Morning Nourishment - Cooperating with the Lord to Bring In a New Revival That Will End This Age
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Day 1
Verses: Hab. 3:2 …O Jehovah, revive Your work in the midst of the years… Hosea 6:2 He will enliven us after two days; on the third day He will raise us up… [The] matter of revival is the “kernel” within the “shell” of the books of the Minor Prophets…Habakkuk 3:2a speaks of revival…Among God’s elect there has always been an aspiration to be revived…Although we may not realize it, such an aspiration has been within us through all the years of our Christian life…Habakkuk’s prayer for revival…represents the whole. . God always considers His elect as a corporate Body…Thus, when Habakkuk prayed for revival, we also prayed…Such a prayer is an everlasting prayer. (Life-study of Malachi, p. 19)
The main contents of the New Testament are that the Triune God has an eternal economy according to His good pleasure to dispense Himself into His chosen and redeemed people in His life and in His nature, to make all of them the same as He is in life and nature, to make them His duplication that they may express Him. This corporate expression will consummate in the New Jerusalem. Thus, the New Jerusalem is simply the enlarged, the increased, incarnation consummated in full, that is, the fullness of the Triune God for Him to express Himself in His divinity mingled with humanity.
In [2 Samuel 7:12] God spoke of David’s seed, and in verse 14a He said, “I will be his Father, and he will be My son.” Here we have something of very great significance—the seed of David becoming the Son of God. These verses clearly unveil that a seed of man, that is, a son of a man, can become the Son of God. This implies that God’s intention is to make Himself man in order to make man God in life and in nature but not in the Godhead. Such an implication is exceedingly great. Eventually, the whole Bible consummates with this matter. The New Jerusalem, the ultimate consummation of the Bible, involves God becoming man and man becoming God in life and in nature but not in the Godhead, and God and man being mingled together to be one entity.
In God’s romance He desires to be one with man. He carried this out by becoming the same as man. God, because of His heart’s desire, became a man in incarnation, and He contacted man by the way of a romance. Before God opened up in the New Testament what was on His heart, both angels and men did not know what God was doing (Eph. 3:9). They did not realize that their God was becoming a Husband to marry a wife.
This Husband was divine, and the wife He was going to marry was human. Although God became a lowly man,…His intention was to bring His humanity up to the level of His divinity. Through the divine power in the Spirit of holiness, Jesus’ humanity was uplifted into the divine sonship, into divinity [Rom. 1:3-4]. By this He was born of God not as God’s only begotten Son but as God’s firstborn Son (8:29), which indicates that many sons would follow.
Today our Christ is God in the divine sense and man in the human sense. He is a God-man. This God-man is the Bridegroom in the divine, universal romance (John 3:29), but His counterpart, being merely human, still does not match Him. A human without a divine source cannot be the counterpart of the God-man. Therefore, God regenerated His human elect. Regeneration is to put divinity into humanity, to uplift humanity to the standard of divinity.
However, regeneration does not complete the process…In order to uplift our entire being, God first has to regenerate our spirit and then transform our soul. The transformation of our soul takes time. Christ is divine and human, and His transformed lover is human and divine. They are the same in life and nature, perfectly matching each other. (CWWL, 1994-1997, vol. 3, “Crystallization-study of Song of Songs,” pp. 325-326)
Further Reading: Life-study of Malachi, msg. 4; Life-study of 1 & 2 Samuel,
Day 2
Verses: John 1:14 And the Word became flesh and tabernacled among us… 1 Cor. 15:45 …The last Adam became a life-giving Spirit. Rev. 5:6 And I saw…a Lamb standing as having just been slain, having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven Spirits of God… The central revelation of God is God becoming flesh, the flesh becoming the life-giving Spirit, and the life-giving Spirit becoming intensified sevenfold to build up the church to issue in the Body of Christ and to consummate the New Jerusalem…This Spirit is to build up the church, which becomes the Body of Christ consummating the New Jerusalem as the final goal of God’s economy…The Lord’s recovery today is just the recovery of these critical points concerning the Spirit of God in the move of God’s eternal economy. (CWWL, 1994-1997, vol. 4, “The Divine and Mystical Realm,” p. 92)
I am quite concerned for all the co-workers and elders. It may be that a good number of them do not have a complete understanding of what the Lord’s recovery is. If we are asked to explain what the recovery is today, we should be able to answer in one simple sentence: The Lord’s recovery is God becoming the flesh, the flesh becoming the life-giving Spirit, and the life- giving Spirit becoming the sevenfold intensified Spirit to build up the church that becomes the Body of Christ and that consummates the New Jerusalem.
