FIRST DAY. The Abiding Presence.
第一日 在 基 督 裏
“Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.”––MATT. xxviii. 20.
When the Lord chose His twelve disciples, it was “that they should be with Him, and that He might send them forth to preach” (Mark iii. I4). A life in fellowship with Himself was to be their preparation and their fitness for the work of preaching.
So deeply were the disciples conscious of this having been their great privilege, that when Christ spoke of His leaving them to go to the Father, their hearts were filled with great sorrow. The presence of Christ had become indispensable to them; they could not think of living without Him. To comfort them, Christ gave them the promise of the Holy Spirit, with the assurance that they then would have Himself in His heavenly presence, in a sense far deeper and more intimate than they ever had known on earth. The law of their first vocation remained unchanged: to be with Him, to live in unbroken fellowship with Him, would be the secret of power to preach and to testify of Him.
When Christ gave them the Great Commission to go into all the world and to preach the Gospel to every creature, He added the words: “Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.”
For all time the principle is to hold good for all His servants that without the experience of His presence ever abiding with them, their preaching would have no power. The secret of their strength would be the living testimony that Jesus Christ was every moment with them, inspiring and directing and strengthening them. It was this that made them so bold in preaching Him as the Crucified One in the midst of His enemies. They never for a moment regretted His bodily absence; they had Him with them, and in them, in the divine power of the Holy Spirit.
In all the work of the minister and the missionary, everything depends on the consciousness, through a living faith, of the abiding presence of the Lord with His servant, the living experience of the presence of Jesus as an essential element in preaching the Gospel. If this be clouded, work becomes a human effort, without the freshness and the power of the heavenly life. And nothing can bring back the power and the blessing but a return to the Master’s feet, for Him to breathe into the heart, in divine power, His blessed word: “Lo, I am with you always!”
“我就常與你們同在，直到世界的末了。”（太二十八；20）
當年主揀選十二位門徒，目的是要：“他們常和祂自己同在，也要差他們去傳道。”（可三：14）與祂在一起交通的生活，為的是要預備適應其傳道工作。
當主宣佈要離世回到父神那裏，門徒多麼傷心的時候，祂給了他們心靈深處何等大的特權，基督同在是他們生活之中不可少的一環，他們無法想像離了基督的情形。將天上和祂有與世無比親密關係的聖靈賜下，最能安慰門徒的心，工作上最要緊的原則仍未改變：與祂同在，有無法破壞的交通，是得能為主作見證的訣要。
當耶穌賜給他們要往普天下去，傳福音給萬民聽的大使命之際，又加上：“我要常與你們同在，直到世界末了”的應許。
無論何時均不更改事奉與行善的原則，若非有在基督裏的經驗，就沒有傳道的能力，在生活中見證主的能力來實行每時每刻與祂交通，直接領受啟示的經驗，並使他們願意傳福音給釘死主的仇敵，祂每時刻都與他們同在，以聖靈的能力住在他們裏面。
所有差傳事工，都需要以堅強活潑的信心，深深依靠主內在的經驗，耶穌同在的經驗是傳福音的原動力，若非在更新屬天的生命就成了人為的努力，這是毫無能力，所以我們應謙卑回到主的腳前，讓祂有福“我永遠與你們同在”的應許啟示在我們的心坎裏。
