Genuine Worship in Spirit, David Miniel

Not long after hearing the gospel of repentance from sin in 1971, my interest was drawn to the matter of the gifts of the Holy Spirit. There were some small Christian groups that I was acquainted with whose focus was either that the gifts were necessary or that they were just a distraction.

One weekend I attended a conference in Vallyermo, California at a Benedictine Monastery, on the baptism in the Holy Spirit, and I was stirred up to find more written on the subject. That was when I found the book The Latent Power of the Soul by Watchman Nee. By reading this book I found the key to experience the spiritual reality that I was looking for in these so-called gifts of the Spirit. I saw the trilogy of spirit, soul, and body. We, the believers in Christ who are born of the Spirit, can contact Him only with our enlivened spirit. This revelation was made clear to me as I read this book.

My desire was to experience a deeper contact with God and the genuine oneness of the believers. I looked for some groups of people with this practice and experience but every group seemed unspiritual to me, and some were even so exclusive as to subdivide themselves from the others. The oneness took a long time to find.

Ten years had passed and I came to Fresno, sort of running away from everything I was used to, desiring a new start. I still could not find a group of people who cared for the genuine oneness or the exercise of the spirit when worshipping. I was miserable.

Then one day I met someone who shared my love for the books written by Watchman Nee. He told me about a book library at the local church where he fellowshipped with others who took the way found in these books.

What I felt when I came to my first meeting of the local church was a genuine love for God and for His purpose. These believers had dropped everything that was not the unique contacting of God as the Spirit with their open and enlivened human spirit. When I meet with them, the sweetness of the Lord's presence is so real and true that I just know within me that God is pleased.