Christ made Himself, the first God-man, a prototype for the mass reproduction of many brothers, the many God-men (Rom. 8:29). I have been a Christian for about sixty-nine years. After so many years I have been made by God to know only one thing—God became man so that man may become God in life and in nature but not in the Godhead. This is my unique burden, my unique message. God and man will become one entity, and that one entity is the mingling of divinity with humanity. This mingling will consummate in the New Jerusalem, which is the conclusion of the entire Bible.
I recently fellowshipped with the co-workers and elders by speaking a very frank word to them. I said, “Brothers, many of you still work for the Lord by doing affairs. Your kind of taking the lead among the saints is not according to the spirit but according to your kind of realization. So you made a number of formalities, asking others to perform your formalities. This often causes opinions and even divisions.” All the co-workers and elders from today onward should have a change. You have not been called by the Lord as a co-worker or an elder to carry out formalities. You have been called and assigned by the Lord to carry out God’s economy, and God’s economy is altogether centered on Christ, taking Christ as its reality. Without Christ, there is no economy of God.
We may be very busy every day in the Lord’s recovery in the church, and we may be very diligent and faithful, yet we do things that are not the contents, the reality, and the center of God’s economy. So we need a turn. I pray, “Lord, grant us in Your recovery to have a genuine, real revival.”… The urgent need today is the practice of a kind of living that belongs to God-men, and the God-men are the very components of God’s economy. All the elders and co-workers should pursue this reality so that they [and their churches] will be made into a model by the Lord, a model living in the economy of God…In my prayer, this is what I call the genuine revival…If all [the] churches would be such a model, that would be a prevailing testimony. (CWWL, 1994-1997, vol. 1, “Living a Life according to the High Peak of God’s Revelation,” pp. 195-196, 198)
Further Reading: CWWL, 1991-1992, vol. 2, “The Christian Life,” ch. 2;
Day 3
Verses: Phil. 1:19 For I know that for me this will turn out to salvation through your petition and the bountiful supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ. 1 Cor. 6:17 But he who is joined to the Lord is one spirit. Today what we have seen of the Lord…is in God’s central lane, the economy of God, with Christ as its centrality and universality, with Christ as its center, reality, and everything. This Christ is now the life-giving Spirit indwelling our regenerated spirit to be one with our spirit (1 Cor. 15:45b; 6:17). For such a revelation, which is so high, deep, and profound, the Lord needs a model. He needs a corporate people to be raised up by His grace through this high peak of the divine revelation to live a life according to this revelation…Where is the model of living a crucified life that we may live Christ?…Where is the model of living Christ and magnifying Christ by the bountiful supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ? Where is this life? We have these revelations released as messages printed in books, but where is the model? (CWWL, 1994-1997, vol. 1, “Living a Life according to the High Peak of God’s Revelation,” p. 196)
The constituents of the vital groups are the disciples of Christ (Matt. 5:1)… To disciple the Gentiles [28:19] is to constitute the Gentiles into the disciples of Christ. The Lord Jesus, in particular, discipled four people of two families: Peter and Andrew and James and John. He discipled them for about three and a half years. They followed the Lord and stayed with Him day and night, traveling with Him, eating with Him, and doing everything with Him. They were living with Him and were around Him all the time. They saw how this God-man behaved…He lived by another life in His human life. This other life is the divine life. Because He lived the divine life in His human life, His human life became mystical, a mystery.
