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The Lord always goes away from religion

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“How can we find Christ? To find Christ is a living matter; it is not by Bible knowledge. Now do not be offended; be patient and you will see what I mean.

Jesus was born in Bethlehem. There is no doubt about this—it is an historical fact. The strange thing, however, is this: far away from the so-called Holy Land, far away from the genuine religion, far away from the temple, far away from the Jewish religious center, far away from the priests, the scribes, the Pharisees, and all the religious people, was a star showing something of Christ in a heathen land. It did not appear to the Jews, but to the Gentiles, the heathen. In all Christianity, all the preachers, ministers, and pastors tell people that they must find Christ and know Christ by the Bible. But the first case of finding Christ in the Scriptures was not by the Bible. The wise men did not have any Bible knowledge—they did not even have a Bible.

Merely to hold the Bible in your hand and read Micah 5:2, saying that Christ will be born in Bethlehem, does not work. You may say after you have read it that you have got it, but you have not seen it. You have got it, but nothing has happened to you. Those chief priests and scribes knew the Bible so well, but the Lord did not go to them. He went far away to a heathen land to reveal this matter to some heathen, not through the Scriptures, but through something which human hands can never touch—a heavenly star. You may have the Bible, yet you may miss the star. To hold the Book in your hand is easy, but to wait and look unto the star is rather difficult. You simply don’t know when and where the star will appear. You may study the Scriptures and obtain a degree in that, and you may learn all that the Bible has to say about Christ, but you simply cannot determine when the star will come. The Book was with the Jewish people, the religious people, but the star appeared to the heathen. Have you seen this? We may think that the star should have appeared to those priests praying in the temple, but it appeared to some pagans far away from the temple.

Oh, we all must see this star. It is not a matter of seeing the Bible, but absolutely of seeing the star. What is the star? The star is the living revelation, the living vision, not the old and dead knowledge of the Scriptures, not the dead knowledge of Micah 5:2. What we need today is not merely Bible knowledge, but the heavenly vision, the instant vision, the living vision, the vision that human concept can never teach.

Let me check with you. What do you have? Do you have the Scripture verses, or do you have the star? Do you have the scriptural knowledge, or do you have the heavenly star? Do you have the old teachings, or do you have the up-to-date, instant vision? Today so many Christian teachers just have the Bible in their hands—they have not seen the star. Merely to have the Bible in our hand is a deadly thing, but to see the star is a living experience. To find Christ according to the principle shown us in Matthew chapter 2 is not according to the Bible. To know Christ today is something living, not according to dead Bible knowledge, but the living, heavenly star.

The Lord always goes away from religion, even the Christian religion. Wherever and whenever we set up a religion, the Lord will certainly go elsewhere. We cannot circumscribe, confine, or restrict the Lord with our religion. We must learn in the church life never to set up a religion. Never say that this method or that way is right. If you say that, the Lord will say: “It is right for you, but I don’t care for it. If you were not so right, I would be with you; but just because you are so right, I will go to those who are wrong.” Whenever we say that we are right and others are wrong, be sure the Lord will leave us and go to the wrong ones. The Pharisees claimed to be so fundamental, so sound, and so scriptural. Yet the Lord Jesus said, “All right, you are so sound, but I will have nothing to do with you; I will go to the publicans and sinners; I will not only go to see them, but feast with them.”‘

(Finding Christ by the Living Star)

Are we serving under a vision?

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“When Jesus of Nazareth came, He also served God, and a group of Galilean fishermen followed Him as His disciples. In the eyes of man, these Galileans were just like little naughty children. Outwardly, Jesus was a Galilean; He did not move away from Nazareth the first thirty years of His life, and He received no formal education in serving God. Yet at the age of thirty He started a ministry, and a group of “ignorant” people followed Him. Even some women ministered to His needs. They followed the Lord Jesus for three and a half years. What do you think the Pharisees, chief priests, scribes, and elders thought of them at that time? Among these men were fishermen, tax-collectors, and relatives of the Lord Jesus. There was even a woman who was once possessed with seven demons. Did they not seem to be children at play when they claimed that they were serving God?

