the depth of his being, he heard the voice: “Seek ye My face.” His heart answered, “Thy face, Lord, will I seek.”
This is the greatest blessing for a believer.
“I want to see Your face. If I cannot behold Your smiling face, may I behold even Your angry face, because seeing Your angry face is better than not seeing Your face. If I cannot see Your face, it means that my heart is already far from You.”
May we be those who behold His face. Of course, to see His smiling face is most wonderful. Yet even if His face is displeased with us, it is still precious, because His displeasure can cause us to repent and be recovered.
There is nothing that compares with beholding the Lord’s face. May we be those who are willing to wait before Him.
This is our greatest blessing while we are still on earth. There is no blessing greater than this: to dwell in the house of the Lord, beholding His beauty and inquiring in His house.
To commune with God, there are conditions.
There is no communion between righteousness and unrighteousness. There is no fellowship between light and darkness.
God wants us to commune with Him, but to have fellowship there must be something in common. Fellowship means partnership, or sharing something in common. Where there is nothing in common, there is no fellowship.
If we want to fellowship with God, we must have something in common with Him.
If we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanseth us from all sin.
—1 John 1:7
God is light. This is His nature and character. In Him there is no darkness and no shadow of turning. He lives in the light.
We need to walk in the light. We need to walk in the light of His life.
Thank God, we have His life within us. This life shines. When the light within shines upon God’s Word, the written Word becomes a living Word to us. The Logos becomes rhema.
The truth written in the Bible becomes a living Word to us. This living Word works in our lives and causes us to see the darkness that we failed to see before.
Then we repent and confess, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin. Therefore, fellowship and communion need not be interrupted.
The light of God is absolute light. The light that shines in our hearts may still be very small and immature, but it is the same kind of light and the same nature of light. Therefore, there can be fellowship.
As we walk in the light, we are delivered from darkness. The blood of Jesus cleanses us from all sin, and the life within us grows. Our fellowship becomes more real, closer, and purer.
God is also righteous.
If ye know that He is righteous, ye know that every one also that doeth righteousness is begotten of Him.
—1 John 2:29
When we believe, we are justified. But every day we need to express His life within us, and the expression of His life is righteousness. If we walk in righteousness, fellowship will not be interrupted.
God is love. If we want to fellowship with the God who is love, we must love also. If we hate our brothers, how can we fellowship with God? We are still in darkness.
The conditions for communion are clear: we need to walk in the light, practice righteousness, and love. If we do this, our fellowship will not be interrupted.
There are many ways in which we can fellowship. Communion is not something external; it is within the spirit. Yet it has many expressions.
Our worship is a way of communion. We come into His presence, lift our hearts in praise, and behold Him. We look upon His beauty. That is communion.
Romans 12 tells us to offer our bodies as a living sacrifice. This is what God delights in. It is our spiritual service and our spiritual worship.
If we offer ourselves to God every day, our whole life becomes a life of worship. Worship is not confined to the Lord’s Day. Every day is worship.
Our whole life is a life of worship. Communion is worship, and worship is communion.
Often we think prayer is simply asking. But prayer is really communion with God. If we do not commune with Him first, how can we ask? We will not know what to ask, and even if we ask, we may ask amiss.
Before we ask, we must learn to commune with Him, because we need to know what is in His heart. Prayer is communion. We pour out our heart before Him, and that is communion with God.
Reading God’s Word is also communion. We do not read merely for knowledge; we meditate on His Word and allow Him to speak to us. That is communion.
There are many ways to commune with God. Sometimes communion is wordless, and sometimes we use words. Sometimes, when we have no words, that fellowship is even sweeter than using words. But it is all communion.
There is nothing more important than our communion with God Himself. This is our lifeline.
In warfare, once communication is interrupted, the war is already won. The same is true in spiritual warfare.
The aim of our adversary is to cut off our communication with the Lord Himself. If he succeeds in doing that, we fail. But if we maintain that fellowship and communication, our adversary fails.
There is nothing more important than this.
Let me say something from my younger days for the young brothers and sisters.
Shortly after I was saved, a group of brothers and I were on fire for the Lord. We went to villages to preach the gospel.
Shortly afterward, God placed me in a very different environment, as though I had been put into an icebox. There was no fellowship, no brothers and sisters, and no one with whom I could fellowship. I was all by myself at the university.
I lived in a dormitory, with three people sharing one room. It was a secular school. There were no meetings that I knew of, nowhere to go, and no one with whom I could communicate.
Only God’s mercy preserved me.
Every day I communed with Him. That was my life. I knelt down in my room and read His Word. People walked in and out, but I was not distracted by all those activities.
I felt that if I could not maintain this life before the Lord, I would be a great failure.
Because of that, I was preserved. The Lord protected me.
The surroundings of this world keep changing. Sometimes we are in an atmosphere where the love of the saints carries us forward. Then one day, our circumstances change and we are by ourselves.
If we have never cultivated personal communion with God, how can we stand for Him?
Brothers and sisters, we need to learn to commune with the Lord Himself. All other things may be let go, but we must persist in this life of communion with Him.
Every day, this life must never be broken. If that is the case, the adversary is already defeated.
Lord, we thank You because You so earnestly desire fellowship and communion with us. Lord, we pray that You will create in us a passion to commune with You.
We pray that there will be no interruption as we commune with You. Lord, do not allow the enemy to cut off this line of life. We ask in Jesus’ name.