Month: January 2019

What does it mean to be blended?

/ livinglywrong

“When we blend together, we have the cross and the Spirit. Without the cross and the Spirit, all that we have is the flesh with division…. We may come together without much blending because everyone stays in themselves. They are afraid to offend others and make mistakes, so they keep quiet. This is the manner of man according to the flesh. When we come together, we should experience the terminating of the cross. Then we should learn how to follow the Spirit, how to dispense Christ, and how to say and do something for the benefit of the Body. To be blended means that you are touched by others and that you are touching others. But you should touch others in a blending way. Go through the cross, do things by the Spirit, and do everything to dispense Christ for His Body’s sake. We should not come to a blending meeting to be silent. We have to prepare ourselves to say something for the Lord. The Lord may use us, but we need to be tempered and crossed out, and we need to learn how to follow the Spirit to dispense Christ for His Body’s sake. Such a blending is not social but the blending of the very Christ whom the individual members, the district churches, the co-workers, and the elders enjoy, experience, and partake of. The blending is for the building up of the universal Body of Christ (Eph. 1: 23) to consummate the New Jerusalem (Rev. 21: 2) as the final goal of God’s economy according to His good pleasure (Eph. 3: 8-10; 1: 9-10).”

(CWWL, 1994-1997, vol. 4, “The Divine and Mystical Realm”)

What is the best way to take care of new ones?

/ livinglywrong

“To give the new believers and young ones a lot of teaching is not the proper way to take care of them. The proper way to foster them is to show them a pattern. By showing them a pattern you water them, supply them, nourish them, and cherish them. This is fostering. If you find that your experience is somewhat lacking, point the new believers to different people in the Bible, for example, to ones such as Enoch, Noah, Abraham, and David in the Old Testament and Peter, John, Paul, and Timothy in the New Testament. We can present the lives of Bible characters in such a way as to foster the growth of the young ones.

If we give too much teaching to new ones and young ones, we shall damage them. Every mother knows that one of the most important matters in the raising of children is proper feeding. Caring for children is ninety percent a matter of feeding and ten percent a matter of teaching. This also should be our practice in caring for new believers in the church. We must learn to have ninety percent feeding and ten percent teaching. Feeding involves the presenting of patterns either from the Bible or from church history. By reading the biographies of saints throughout the ages, we nourish ourselves and experience a kind of fostering. The point here is that the best way to feed others and foster them is to give them a proper pattern. If there is no pattern, there can be no fostering. Only by having a pattern can we feed others.”

(Raising Up the Next Generation for the Church Life, Chapter 9)