At that time among the Jews, there was still a magnificent temple. It was built over a period of forty years. The Levites were divided into twenty-four orders and were offering sacrifices and ministering according to their orders. They were either taking care of the utensils, slaying the animals, or offering the sacrifices such as the daily burnt offerings and sin offerings and the weekly Sabbath offerings on the bronze altar. In the eyes of man, such services were certainly proper and dignified, but were they carried out under a vision? We are all very clear that the services of the priests in the temple were not carried out under a vision; they were carried out by tradition. It was the Lord Jesus and those who were following Him who were serving under a vision and whose service was pleasing to God.”

(from The Vision of the Age, chapter 1)

Excerpts from “Twelve Baskets Full” by Watchman Nee

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“Sin yields sorrow; salvation yields peace and joy.

If you love the Lord Jesus, you should tell Him.

God says He will bless us when we obey Him.

To have fellowship with the Lord Jesus is far more important than to work for Him.

May every morning become your life’s new beginning.

The Bible was given to us as a teacher for this present age. Have you read it?

For the continuous growth of life in Christ, you need ceaseless prayer.

God says, “I will keep thee.” Faith answers, “Lord! I thank You because You surely will keep me.”

If God puts the tears of His people in a bottle, how could He not listen to their prayers?

The mercy of God, the love of Christ, and the coming glory are all calling God’s children to offer their lives.

To have a true walk with God just one time can cause your heart to marvel and worship more than a hundred years of walking on this earth by natural sight. Your duty is to be at rest in God’s hand under whatever circumstances there may be.

God reveals Himself when we are in need (Exo. 15:22-26). When we consider ourselves to be strong, we rely on our own strength, resulting in spiritual weakness. When we know how useless we are and thus rely on His strength, we are strong.

Difficulties provide the atmosphere for miracles and are the initial step to miracles. If there is to be a great miracle, what is encountered must not only be something hard, but something absolutely impossible to overcome. Whether the Lord has spoken or not, we can fully trust in a Savior who is without worry or fear.

If God leads you to walk a way that you know, it will not benefit you as much as if He would lead you to take the way that you do not know. This forces you to have hundreds and thousands of conversations with Him, resulting in a journey that is an everlasting memorial between you and Him.

Your Leader will lead you to walk an untrodden way, to go down a path you never dreamed of. He is afraid of nothing, and He wishes you to be afraid of nothing also. He is with you. In desperate situations it is His joy to see His children grasping His hands.

…

It is abnormal for a saint to seek worldly glories. Those who love the Lord do not wish to be great in this world. Among the saints in the church of God, however, many still crave for a high position and to be called Rabbi. The crisis with the saints is not in the world but in the church!

How wise is the Lord! He told us to call each other only brother and to use no other title. It is regrettable that many, even among the brothers, want to be a great brother! If we have not allowed the Holy Spirit to work the Spirit of the cross in us, we cannot avoid a wicked heart to pursue a name.

Many consider that the world is in the world, without realizing that the world is also in the church and in the hearts of the saints! Unless one is truly dead to the world, it is hard to rid oneself of this kind of heart. Only those saints who have truly died with the Lord on the cross can be dead to the world in the church and in their hearts.”

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)

Hank Unplugged podcast: We Were Wrong

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Hank Unplugged podcast: We Were Wrong with Chris Wilde (8/01/17):

This week Hank is joined on Hank Unplugged by one of his closest friends and brothers in Christ, Chris Wilde. Hank and Chris became friends as a result of the providential meeting between the local church and the Christian Research Institute that resulted in an extensive primary research project that resulted in the CRI Journal titled “We Were Wrong.” Years of research led CRI to amend their position on the local church from one of condemnation to one of commendation, as the group has played a significant role in the transformation of Hank’s personal life in addition to the moniker of the ministry. This is an emotional episode of Hank Unplugged that you cannot miss.

Topics discussed include: The unlikely origins of their friendship as a result of investigating the Lord’s recovery (4:30); The providential meeting between the local churches and the Christian Research Institute and the primary research project that ensued (8:30); The revolutionary impact the Lord’s recovery has had on Hank personally as well as the ministry of CRI (18:30); Brief history of Watchman Nee, Witness Lee and their ministries in China and beyond (21:00); A seminal moment in Hank’s life that caused the moniker of CRI to change to “Because life and truth matter” (26:30); A moving story of the meeting between Gretchen Passantino and a Christian Chinese man who suffered immense persecution as a result of her writings for CRI in the 70’s (33:00); The significance of the local church edition of the CRI Journal entitled We Were Wrong (42:00); The continued damage that misinformation does to the Local Church (53:00); Chris’s transformational testimony (59:30); The immense value of the Local Church to the body of Christ (1:07:00).

