THE WORD OF CHRIST DWELLING IN US FOR OUR SPEAKING
You may have the faith, you may have the spirit, and you may have the Holy Spirit as well, but when you try to speak, you feel that you have nothing to speak about. Of course, you say that you are short of experiences. That is right, but I would say that you are short not only of experiences but also of the word of Christ. Colossians 3:16 says, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly.” You have to notice that in this verse Paul says, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you.” This kind of tone indicates that the word of Christ is here waiting for you to let it come into you. It seems that a person is waiting here, waiting for you to let Him in. Years ago when I read this verse, I did not agree with this kind of tone. Why does Paul say, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you”? The indication here is that today the living word of Christ is waiting for you to let it in. This word is personified as a living person…Paul says, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you,” and the New Testament tells us that Christ is the Word. Not only so, the Spirit also is the Word (Eph. 6:17). The Word, Christ, the Spirit, and God—these four actually are one. These are four synonyms referring to this same one person. God is Christ, Christ is the Spirit, the Spirit is the Word, and the Word is God, Christ, and the Spirit. Therefore, the Word is a living person. Paul does not say the word of some other one or other thing. He says the word of Christ. Surely this is the organic Word, the living Word, the Word which exists as a living person. This Word is waiting to get into you. You have to open up yourself and let Him in.
Colossians 3:16 continues, “Teaching and admonishing one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs.” If you read this verse carefully, you can see some controversy here. First it is the word, yet eventually it is a psalm or a hymn. The principle is this: if you do not speak a certain word very many times, that word could never be a psalm or a song. Whatever becomes a psalm or a hymn has to be a word that you have been speaking once, twice, three times, four times, many, many times—then that word will become a psalm. You cannot write a song unless you compose it with the words spoken by you repeatedly. The same word spoken by you again and again eventually becomes a poem, a song, a hymn, or a psalm. For instance, Hymns, #499 says, “Oh, what a life! Oh, what a peace! / The Christ who’s all within me lives.” This is poetry composed by me. I had been speaking this for years. “The Christ who’s all within me lives. With Him I have been crucified…Now it’s no longer I that live, but Christ the Lord within me lives.” I had been speaking the next verse also. “Christ now is being formed in me. His very nature and life divine in my whole being inwrought shall be. All that I am came to an end, and all of Christ is all to me.” I had been speaking this, so eventually it became a song. This indicates that we have to let the word of the Lord dwell in us to such an extent that it eventually becomes a song, a hymn, or a psalm. Psalms are long poems, hymns are shorter ones, and spiritual songs are the shortest.
The word of Christ is personified; it is a living person who is waiting for you to let Him in. Once you let Him in, He becomes your speaking again and again. Eventually, this speaking will become poetry with rhythm and rhyme. Sometimes, when you begin to speak for the Lord, you feel awkward. When you speak the worldly things, which you have been speaking for many years, you can utter them like a song, like a psalm with rhythm and rhyme. But after being saved only two weeks, when you began to speak Christ, it was somewhat awkward. We have to let the word of Christ as a person dwell in us, and we have to speak this word fluently until we become accustomed to it, and it becomes like poetry in our speaking. We all have to learn to speak Christ, and we have to learn to become accustomed to speaking Christ. We need to become accustomed to it to such an extent that whatever we say will be a kind of poetry—a song, a psalm, and a hymn. Likewise, we speak the healthy words (1 Tim. 6:3). (CWWL, 1985, vol. 3, “The Home Meetings–the Unique Way for the Increase and the Building Up of the Church”, pp. 162-163)
The church in Zamboanga 