Growth in Life

How do we grow in life?

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“We all need to have a private time with the Lord. This needs to be built up into a daily habit. The best time for such a private time with the Lord is in the morning. Some who leave for work very early, however, may need to choose another time of the day. Nevertheless, we all need to set aside time for the Lord daily, preferably at least thirty minutes.

During this time, you should go to the Lord and pray, not for so many affairs or business matters, but to contact the Lord, asking Him to examine you, to enlighten you, and to expose your situation in His light. As the Lord enlightens you, you will need to confess one item after another. When we do not come to the light, we do not see the uncleanness, especially the offenses on our conscience. But when we are enlightened, we are aware of all the dirt. We need to confess everything exposed by the Lord’s light. Once I made a confession to the Lord that lasted more than two hours. The more I confessed, the more I needed to confess. After I confessed one thing, I had to confess another, and then another. To confess is the best way to contact the Lord in prayer for the genuine growth in life. The more we are dealt with by the Lord, the more He will be wrought into our being. This is what it means to grow.

In order to grow, we must firstly contact the Lord in our time of private prayer. I encourage all the saints, especially the young people, to build up such a habit. Every day you must have a time of prayer. Sometimes you may pray for the church or for the Lord’s recovery, if you are burdened to do so. You may also pray concerning your affairs. But the primary matter is to pray for the Lord’s enlightenment, exposing, and examining. Ask the Lord to show you what is within you and ask Him to deal with you. You should say, “Lord, expose through Your light my real situation and condition.” If you pray like this, the light will come, and you will be dealt with. Then whatever you pray will not be a performance, but a genuine prayer from your cleansed spirit.

You need to lay a good foundation in the Word of God by reading through it consecutively from Genesis to Revelation. Read book after book without selection, choice, or preference. Try to read the Bible through once every year or every two years. It is important to build up the habit of reading and studying the Word.

We need to pray and to read the Word, putting these things together.

Along with reading the Bible, we need to develop the habit of reading some profitable and nourishing spiritual books, doing this in a very balanced way and not eating too much at one time. Rather, it is better to eat several times a day. You may read four pages of a message at one time and then read more later in the day or the next day. In reading spiritual books, do not try to take in too much at once. If you build up the habit of reading the Word and spiritual books, you will be healthy spiritually and you will grow.

If you take the Word without receiving light, there must be a problem within. There can be no problem with the Word, for the Word is light. Because you do not receive light, you need to ask the Lord to show you what is wrong, to show you why you have not been receiving light from Him. When you receive light on certain matters, accept the light and confess to the Lord immediately without excusing yourself.

We need to be filled in spirit with the fullness of God. The way to be filled is the same as the way to grow in life: to pray properly, to take the Word of God, to read some nourishing spiritual books, and to be enlightened. If we pray, read the Word, and are enlightened, we shall spontaneously and immediately be filled with the Lord, and the Lord will be added to us. This is the growth in life.”

(From Life Messages vol. 1, chapter 2)

Christian service is a matter of life and in the Body

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THE GROWTH IN LIFE
First we have the aspect of life, then the aspect of service. We have the life matter settled first, then, based on that fact, we have the matter of service. Without life and the adequate growth in life, we cannot have the service. The little children can do many things, but they cannot serve, because they simply do not have the adequate growth in life.

To serve the Lord, the growth in life is required. The service is not mentioned in Romans 6 or 7. It is not mentioned until chapter twelve, where sinners have been redeemed, justified, and delivered from the old nature, and they are walking in the spirit. They have the real growth in life. Now they are the practical and functioning members of the Body. The Christian service is an issue of the growth of life.

If you don’t have life, you cannot serve. Even if you have life, but are short of the growth in life, still young, childish, even like a babe, you cannot serve. The service requires life and the growth of life, the maturity of life. It is a life matter, and it is a matter of the growth in life. We cannot serve the Lord without growing in the life of the Lord. This is something very basic. This is why we have been stressing the matter of life in view of our expectation of having a church life with the service. Without the growth in life, there is no possibility for the church to be built up. And without the building up of the church, there is no possibility of having the church service, the Christian service.

