For many years I have been taught, helped, and even strengthened to enjoy the Lord in such a way. This is why we should not focus on the doctrines, the teachings, and the gifts, but we should focus our entire being on the Lord Himself. We should learn to enjoy Him, to contact Him, to eat Him, to partake of Him. The Lord said, “He who eats Me, he also shall live because of Me” (John 6:57). We must learn to know the Lord in such an experiential way, day by day tasting Him and being satisfied with Him. We need to be saturated with the fatness of His house, saturated and permeated with His sweetness.
THE ISSUE OF OUR ENJOYMENT OF THE LORD
If we enjoy the Lord in this way, this enjoyment will create a deep hunger within us for the Lord’s heart’s desire, His dwelling place. This enjoyment will stir us up to pray, “Lord, bring me fully into the experience of the church life. Keep me in Your courts and in Your house all the days of my life.” The enjoyment of the Lord will bring you into the church life, and the church life will cause you to enjoy Him even more as the fountain of life and the source of light. Sometimes people asked us where we received all our light from. They wondered what books we studied to get this light from the Word. Actually, the light we have received is from the living Lord Himself in the church. In the church the Bible is an open book. The church is typified by the tabernacle. Within the tabernacle is the table of the bread of the Presence, which is the source, the fountain, of life, and the lampstand, which is the source of light. Life and light [112] are both in the house of the Lord, in the church, God’s building. This life and light are inexhaustible in the church. In the Lord’s house the light even floods in, as the psalmist said, “In Your light we see light” (Psa. 36:9).
The issue of the enjoyment of the tree of life is the tabernacle, the house of the Lord. If we enjoy Him in such a living and real way as the tree of life, we will have the tabernacle, and we will be in the house of the Lord. At that time we will be able to say that we are saturated with the fatness of the house of the Lord. We will enjoy Him as the fountain of life and the source of light. We will only desire to dwell in His house all the days of our life and will have a full realization that a day in His courts is better than a thousand. We will be like the sparrow that has found a house and the swallow that has found a nest for herself where she may lay her young at the two altars of the house (84:3). The church life will be our resting place and a nest to take care of the younger ones whom we have brought to the Lord. Thank and praise the Lord for the fatness of His house.