Out from His human life came something divine. The disciples who followed the Lord for three and a half years saw what He did, how He behaved, and how He spoke…They saw Christ’s human living and His death on the cross for six hours, and they saw Him in resurrection. Christ used these three processes—His human living; His all-inclusive, all-terminating, life-releasing, and new-man-creating death; and His life- dispensing resurrection—to disciple His followers. In resurrection He became the life-giving Spirit and entered into them… On the day of His resurrection Christ breathed Himself into His disciples, and they also became living…The Spirit of life and of reality who was breathed into them would guide them into all the reality of what they had observed of the Lord when they were with Him for three and a half years.
The concept of the disciples was revolutionized by what they saw of the Lord Jesus living God by denying Himself in His humanity…They were discipled through Christ’s crucifixion to annul their human life for them to live the divine life (Gal. 2:20). They were also discipled through Christ’s resurrection to know Him as God’s firstborn Son (Rom. 1:4; Acts 13:33; Rom. 8:29)…Christ had the human life and nature, but He lived the divine life and nature through the denying of His human life and nature.
This was His divine and mystical living to disciple all His followers for three and a half years…They were also discipled to know Christ as the life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45)…Christ’s resurrection was for the producing of the many sons of God as His multiplication and increase (Heb. 2:10; John 12:24).
If we open to the Spirit within us as we prayerfully consider this fellowship, we will be discipled. Only the discipled ones are the constituents of the vital groups. They have been discipled to be vital…The vitality of the ministry is due to a person’s living the divine life out of his human life. Then what he utters is divine out of a crucified human life. We need to deny our human life for the releasing of something divine. (CWWL, 1994-1997, vol. 5, “The Vital Groups,” pp. 74-77)
Further Reading: CWWL, 1994-1997, vol. 5, “The Vital Groups,” chs. 2—4, 6
Day 4
Verses: Matt. 3:15-16 …For it is fitting for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness…And having been baptized, Jesus went up immediately from the water, and behold, the heavens were opened to Him, and He saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming upon Him. 11:29 Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am meek and lowly in heart… As the first God-man, Christ lived on earth in a particular way for the accomplishing of God’s eternal economy, which ultimately consummates in the New Jerusalem. . The very center of the four Gospels is Christ. Matthew 1:18 and 20 say that this God-man’s conception was of the Holy Spirit. The God-man was one person but of two sources. The first source is divine, and the second source is human. He was one person of two natures—human and divine. Christ’s ministry commenced through His baptism (3:13-17). Before He carried out any part of His ministry, the first thing He did was to be baptized to fulfill the righteousness according to the way of righteousness brought in by John (v. 15; 21:32). The Lord Jesus recognized that, according to His flesh (His humanity—John 1:14; Rom. 1:3; 8:3), He was good for nothing but death and burial. Jesus needed to be baptized because He became flesh, and the flesh, in the eyes of God, is good for nothing but death and burial. To bury such a dead person by baptism is the way of righteousness. (CWWL, 1994- 1997, vol. 3, “The God-man Living,” pp. 473-475)
In the performing of the miracle of feeding five thousand people with five loaves and two fish, He trained His disciples…In Matthew 11:29 the Lord told the disciples that they needed to learn from Him, indicating that He was their pattern. Matthew 14:19 says that He took the five loaves and two fish and when He was going to bless them, He looked up to heaven…Looking up to heaven indicates that He was looking up to His Father in heaven. This indicates that He realized the source of the blessing was not Him.
He was the sent One… The sending One, the Father, should be the source of blessing. Here is a great lesson for us to learn. Most readers of the Bible would pay attention to the miracle of creating something from nothing performed by the Lord Jesus in Matthew 14. But we need to see the pattern that the Lord set up for us here. We need to remember that He looked up to the Father in heaven and blessed the five loaves and two fish in front of His disciples. After His blessing in this way, He told the disciples what to do. No doubt, what He did was a pattern for the disciples to learn from Him.
