“The highest profession on earth is to spend time being infused with God that we may shine forth God. This is far greater than doing anything for God.” – Witness Lee, Life Study of Exodus, p. 738
The highest profession on earth: This quote begins by challenging our personal value system: what profession do we esteem most highly? Doctors or nurses? Professors or teachers? Scholars, scientists, or statesmen? Perhaps a more enlightened Christian might say that “doing the will of God” or “serving God” is the highest profession on earth. However as we’ll consider below, even higher than doing something for God is to spend time “beholding and reflecting like a mirror the glory of the Lord” (2 Cor 3:18).
It’s also revealing that Brother Witness Lee uses the word “profession” to describe the activity of being infused with God. “Profession” implies a learned occupation, requiring focused attention and a foundation of specialized education. In the coming weeks we’ll explore the numerous facets, experiences and even skills related to this highest profession. Perhaps the first practical reminder is simply to spend time in the Lord’s presence to be infused with Him.
Spending time: For 40 days, Moses stayed with God on Mount Sinai. For 40 days, he didn’t eat, drink, or sleep — nor did he have any people, matters or things to distract him. For 40 days, Moses was alone with God, and notably God did not tell him to do anything. Instead, God infused Moses with Himself until the face of Moses shone with the light of God. This account impresses us not only for the sheer length of time spent, but also for the carefully designed privacy for Moses to be alone with God (Exo. 34:2-3).
It’s no surprise that as our human lives go on, we find that work, school, family, and even church-related obligations squeeze out other activities from our schedules. Unfortunately, often one of the first things to go is spending face-time alone with the Lord. This may create an inward uneasiness; we may be bothered that how we spend our time does not match what we value. However we are practically challenged to spend regular, intimate, and focused time with the Lord.
Despite a hurried, harried schedule, have you found practical ways to linger with the Lord privately? How are you able to allocate time to this highest profession on earth?
To be infused with God: While our natural instinct as believers is to do something for God, we’re helped to realize that mankind’s first day of existence on earth was God’s seventh day, a day of rest (Gen. 2:2-3). Man’s first activity was not to join in God’s work or labor for Him, but rather to rest with God and to be satisfied with Him.
How can we rest with God and be infused with God? A primary means is through prayer. We’re reminded of this classic passage from Lessons on Prayer: “The significance of prayer is to contact God in our spirit and to absorb God Himself. Prayer is the human spirit contacting the Spirit of God, through which man absorbs God. Therefore, the significance of prayer lies…in contacting and absorbing God.”
To shine forth God: The result of Moses receiving God’s infusing was that his face shone with the light of God (Exo. 34:24-35). Similarly, the result of God shining into our hearts through prayer is that we shine forth God’s light on others, and “illuminate the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Cor 4:6).
This “beholding and reflecting…the glory of the Lord” (2 Cor. 3:18) is first for us to be infused and enlightened by the Lord, and second to enable others to see God through us. As we contact the Lord and absorb Him, spontaneously God shines through us onto others. As Brother Ron Kangas elucidated in the Winter Training, “the degree to which the Lord shines out of us depends on the degree to which He shines into us.”
As many of us go forth to gospelize, truthize, and churchize America, let’s be excercised to spend adequate time to be infused with God through prayer, that the Lord may shine out of us to illuminate the gospel of the glory of Christ!
Amen! I was reminded of Mary sitting at the Lord’s feet, just spending time before Him. While this troubled her sister, Martha, who was very busy serving; spending this time still before the Lord may be the reason only Mary understood that the Lord’s death was approaching and therefore she anointed him with the costly nard. It’s interesting that this act was so effective, it remains an eternal memorial to her. We can only speculate as to the services Martha was engaged in. Many times our need is just the “one thing”, and in this one thing we become clear how the Lord should manifest through us.
Lord, usher us all into the highest profession on earth!
Amen! Do usher us all to the highest profession on earth. May we fight to maintain this profession, spending enough precious and valuable time with God to receive His infusion to absorb Him to reflect and express Him spontaneously.
Oh Lord, cause us to be absolutely dissatisfied if we do not maintain this highest profession.
Now this is eternal life : that they know you, the only true God and Jesus Christ , whom you have sent, said John In 17:3.
When meditate “ know” in the verse, how are we to know Him?
He is revealed in Christ Jesus on the earth how He interact with God, how he had shown His character in his doing, etc.
When we reflect Jesus by infused with Words and prayer we come to get to know Him .