SERVICE IN THE BODY

The Christian service is a matter of life and in the Body. It is a matter in the Body and a matter of the Body. You cannot serve the Lord as an individual Christian. To serve the Lord, you must realize that the Lord’s service is something in the Body.

Every believer is a member of the Body, a part of the Body. An individual is not the Body. A member of the Body cannot function without the Body. The hand is good, quite useful, but if it is cut off from the body, it becomes not only dead, but also ugly, terrible, and even terrifying. You may love to shake my hand, but if this hand were detached from the body, it would be terrible.

Today many Christians are detached, separated from the Body. They are disembodied members. The members of the body are beautiful as long as they are attached where they belong in the body, but in any other place they are terrible. How sad it is that many Christians today are like ears that have been detached and put on the shoulders. How could they serve the Lord? How could we serve the Lord without being built up together as members of the Body? It is impossible.

I am not speaking on this point according to knowledge or doctrine. By the mercy of the Lord, I can testify to you from my experience that for many years I have simply been unable to serve the Lord without the Body. It is impossible to serve the Lord without the Body, without the church life, without the church practice.

The Body life is in Romans 12, and the church service is in this Body life with the members of the Body, of the church, functioning, serving. This matter is very clear in the Word. We need to check ourselves to see whether or not we have a real Body life. If not, we are wandering saints. If you say that you are in the Body, you have to consider seriously where the Body is, practically speaking. If we could give up the service of the Lord, there would be no need for us to talk about the Body, the church life. But if we do have the sincere heart to serve the Lord, we must realize that the service is in the Body.

(The Service of the Priesthood)

Two kinds of eating: eating in sowing and eating in harvesting

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“Many of you have testified regarding your enjoyment of the Lord, but all that I have heard pertains to your eating, your enjoyment in sowing. You have not yet reached the level of eating with regard to harvesting. The initial sowing is easy, but the final harvesting is not so easy. After the seeds are sown, whether or not there will be a harvest is still a question. Up until now, your eating of the Lord for enjoyment has been in the initial stage, the sowing stage.

Therefore, I have to make it clear to you, brothers and sisters, that you should not stop at the enjoyment of sowing, but go on to the enjoyment of harvesting. When you sow, you simply bury the seed into the ground. After sowing, you still need to take care of the sprout that it may grow and bear fruit. Only then can you have the enjoyment of the harvest. In our enjoyment of sowing, we receive something of the Lord into us. Whenever we call on the name of the Lord and pray-read His word, we receive a portion of the Lord as a seed into us. Whether this will result in a harvest depends upon our willingness to let the seed grow. If we let it grow, it will surely yield a harvest. Otherwise, nothing will happen.

…Today I want to check with you all. Do you as sowers truly have seeds? Do you as eaters really have bread? Perhaps you have only half a bowl of rice, which is not enough even for yourself. If you cannot feed yourself adequately, how will you be able to take care of others? What is the reason for this? It is because you sow the seed, yet you do not labor to let the seed grow.

We all know that when a farmer labors on a field, he has to remove the stones, eliminate the weeds, water the soil, add fertilizer, and sometimes apply some pesticides. What do you do? You have done very well eating the Lord and pray-reading His word, but you do not remove the stones, nor eliminate the weeds, nor water the soil, nor add fertilizer, nor apply pesticides. In the end you might as well have not sown at all. If you do not sow, your seeds will remain intact, but once you sow, you lose the only seeds you have. There are some people who indeed have a reserve of a small portion of the Lord before pray-reading the Word, but after they gained the Lord through pray-reading and then are disobedient by not laboring, they lose the presence of the Lord. The Lord went farther away from them.