According to this pattern, we have to realize that we are not the Sender but the ones sent by the Sender. Regardless of how much we can do, we should realize that we still need the blessing from the source, from our Sender, that we can pass on to the benefited ones. This is a big lesson that I want to stress. After performing the miracle, the Lord went up to the mountain privately to pray (v. 23; cf. Luke 6:12). The Lord did not remain in the issue of the miracle with the crowds but went away from them to be with the Father privately on the mountain in prayer.
If we go to a certain place and have a great success, would we leave right away, or would we remain in this big success to enjoy it? We need to see and follow the pattern of the Lord Jesus… The word privately is very meaningful. This means He did not let the people know that He was going to pray. Otherwise, they would have followed Him… I like these three phrases: to be with the Father, on the mountain, and in prayer. We should learn from the Lord’s pattern here by exercising to be with Him on the mountain in prayer. His looking up to heaven means that He had no trust in Himself. His going up to the mountain means that He wanted to be with the Father in prayer. (CWWL, 1994-1997, vol. 3, “The God-man Living,” pp. 561, 564-565)
Further Reading: CWWL, 1994-1997, vol. 3, “The God-man Living,” chs. 1,
Day 5
Verses: John 10:10-11 …I have come that they may have life and may have it abundantly. I am the good Shepherd; the good Shepherd lays down His life for the sheep. The content of God’s entire New Testament economy is Christ as the Son of Man cherishing us and as the Son of God nourishing us. The Jesus who is portrayed in the four Gospels is very cherishing…All people need Him to cherish them, to make them happy, comfort them, and give them rest…Even the most sinful tax collectors could sit with Him as friends, eating and talking with Him (Luke 15:1; Matt. 9:10). God sent His Son as a propitiation for our sins in His humanity (1 John 4:10)—cherishing. As the Son of Man, Christ came to be the sin offering to appease the situation between the sinners and God. God sent His Son to us that we may have life and live through Him in His divinity (v. 9)—nourishing. This is confirmed by John 3:16: God gave us His only begotten Son that we who believe into Him may not perish through His redemption in His humanity (cherishing) but may have eternal life in His divinity (nourishing). God gave His only begotten Son to redeem us in His humanity judicially so that we may have eternal life in His divinity for Him to save us organically. (CWWL, 1994-1997, vol. 5, “The Vital Groups,” pp. 131- 132, 136)
I believe that not having the Father’s loving and forgiving heart and not having the Savior’s shepherding and seeking spirit is the reason for our barrenness…The Lord said, “By the fruit the tree is known” (Matt. 12:33), but we are a tree without any fruit…A good, gentle pastor may not have a particular gift, such as the gift of speaking; he may simply visit people and welcome them when they come to his meeting, but according to statistics, he will have a ten percent yearly increase. We…do not have even a ten percent increase.
Can you see how barren we are? Many of you are good speakers, knowing the higher truths…However, we do not have fruit, because we are lacking in the Father’s loving and forgiving heart and the Son’s shepherding and seeking spirit. We condemn and regulate others rather than shepherding and seeking them. We are short of love and shepherding. These are the vital factors for us to bear fruit, that is, to gain people…We have to consider our ways, as Haggai said (Hag. 1:5). Our way is not right; something is wrong.
The first gospel preacher, Christ, carried out His ministry by shepherding. He went to Jericho just to visit one person, a chief tax collector (Luke 19:1- 10). He did not go there to hold a big gospel campaign with thousands of people. His desire was to preach the gospel to gain one person, and His preaching was a shepherding. John 4 says that while the Lord was on His way to Galilee, “He had to pass through Samaria” (v. 4). He detoured from the main way to Sychar, near Jacob’s well, in order to contact a sinful Samaritan woman, who previously had five husbands.
