Week of 23 August 2020
The Will of God (8) — Meeting to Know and Do the Will of God
To meet is to know and do the will of God; our goal, our purpose, on earth is to do the will of the Father. We need to realize that besides our inner life with the Lord, nothing is as crucial, important, and profitable as the church meetings. As indicated by the Greek word ekklesia, the church—the dwelling place of God—is a meeting or an assembly of the called-out ones. Our Father has predestinated us to meet together; coming to the meetings is God's will. The Christian life is a meeting life. Much of the grace that we receive is in the meetings, and much of the work that the Lord does is also in the meetings. Hence, we should regard the meetings as being of great importance.
In the meetings God makes His will known to us. Doing God's will depends on knowing His will. When the psalmist went into the sanctuary of God, he was able to know God's will. God's sanctuary, His habitation, is in our spirit and in the church. In order to go into the sanctuary of God, we need to turn to our spirit and go to the meetings of the church. Once we are in the sanctuary—in the spirit and in the meetings of the church—we receive another view, a particular perception, of our situation. Hence, God's way is made known in the sanctuary of God.
Since the will of God is in Christ, concentrated in Christ, and for Christ, and Christ is everything in the will of God, we do God's will through exhibiting Christ in the meetings. The will of God for us is that we would experience and enjoy the all-inclusive Christ and live Him as our life. We exhibit Christ in the meetings by offering to God Christ as the reality of the offerings, enjoying Christ together with God. We need to function in the meetings to exhibit Christ. Many believers do not bear responsibility in the meetings. This is a fundamental error. It is a ploy of Satan to render the members of the Body of Christ useless so that they do not function. As Christians, we are members of Christ, and our most important service is to meet.
Since the Father's eternal will and the desire of His heart are to build up the church as the Body of Christ, we do His will by functioning in the meetings according to the scriptural way to meet for the building up of the Body. The recovery according to the Lord's mind is to bring His believers out of the clergy-laity system and to replace this system with the scriptural way to meet and to serve for the building up of the Body of Christ.
The Lord desires to recover the church meetings in mutuality with all functioning for the building up of the Body of Christ. To achieve this, before coming to a meeting, we should prepare ourselves for the meeting with something from the Lord or of the Lord, either through our experience of Him or through our enjoyment of His word and fellowship with Him in prayer. We must labor on Christ, our good land, so that we may reap some produce of His riches to bring to the church meeting and offer. Thus, the meeting will be an exhibition of His riches and will be a mutual enjoyment of Christ shared with all the attendants before God and with God for the building up of the saints and the church.
The significance of prophesying in 1 Corinthians 14 is to speak for the Lord, to speak forth the Lord, and even to speak the Lord, to minister, to dispense, the Lord, into others; in the sense of the divine dispensing, the entire Bible consummates in all prophesying. God desires that each of the believers prophesy, for the organic building up of the church as the Body of Christ.
(Source:https://www.churchintaipei.org/weeklynews/archive/1135.pdf )
The Meetings Being an Exhibition
The way we function in the meetings depends on the way we live our life. First Corinthians says that Christ is the portion given to us by God (1:2), and Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God (v. 24), who became righteousness, sanctification, and redemption to us (v. 30). He is everything to us. Christ is the First and the Last. He is the first One raised from among the dead, and He is also the last Adam (15:20, 45). He is also the second man (v. 47). After He accomplished redemption, He became the life-giving Spirit so that we may be joined to Him as one spirit (v. 45; 6:17). Now we are learning to live by our mingled spirit. Our living is to experience and enjoy Christ in our spirit. This is to live by our spirit. Our meetings are an exhibition of this living. Christian meetings are the exhibition of our Christian life.
The meetings are an exhibition of our living when we use a strong spirit to exhibit the Christ we have experienced. Christ is the “harvest” that we exhibit. Hence, we must pay attention to two important points: our spirit must be strong, and Christ must be our content. We need a released spirit, and we must be filled with the riches of our experience of Christ. This is a basic principle.
First Corinthians 2:1-2 shows how Paul was among the Corinthians: “I, when I came to you, brothers, came not according to excellence of speech or of wisdom, announcing to you the mystery of God. For I did not determine to know anything among you except Jesus Christ, and this One crucified.” Paul’s speech and proclamation were “not in persuasive words of wisdom but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power” (v. 4). He did everything according to the expression and demonstration of the Spirit. His speech was simple, not eloquent, but it expressed the Spirit. His speaking was the expression and demonstration of the Spirit and of power.
When Paul was with the Corinthians, his spirit was strong, but his speech was not eloquent, nor did he express human wisdom. When he opened his mouth, his spirit came forth. He did not express eloquence, literary attainments, or philosophy; rather, he demonstrated his spirit. The content of the demonstration of his spirit was not mathematics, science, or philosophy; it was Christ. Christ was Paul’s content. This should be a pattern for our meetings. When Paul was with the Corinthians, he demonstrated a strong spirit, and Christ was his content. In the same principle, we should have a strong spirit, and Christ must be our content in our meetings.
Our spirit must be strong, and it is released through our speaking. The content of our speaking should not be stories about our daily affairs, nor should we relate how gracious God has been to us or how we have received His care. The content of our speaking should be Christ, the mystery of God. We should minister Christ with a strong spirit. This is the meaning of prophesying. Our speaking in the meetings is to exhibit, to display, the Christ we have experienced. In this way we present Him as our offering to God and, at the same time, supply Him as food to others. Furthermore, we also enjoy Him. This is the meaning of prophesying.
(CWWL, 1970, vol. 3, pp. 413-414)Back to Simplicity
My burden in this message is to impress you with the simplicity of the early Christians. May the Lord restore such a simplicity among us in His recovery today! If we are brought back to this simplicity in our meetings, we shall not use the hymnal or even the Bible to replace the all-inclusive Spirit. Sometime we may have a meeting in which we use neither the hymnal nor the Bible. Instead, we may simply show forth Christ through the exercise of our spirit. I can be deprived of my hymnal and of my Bible, but I cannot be deprived of the all-inclusive Christ in my spirit. However, if some Christians did not have a hymnal or Bible, they would have nothing. They know how to sing from the hymnal and how to use the Bible, but they do not know how to exercise the spirit to experience Christ as the life-giving Spirit. Oh, may the Lord cause us to put our trust in nothing other than the living Christ Himself!
We have seen that although the Christians in the early church did not have the Bible or a hymnal, they did have the living Christ. They called on His name and spoke a great deal of Him and regarding Him. They also sang and praised the Lord. Therefore, whenever they gathered together, they could exhibit what they had experienced and enjoyed of Christ in their daily living. By this we see that a proper Christian meeting should be an expression of the Christian life. We should not make the meetings something different from or apart from our daily walk. If we do this, our meetings will become a performance, the meeting hall will become a theater, and the saints will become performers. Our meetings should not be performances—they should be exhibitions of the way we live at home, at school, and at work. They should be an expression of the Christ by whom and in whom we live day by day. In order to have proper meetings, we must first have a proper daily life.
(Life-Study of 1 Corinthians, msg. 64)