…Let me ask you, brothers and sisters, what do you eat today, manna or the produce of the good land? Some say they eat manna; others say they eat manna as well as the produce. This is true. However, I hope that those who eat manna will gradually stop eating it. Do you know where manna was eaten? It was eaten in the wilderness. Therefore, eating manna is a strong proof that you are a wanderer. Where was the produce of the good land eaten? It was eaten in Canaan! Moreover, the top tenth of the harvest of the land — the firstborn of the herd and of the flock and the firstfruits of the grain — were not to be eaten at home. They had to be brought to the temple and eaten before God. This shows that their wandering had ceased. Do you want to be a Christian who eats manna or a Christian who eats the produce of the good land? Everyone wants to be a Christian who eats the produce of the good land. True, manna is good; but it is not good enough because it is the diet of those who wander about in the wilderness.

…To obtain manna does not require our laboring, but to get the produce of the land of Canaan does. While we are enjoying the Lord and receiving Him into us, He often raises up circumstances and allows many things to happen for our good, so that the seed in us can grow and produce something. For example, a sister, whose husband always makes things difficult for her, prays every day, asking the Lord to cause her husband to love Him as much as she does. However, the more she prays, the less he loves the Lord; the more she calls “O Lord, Amen!” and the more she pray-reads, the more her husband is annoyed…. Let me tell you that all those things that happen are the Lord’s raising up the north wind to blow upon you (S.S. 4:16). Instead of asking the Lord to change your husband, pray that the Lord will grow in you: “O Lord, make me willing to accept Your dealing. O Lord, subdue me from within. O Lord, cause me to submit myself under Your hand and take the breaking.”

…Twenty years ago, when I saw brothers who had good character and proper behavior and who gave good impressions wherever they went, I greatly appreciated them. However, now in retrospect those brothers with good character and proper behavior did not bear any good fruit. On the contrary, some careless and sloppy ones were able to bring people to salvation. The church life, the testimony of the church, is not a matter of behaving well or not behaving well, nor is it a matter of being or not being above reproach. The church life, the testimony of the church, is a matter of eating the Lord as the seed and allowing this seed to grow. Like a farmer, you remove the stones, eliminate the weeds, water the ground, add fertilizer, and apply pesticides so that the Christ in you will gradually grow into a harvest. This is not a matter of being well-behaved or not; it is a matter in a totally different realm. Behaving and not behaving are in the realm of good and evil. What we are speaking about is the realm of Christ. You are full of Christ, and you bring in your topmost portion before God to enjoy with the saints in the meeting. This is our proper meeting today. The emphasis in the meeting is not on singing, praying, praising, speaking in tongues, or functioning; the emphasis is on bringing in the topmost portion of the Christ that you have produced. I bring my portion, and you bring yours. Apart from any forms, we all present our Christ.

…Now we all have learned to eat. We have learned that there are two kinds of eating. One is the eating in sowing, and the other is the eating in harvesting. The eating in sowing cannot constitute our worship; we need the eating in harvesting. When you bring the eating in harvesting, that will constitute the true worship and the genuine church life. The church needs this. We have to look to the Lord and open up to Him that we all may learn to be exercised in the matter of eating.”

(Eating the Lord, chapter four)

We need to grow in life, but we also must increase in number

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The brothers and sisters who have been raised up by the Lord in these days to take the way of His recovery must realize that we must always increase in two ways. We must increase in the measure of life, and we must also increase in the number of persons. This is to increase both in quality and quantity. To be increased in the growth and measure of life is to be increased in quality. However, quality always comes out of quantity. If we do not have the quantity, how can we have the quality? We need the quantity, the increase of numbers.

It is easy for Christians to be unbalanced and go to an extreme. We need to learn to be balanced in several directions. We need to grow in life, but we also must increase in number. Life always must grow in all the churches day by day, and our numbers also must always increase. Otherwise, we are unbalanced; we are a “cake not turned” (Hosea 7:8)…

The best way to check whether a commercial business is right or wrong is to look at its accounting. We should not care for the general manager’s or director’s report; we should examine the accounting books. What are the balance, profit, loss, and liabilities of this business, and what kind of turnover has it had in the past ten years? We should look at the statistics and worksheets. In the same way, we should not say that our meetings are wonderful and everything is wonderful. If everything is wonderful for a whole year yet there is no increase, there must be something wrong. We need to check ourselves.