The Lord foreknew that she would come to the well of Jacob. The well of Jacob is a type of Christ, who is the fountain of water springing up into eternal life (v. 14b). We have to learn of the Lord’s pattern in purposely detouring to Sychar to gain only one person. To spend three years to gain one person is worthwhile. If you spend three years to visit one person continually, you will gain him. After twelve years you will have four new ones following you to the church meetings. (CWWL, 1994-1997, vol. 5, “The Vital Groups,” pp. 113-114)
Further Reading: CWWL, 1994-1997, vol. 5, “The Vital Groups,” chs. 7—11;
Day 6
Verses: Acts 20:28 Take heed to yourselves and to all the flock, among whom the Holy Spirit has placed you as overseers to shepherd the church of God… 2 Cor. 12:15 But I, I will most gladly spend and be utterly spent on behalf of your souls… Phil. 2:17 But even if I am being poured out as a drink offering upon the sacrifice and service of your faith, I rejoice, and I rejoice together with you all. We need to contact and take care of others, sinners and believers, as the apostle Paul, the top apostle, did in contacting people and taking care of people’s need ( 2 Cor. 1:23—2:14). In 2 Corinthians 11:28-29 Paul says, “Apart from the things which have not been mentioned, there is this: the crowd of cares pressing upon me daily, the anxious concern for all the churches. Who is weak, and I am not weak? Who is stumbled, and I myself do not burn?” This unveils the care of a proper shepherd. Our attitude may be that everyone is weak but we are not weak…In 1 Corinthians 9:22 Paul says, “To the weak I became weak that I might gain the weak.” This means that we should come down to the weak one’s level… This is the way to shepherd people by visiting them. Paul also says, “Who is stumbled, and I myself do not burn?” This is to burn in sorrow and indignation over the cause of the stumbling of all the fallen ones. This shows the pattern of Paul as a good shepherd, taking care of God’s flock. (CWWL, 1994-1997, vol. 5, “The Vital Groups,” p. 115)
In Paul’s talk with the elders in Ephesus in Acts 20, Paul said that he taught them “publicly and from house to house” (v. 20)…In addition to all his labor, he still visited the homes of the saints, from house to house. He did this to perfect the saints. He did not shrink from declaring to them anything that was profitable (v. 20), declaring to them all the counsel of God (v. 27). What a marvelous perfecting work the apostle Paul did! An apostle should speak full of sympathy, with tears.
Do you want to be an apostle? Then learn how to weep. In Acts 20:19 Paul said that he served the Lord as a slave with all humility and tears. Then in verse 31 he said that he did not cease admonishing each one of the saints with tears. An apostle tells the dear ones under his shepherding everything concerning God and His counsel with tears. He does not only speak publicly, but he also visits the homes of the saints.
The end of 1 Corinthians 12 reveals that love is the most excellent way (v. 31b). How can one be an elder?…How can one be a co-worker?…How do we shepherd people? Love is the most excellent way. Love is the most excellent way for us to prophesy and to teach others. Love is the most excellent way for us to be anything or do anything.
The church is not a police station to arrest people or a law court to judge people but a home to raise up the believers. Parents know that the worse their children are, the more they need their raising up…The church is a loving home to raise up the children.
The church is also a hospital to heal and to recover the sick ones. Finally, the church is a school to teach and edify the unlearned ones who do not have much understanding. Because the church is a home, a hospital, and a school, the co-workers and elders should be one with the Lord to raise up, to heal, to recover, and to teach others in love. Some of the churches, however, are police stations to arrest the sinful ones and law courts to judge them. Paul’s attitude was different.
He said, “Who is weak, and I am not weak?” (2 Cor. 11:29a)…Who is without sin? Who is perfect? Paul said, “To the weak I became weak that I might gain the weak” (1 Cor. 9:22). That is love…Love covers and builds up, so love is the most excellent way for us to be anything and to do anything for the building up of the Body of Christ. (CWWL, 1994-1997, vol. 5, “The Vital Groups,” pp. 126-127)
Further Reading: CWWL, 1988, vol. 4, “Further Light concerning the