Transformation

Why is our Christian growth stunted?

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“Question: How is it that after so many years of being a Christian, there does not seem to be any change in me? Why do I still lose my temper? Should we expect to improve?

Answer: I understand your problem. Day after day a mother takes care of her children, but she can see very little change in them. She does not do anything purposely to make them grow, but by feeding them properly and by regulating their behavior, exercise, and sleep, little by little they are changing. The time will come when they will be full-grown.

Why is our Christian growth stunted? It is from our failure to take in the Word. Our eating and drinking are deficient. If the main point of our meetings is guitar playing and singing the psalms, we may enjoy ourselves, but year after year there will be no change in us. Just as our human life requires that we eat, drink, sleep, and breathe, so for our spiritual life we must contact the Lord and take in His Word. Our meetings must also supply us with the solid food. The result will be transformation. We will change not by any outward doing but by the life supply dispensed into us from within.”

(Life Messages, vol. 1, chapter 16)

The most important thing is to live by the will and not by the emotions

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“Your emotions are unreliable. Indeed, they are like the waves. But you can abide peacefully by your will. What God wants to give is not a happy feeling every day. His purpose is for you to live by your will and your spirit. “I love the Lord, not because of what I feel, but because I want to love Him.” Just as we would read the Bible, pray, preach, and serve the Lord when we are joyful, in the same way we should read the Bible, pray, preach, and serve Him when we do not feel anything and our heart is as cold as ice. Please understand that the most important thing is to live by the will and not by the emotions. The most deceiving thing is for a person to take his feelings as an indicator of his spiritual life. From now on, please learn to exercise your will to control your whole being and your feelings. If God rewards you with feelings, thank Him. If He does not and you feel lost at heart, go on as usual. Until you have overcome your habit of living by your feelings, God cannot greatly use you. He needs solid vessels, those who do not change due to circumstances.”

(Collected Works of Watchman Nee, Vol. 7, pp 1106-1108)

Only broken vessels can be channels of living water

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“Christianity today exhorts people to improve their outward behavior, but what God pays attention to is far higher than this. God is not after a mere change in man’s outward behavior; rather, He desires man to have an inward transformation in life. He does not want us to merely change our outward living. He wants us to be broken in our inward disposition. The outward change of behavior gains the praises of man, but it cannot please God. What God desires and what pleases Him is not the improvement of our outward behavior but the transformation in life and the breaking of our inward disposition. Mere behavior improvement makes us good persons but not spiritual persons. In order to be spiritual, we need to be broken inwardly. Without being broken, without suffering any blows, and without passing through death, we can be persons who are whole but not persons who are full of life.

What others see in your outward behavior improvement is your morality but not your spirituality. Many times, just as your immorality can become your covering, so your morality can also become your covering. The unbelievers require us to have a high morality, which is reasonable and right. Yet God’s requirement in us is much higher than this. God requires that we be broken and crushed so that the Christ within us — the glorious Christ, the Christ of holiness– may be lived out through us.

…Christ does not need whole vessels; instead, He needs broken vessels. This is because only broken vessels can be channels of living water. Whole vessels can only be cisterns of dead water. The biggest problem today is that it is hard to find any wounds or scars in most Christians. Most of us do not have any wounds, scars, marks of death, or experiences of the cross. Even though we have been saved and truly have Christ’s life in us, this life has no way to come out. The reason is not that our behavior is too poor or too good but that we are too whole and too impregnable. Because we have no wounds, Christ has no way to be released from within us.

…No one who is a good vessel in God’s hand can be whole; rather, he must be full of scars and wounds. A certain sister may have believed in the Lord for over a decade, yet because her life has been easy and smooth, she has no wounds at all. She got married to a husband who is considerate, she gave birth to a son who is obedient, and she found a job that is easy and smooth. Everyone says that she is very fortunate; actually, it is not so. Many times the work that God carries out in someone who is truly in His hand is the work of breaking, smiting, and splitting. Jesus the Nazarene, the One who was the most acceptable to God, also experienced many sufferings while He was on the earth. He was called “a man of sorrows” (Isa. 53:3), and He was full of bruises and wounds. Hence, a person who is in God’s hand, if he is highly regarded or esteemed by God, will have many wounds as the result of God’s work in him. What kind of work is this? This is the work of breaking. If God favors us, His hand will work in us in many ways, and we will thus have many scars and wounds. These scars and wounds will become outlets for the flow of living water.”

(The Crucified Christ, chapter 1)

How will the one new man come into existence?

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“In the new man Greek and Jew, circumcision and uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, slave, and free man have no place. The renewal is not merely for our behavior. The renewal is…to get rid of our racial ordinances and to get rid of the natural persons….We all need to be renewed for the existence of the one new man.

When the Spirit spreads into our mind, it becomes the spirit of our mind. It is in such a Spirit that we are renewed for our transformation. The Spirit renews, reconstructs, rearranges, our mind. Man is absolutely under the control and direction of his mind. What his mind thinks, he does,…he follows,…[and] he carries out. The director of our being is our mind. Even after you have been regenerated and are loving the Lord, you are still under the direction of your mind.

We need to drink of the one Spirit so that the Spirit can saturate our mind. The renewal of the mind is for the real practice of the new man. The British, the Chinese, and the Americans all have different ordinances related to their culture. This is why we need to have our national mentality renewed. Our national and even natural mentality was educated and built up according to our racial and cultural background. This is the top hindrance to the existence of the new man. Brother Hudson Taylor went to China with a burden to bring the gospel to the Chinese. He was so burdened that he even dressed the way the Chinese did. This was very commendable, but we must go further to see that it is necessary to be renewed in our mentality. Merely to change in an outward way could be a kind of performance and not the renewal in our mind.

We believe that this is the age for the new man to be perfected and to come into existence in a full way. The Lord has arranged the outward environment and situation for the new man to come into being, but the outward situation has to match the inward reality. There is the need of the inward reality in the members of the Body of Christ. Due to the scientific inventions and the political situations on this earth, the many nationalities and cultures have been brought together. Now there is the need of the inward reality, which is the renewal of our mind. Our national, racial mentality, which has been built up through our entire life, must be renewed.

[When I first] came to the United States, the Lord showed me that I had to give up my Chinese mentality. I wanted a mind that cared only for the Lord’s recovery and not for my Chinese way of living. We need the Lord’s mercy and grace for Him to renew our mind. The Lord is going to perform something to bring this one new man into full existence. The Lord is going to do such a marvelous thing with all the different cultures and races. The tendency of this age is pointed toward the Lord’s work for the one new man. But in order for this to happen, we must have a thorough, proper, and adequate renewal of our mind, which has been built up by our nationality. This is why we have to drink of the Spirit. Then our entire being, especially our mind, will be saturated by the Spirit.”

(CWWL, 1977, vol. 3, “The One New Man,” pp. 516-517, 507-509)