(CWWL, 1964, vol. 4, “Serving in the Meetings and in the Gospel,” ch. 5, pp. 116-117)

Neither faith nor love are ours

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That Christ may make His home in your hearts through faith, that you, being rooted and grounded in love. (Eph. 3:17)

“To experience Christ we need faith and love (1 Tim. 1:14). Faith enables us to apprehend Christ, and love enables us to enjoy Him. Neither faith nor love are ours; they are His. His faith becomes our faith, by which we believe in Him, and His love becomes our love, by which we love Him. When we are rooted and grounded in His love, we grow and are built up in His life.”

(Ep 3:17, footnote 4)

Over 90% of our growth in life depends upon the dealing with our disposition, character, and peculiarity

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“I believe that the vital group meetings will be greatly used by the Lord. In the church many of us love the Lord, love the Lord’s recovery, and love the church, but not many are really useful because of the defects related to our disposition, character, and peculiar traits. All these defects annul us, making us useless. This vital group training and the practice of the vital groups will make us useful in saving sinners, in nourishing the new ones, and in feeding the saints. We need to endeavor to put all the things we have covered in this training into our practice in the vital groups.

In order to deal with our disposition, character, and peculiarity, we need to see a vision that we have been crucified on the cross (Gal. 2:20a). We should pray, “Lord, thank You that on the cross You have crucified my disposition, my character, and my peculiarity.” We need to see a vision of Christ’s crucifixion. By His mercy and grace we need to accept this vision and then proceed to live by the Spirit. In our daily life the Spirit applies Christ’s death to all the negative things in our being.

We have to learn practically in our daily life to be dealt with very finely in our disposition, character, and peculiarity. Sometimes we might think certain brothers and sisters have made some improvement, but their improvement is questionable. The real improvement must be because of the particular dealing with our disposition, character, and peculiarity. If we do not have some definite and practical experiences in this, we cannot have the real improvement in life. Over ninety percent of our growth in life depends upon the dealing with our disposition, character, and peculiarity. Our daily lives are filled up with these three items.

Each of us has his particular disposition. One brother has his particular way to come to the meeting and to find a seat in the meeting. Even in coming to the meeting and finding a seat in the meeting, he does not obey the Spirit, but he obeys his peculiarity. If the usher would try to seat this brother in another place, this brother might be offended. We need to consider how often we obey the Spirit during the day. Mostly we act, move, and behave according to our disposition, character, and peculiarity.

Some brothers are very active people, so they like to move around in the meetings by helping to usher people to their seats and by caring for the distributing of the bread and wine at the Lord’s table. Other brothers are very inactive people. Once they are seated, they do not want to be moved by anything or anyone. If you ask the brother who is active to be an usher, he will be very happy. If you ask the inactive brother to usher, he will say that he does not like this. Both of these brothers are acting and serving according to their disposition and not according to the Spirit. This shows that we have to die to ourselves so that Christ may live in us.”

(Fellowship Concerning the Urgent Need of the Vital Groups, ch. 17)

The church life is not for a good time; it is for something solid

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“Suppose the young people in a locality come together only to have a good time, playing the guitar, singing hymns, and releasing their spirit, but they do not spend time in the Word of God and are not exercised in the spiritual experiences. Several years may pass, yet nothing will be built up. Such a situation would be worse than the situation in denominational Christianity, for Christianity at least has seminaries to train some leaders. To only have a good time is a waste of time. We need to come to the church meetings to learn something, to be built up, and to be trained. This is worthwhile. We should mean business in the church life. The Lord’s testimony is the most important thing in our life today. Therefore, we need to spend our time, our energy, and even our being to be constituted for the Lord’s recovery.