Other links:

Don’t look for things other than they are

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“Surely You are a God who hides Himself, O God of Israel, the Savior.”  (Isaiah 45:15)

“The very fact that the church has continued on this earth for nearly two thousand years is the result of the working of Him who is a God who hides himself. It is often true that the greater the display accompanying any work, the less the divine content; and the more silent the work and the less our awareness of it, the greater the divine content. Since all the work we do is done unto Him who hides Himself, it must be based on faith, not on sight. [2 Cor. 5:7]

I trust these words will help some of us to realize that when we are most conscious of impotence, God is often most powerfully present. Don’t look for greater things. Don’t look for things other than they are. Don’t set your expectation on some great vision or on some great experience. And don’t expect anything outward, for the God who hides himself is at work within your life, and He is working mightily. Your responsibility is to cooperate with Him by responding to His voice within — that ‘still small voice,’ that voice that seems so much a part of your own feelings that you scarcely recognize it as a voice at all. To that voice, registered in the deepest depths of your being, you must say, ‘Amen,’ for there, secretly and ceaselessly, the God who hides himself is working.”

(A God Who Hides Himself, Chapter 1, Section 6)

If you only hold the Bible in your hand, you will miss Christ

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“In John chapter 7 there is another case of finding Christ. Christ was doing some marvelous things, and the people were saying, ‘Of a truth this is the prophet.’ Others said, ‘This is the Christ.’ Then some said, ‘Shall Christ come out of Galilee? Hath not the Scripture said, that Christ cometh of the seed of David, and out of the town of Bethlehem?’ Yes, the Scripture does say that; they were one hundred percent right. But they missed the mark just by being right. If they did not know the Bible so well, I believe it would be easy for them to grasp the Christ. They were frustrated by their Bible knowledge. Yes, He was born in Bethlehem, but He was raised in Nazareth. This really bothers people. If you only hold the Bible in your hand, you will miss Christ. You must follow the living Christ.

Then Nicodemus, who had come to know Christ somewhat, began to argue with them. But they protested, ‘Search, and look: for out of Galilee ariseth no prophet!’ They were absolutely right; not even the least prophet came out of Galilee. What would you say? We should not say, ‘Search and look,’ but, ‘Come and see!’ If you search and look, you will miss the mark, you will miss Christ. Christ was right there; yet they said, ‘Search and look.’ This is today’s situation. So many Christians are missing Christ. They keep themselves to the Scriptures: they say, ‘Have not the Scriptures said?’ But they miss Christ. Here is the Bible, and here is Christ. They care for the Bible, but they would not care for Christ.

Oh, it is possible to be so right, but wrongly right! You may be right, but you are just partly right; eventually you are not right, for you have missed the mark. The Lord always acts in a ‘sneaky’ way to those who feel they are so right. He does it purposely; He does not want us just to know the knowledge and go to sleep. He wants us to be alert at all times lest by knowing the Bible we lose His presence. Oh, it is possible to lose the presence of the Lord just by knowing the Bible. I would rather lose the knowledge of the Bible and keep the presence of the Lord. Do not say that as long as you are scriptural, you are all right. Regardless of how scriptural you are, if you lose the presence of the Lord, you are absolutely wrong. The Lord be merciful to us. Knowledge alone does not work. It did not work with the scribes, the chief priests, and the Pharisees, and it will not work for us.

What is the New Testament way to find and follow the Lord? It is continually to keep His presence, His hidden presence. He prophesied that he would come out of Bethlehem, but He came out of Nazareth. Give up your searching. God can never be understood by searching. [John 5:39-40] I am not searching; I am seeing, I am enjoying. I do not understand and I do not care to understand, but I enjoy. His presence is really hidden. Isaiah 45:15 tells us that He is a hidden God. He is a God that hides Himself. Learn to praise Him, learn to see Him, learn to trace Him, learn to find Him, but never try to understand Him. We are not qualified to understand Him; we are only qualified to enjoy Him. So ‘come and see.’ ”

(Finding Christ by the Living Star, pp. 16-19)