Watchman Nee’s Sit, Walk, Stand is a spectacular little book that offers great insight into the Christian life. Nee draws from the book of Ephesians, which he sees broken down into three sections:
(1) Our Position in Christ (1:1-3:21)—SIT
(2) Our Life in the World (4:1-6:9)—WALK
(3) Our Attitude to the Enemy (6:10-24)—STAND.
Here are some excerpts (primarily from the SIT chapter). We must remember that Christian life is a work of God from start to finish...sheer grace. May we truly believe this!
Christianity does not begin with walking; it begins with sitting….Most Christians make the mistake of trying to walk in order to be able to sit, but that is a reversal of the true order….Christianity is a queer business! If at the outset we try to do anything, we get nothing; if we seek to attain something, we miss everything. For Christianity begins not with a big DO, but with a big DONE….we are invited at the very outset to sit down and enjoy what God has done for us; not to set out to try and attain it for ourselves. (14)
The Christian life from start to finish is based upon this principle of utter dependence upon the Lord Jesus….we only advance in the Christian life as we learn first of all to sit down….When we walk or stand we bear on our legs all the weight of our own body, but when we sit down our entire weight rests upon the chair or couch on which we sit. We grow weary when we walk or stand, but we feel rested when we have sat down for a while. In walking or standing we expend a great deal of energy, but when we are seated we relax at once, because the strain no longer falls upon our muscles and nerves but upon something outside of ourselves. (15)
I received everything not by walking but by sitting down, not by doing but by resting in the Lord….No Christian experience begins with walking, but always with a definite sitting down. The secret of deliverance from sin is not to do something but to rest on what God has done. (18, 22)
God is waiting till you cease to do. When you cease doing, then God will begin. Have you ever tried to save a drowning man? The trouble is that his fear prevents him trusting himself to you. When that is so, there are just two ways of going about it. Either you must knock him unconscious and then drag him to the shore, or else you must leave him to struggle and should until his strength gives way before you go to his rescue. If you try to save him while he has any strength left, he will clutch at you in his terror and drag you under, and both he and you will be lost. God is waiting for your store of strength to be utterly exhausted before he can deliver you. Once you have ceased to struggle, he will do everything. God is waiting for you to despair. (23)
OH, MAY WE BELIEVE THIS...
God is so wealthy that his chief delight is to give. His treasure-stores are so full that it is pain to him when we refuse him an opportunity of lavishing those treasures upon us….It is a grief to the heart of God when we try to provide things for him. He is so very, very rich. It gives him true joy when we just let him give and give and give again to us. It is a grief to him, too, when we try to do things for him, for he is so very, very able. He longs that we will just let him do and do and do. He wants to be the Giver eternally, and he wants to be the Doer eternally. If only we saw how rich and how great he is, we would leave all the giving and all the doing to him….Just you stop “giving,” and you will prove what a Giver God is! Stop “working,” and you will discover what a Worker he is!....When we come to an end of our works, his work begins. (24-25, 69)
God never asks us to do anything we can do. He asks us to live a life which we can never live and to do a work which we can never do. Yet, by his grace, we are living it and doing it. The life we live is the life of Christ lived in the power of God, and the work we do is the work of Christ carried on through us by his Spirit whom we obey. Self is the only obstruction to that life and to that work. (69)
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