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Apprehending the Unsearchably-Rich Christ
I received the Lord as my personal Savior, and was baptized, as a child. My parents were sincere, devoted believers in Christ who spent time praying and reading the Bible daily, and brought my siblings and me with them to: Sunday school, the Lord’s supper meeting, a gospel meeting, a Bible reading and studying meeting and a prayer meeting every week. Between ages 13 and 16 I read the Bible completely through, one chapter each morning. For the remainder of my high school years I read a chapter of Proverbs, plus either something from the Psalms or from the New Testament, every day.
During my first year in college, I visited 13 different congregations of various denominations (several of them on a rotational basis), participated actively in the Baptist Student Union, occasionally with the Church of Christ campus group and infrequently with a Pentecostal-type campus group. Besides this, I practiced weekly and sang at concerts with a Christian black choir on campus.
During this time, I met some believers who focused on enjoying the Lord and showed me in the Scripture that I have a human spirit (I Cor. 2:11, Job 32:8, Zech. 12:1, Pro. 20:27) and that, through believing, this was where the Lord and I were joined (I Cor. 6:17). This was a big help to me. I had never before known that, through my receiving of the Lord, I was one spirit with Him. Furthermore, I began to enjoy the Lord practically in fellowship with these believers by means of praying (Eph. 6:18), singing Scripture-rich hymns (Matt. 26:30) and songs (Cor. 3:16), praying the words of the Bible (Eph. 6:17-18a) and calling upon the Lord. By enjoying the Lord practically in these ways, I sensed that Christ was growing in me.
Beside this enjoyment, God’s intention for Himself was clarified to me through fellowship with these believers. Before that time, most of the things I had heard and learned concerning God, Christ, the Spirit, salvation, and God’s will had been merely unrelated truths. Finally, after seeing in the Bible, God’s goal and His plan to obtain it, all the pieces of Bible truth began to fit together. Hallelujah! God intends to head up all things in Christ (Eph. 1:10). He begins this by heading up the church, which is His body. As all His believers together take Him as their source, His body grows to become His fullness, so that He may be fully expressed in the universe and ultimately have complete dominion over it. Two books, which helped open up the Bible for me at that time, were Love Not the World by Watchman Nee and God’s New Testament Economy by Witness Lee. In both of these books I was enthralled with the “straight cutting” (2 Tim. 2:15) of the word of the truth in the Bible. I was also deeply impressed with the practical applications of the revelation in these books.
For the last 13+ years I have continued in this fellowship and have enjoyed my relationship with the Lord and with such believers from many cities and even other countries. I have also enjoyed an increasingly clearer and more detailed revelation of the truths in the Bible. “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.”
N.P.
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