I encourage all the saints to spend a solid time to enter into the solid things. We should not relax or only seek to have a good time. The church life is not for a good time; it is for something solid. We need to pick up this burden and go to the Lord. We should not use the excuse that we are weak. We are all weak, but He who is in us is strong. We do not have the energy in ourselves, but His grace is sufficient for us (2 Cor. 12:9). We all need to look to the Lord for His grace that we may come up to His standard. I hope that all the saints will legally spend time in the Word of God. If we all practice this, the church life will be healthy, strong, rich, and genuinely living. We all need to honor the headship of Christ, bear the truth, exercise ourselves unto godliness, take care of the healthy teaching, and study the Word. By spending time in the Word, we will be filled with the knowledge of the divine Word and will know how to conduct ourselves in the house of God.”

(Crucial Principles for the Christian Life and the Church Life, Chapter 8, Section 4)

We must not derive our life or strength from outward circumstances

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“He grew up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground.” (Isaiah 53:2)

‘…Its roots are the means whereby a plant is nourished, the channel through which its life is derived. No plant can live without a root-system. Equipped with one it may survive in the most unpromising conditions. Isaiah’s words suggest that Jesus Himself did not derive His life and strength from outward circumstances. Nor must we. If necessary we must be able to live without the succor of our brethren in Christ. Even with them around us, we live with our fellow members, we do not live by them. The secret source of our life is God alone.

But to live thus “out of a dry ground” means something more. It means that nothing merely circumstantial can destroy us. No drought can wither God’s tender plants. Amid barren, even hostile conditions, His children are equipped to be “more than conquerors.” Their life is Christ Himself.’

(from A Table in the Wilderness)

Genuine spiritual life grows in desolate circumstances

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“Genuine spiritual life grows in desolate circumstances. We should not expect to always receive light when we read the Bible, to have the Lord’s presence when we pray, to save many sinners, or that our wife, husband, children, parents, and siblings will be spiritual. These expectations are unrealistic. Those who are genuinely spiritual pitch their tent between Bethel and Ai. God does not allow us to be free of desolate situations, that is, to become a monk or an ascetic, nor does He want us to become mystics. God desires that we remain in the status in which we were called (1 Cor. 7:20). Those who have a wife, a husband, children, or a family should remain where they are. They should learn to labor and work with their hands. If we can be normal human beings in our troublesome, complicated, and fallen situations, then we will have the genuine exercise of spirituality. Living between Bethel and Ai should be our normal experience.

We all want the church in our locality to be spiritual, free from problems, full of harmony and God’s presence, and in a glorious situation. However, no matter how much we try to maintain the situation, a storm may come, there will be discord, or the flesh surfaces. In other words, Ai always accompanies Bethel. Like Abraham who followed God, we must pass between Bethel and Ai. We will see God’s house on one side but a heap of ruins on the other side. No matter how we pray or labor, we should be prepared for desolate situations. The church may be Bethel today but Ai tomorrow. This is a picture of our true situation.

Our outward circumstances in coordination with the operation of God give us the opportunity to develop a genuine spiritual life. We should not expect to be in a situation that is heavenly and without any problems. God did not create us to be human beings in heaven. He ordained that we be human beings on the earth. His desire for us to be genuinely spiritual does not mean that we should break away from human relationships. Rather, we need to live and conduct ourselves properly in these relationships.

No matter how much we grow in life and no matter how many visions we see, there will always be a feeling of desolation in us, because we live on the earth, remain in our old man, and have the flesh. As long as we are on the earth, our circumstances will give us a sense of desolation, a sense of Ai. We are in between Bethel and Ai, and we seek progress. On the one hand, we have a sense of desolation, but on the other hand, we are in the house of God and have the presence of God. On the one hand, we are not satisfied with the ministry of the word, but on the other hand, we receive grace and are supplied. We have weaknesses and desolation, but we also have the Lord’s blessing. We must leave our spiritual longings and learn to experience God in our desolate situations so that we may have genuine growth in life.”

(The Suffiency, Pursuit and Learning of the Lord’s Serving Ones, Chapter 2)