"The principle of being a Christian is to let Christ mature in us.... We must follow this principle so that Christ within us may possess us, govern us, and control us."
"Christ controls, possesses, and governs us in and through the Spirit. Therefore, we must pursue the infilling of the Spirit."
"Salvation and the life of God are given to us freely, but the infilling of the Spirit is not. To gain the infilling of the Spirit we have to pay the price. How much of the infilling of the Spirit we gain depends on how much of the price we pay."
"How do we pay the price?... We pay the price by giving the Spirit the ground in us."
"What is to pay the price? It is to empty our vessel for God to come in."
"Before we were saved, we lived in the world and were our own masters. We did not give the Lord any ground and did not care about His authority."
"In the Gospels, the Lord repeatedly asked people to leave everything, to sell all that they had, and the deny the self to follow HIm. What the Lord really meant was that if we want to become His disciples, follow Him, and gain Him as salvation, the first criterion is that we must leave everything.... To leave everything does not mean to abandon everything and to care for nothing. Rather, it means that all these things no longer have the ground in us because the ground in us have been given to Christ.... It means that we do not allow anything other than the Lord to occupy us.... We have to empty out our hearts for Christ."
"The source of all our problems lies in whether or not we are willing to give Christ the ground."
"What the Lord is fighting for is His authority and ground. Are the authority and the ground in your hands or in the Lord's hands?"
2 Short Stories:
"There was a brother whose clothing was very valuable, but his clothing did not occupy him and was not his world. Under the natural arrangement of God, he had a certain status and position to live this kind of a life, but those things did not have any ground in him. He did not love the world. This is the principle of living in the world. On the contrary, someone who may be very poor may want this thing or that thing. This is to love the world."
"Some fifty years ago in a Western country, there was a group of saints who were pursuing the infilling of the Spirit. One of them was a sister who loved the Lord very much and who was also pursuing in the infilling of the Spirit.... She felt that she had given the Lord the ground in her. It seemed that the Lord could do whatever He wanted to do in her except deal with her hair. During that time in the West, the most fashionable way for a woman to arrange her hair was to set it up very high, like a tower. This sister allowed the Lord to touch everything she had except her tower-like hair. When she had the feeling that the Lord wanted to deal with her hair, she told the Lord, "Lord, if You touch my money, I am willing to offer it. If You want me to deal with my sins, I am willing to do it. However, my hair is really an insignificant matter, so please leave me alone." We can see that this sister's hairstyle was not sinful, nor was she loving the world by having the hairstyle.... The problem is that man likes to reason. Who can say that setting one's hair very high is loving the world, while cutting one's hair very short so that it looks like neither a man's nor a woman's is not loving the world? The question we must ask is, who has the authority? Is the authority over your hair in your hands or in the Lord's hands? Who is the master of your head—you or the Lord?
Our reasons may be very plausible, but the Lord never listens to our reasoning. In a sense, He is unreasonable. Our "lawsuits" with the Lord are always one-sided. There are no plaintiffs and defendants. There is only His side. Whatever He says, that is it. There is nothing to argue about. During a meeting, the sister mentioned earlier came and, kneeling down, cried out loudly, "Lord, why do You not answer my prayers? Why have you not filled me with the Spirit? Lord, I have been so desperate. I have been praying and waiting. Whatever You wanted me to do I did. Why have You not given me the filling of the Spirit?" Then the Lord answered her, "Have you done all that I asked you to do? What about your hair?" She was speechless. On that day she knelt down and pulled her hair down. Then she received the infilling of the Spirit. Once her hair was subject to the Lord, she was immediately filled with the Spirit. This is to pay the price.
What the Lord wants is not our wealth, our time, and our everything. What He wants is for us to allow Him to question us about everything.... What the Lord is fighting for is His authority and ground. Are the authority and the ground in your hands or in the Lord's hands?"