«　WEEK 7　DAY 3　»

　　Eph. 4:30 And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, in whom you were sealed unto the day of redemption.

　　1 Thes. 5:16-19 Always rejoice, unceasingly pray, in everything give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. Do not quench the Spirit.

　　Every day in the morning you must go to the Lord, saying, “Lord, thank You that I am here. Fill me up. Saturate me. Soak me. I want to be soaked in You and with You.” We need such a prayer. It is not too much to have this kind of prayer three times a day. I advise the young people to have this prayer ten times daily. The more we pray this way, the better. People may teach you that you should not eat so much, but no one has ever taught you not to breathe too much. Your breathing should not be reduced. Rather, you had better exercise to have more breathing and to breathe deeply. To pray in this way is to gain the oil in your vessel. (CWWL, 1985, vol. 5, “The Way to Practice the Lord's Present Move,” p. 510)

　　Ephesians 4:30 tells us not to grieve the Holy Spirit of God. Do not make Him unhappy. The Holy Spirit who is now sealing us unto the redemption of our body is in us. We must make Him happy. Because He has really joined us with Him as one (1 Cor. 6:17), when we are unhappy, this indicates that He is unhappy. If you do not come to the meeting, or if you come and do not function, this makes the Spirit unhappy. At the end of the day you may not feel so good, but when you come to the meeting and function in it, you feel so happy. This means that the Holy Spirit is happy within you. If you do not feel happy, this is an indication that you have grieved Him. Why have you grieved Him? Because you did not buy Him. You did not pay the price for Him. He is the oil.

　　First Thessalonians 5:19 says, “Do not quench the Spirit.” Sometimes we even go further not only to grieve Him but also to quench Him. Sometimes we may tell the Lord to tolerate us for a certain time and not to inspire us. We may know that the Spirit is moving within us, but we may not like it. To quench the Spirit is to reject the buying of the oil. In many things we do not buy the Spirit, so we miss the chance to accumulate more and more of the Spirit in our being.

　　Nearly the last charge in the entire New Testament is to walk according to the spirit (Rom. 8:4), which is our human spirit mingled with God's Holy Spirit (cf. v. 16), our mingled spirit. To walk means “to live, to act, to behave, to do things, to have our being.” We have to have our being according to the spirit, and this is to buy the Spirit. Our thinking and our speaking, the expression of our attitude, should be according to the spirit. If you are having your being according to the spirit, this is to buy the Spirit. But to walk, to have your being according to the spirit, needs us to pay a great price. You may need to stop your excessive talking on the telephone and stop your further reading of the newspaper from the first page to the next.

　　My burden is to fellowship with you that you may rise up to live a life of always buying an extra portion of the oil by not wasting your time in doing anything. If you do something, and you feel that it is a waste of time, you had better stop doing it. Use that time to contact the Lord, to pray. This is to watch unto prayer. To be watchful is not to let your time go, not to waste your time, but to take every time as a chance to buy the oil. To buy the oil is the best way to redeem our time, for the days are short....All of us need to live such a life of buying the oil daily, even hourly. We need to buy the oil in the way we dress, shop, talk, and live. In everything we must be serious and consider the solemn parable given by the Lord Jesus in Matthew 25:1-13....This is a lifelong matter, not an overnight matter....The one thing that the Lord needs and that we need is to rise up to pay the price to buy the oil all the time in all the matters in our daily life. (CWWL, 1985, vol. 5, “The Way to Practice the Lord's Present Move,” pp. 530-533)

　　Further Reading: CWWL, 1985, vol. 5, “The Way to Practice the Lord's Present Move,” ch. 9