Allow the Cross to Deal with Rebellion and Natural Capability for God’s Life to Grow

If we want the life of Christ to be unhindered in us, we need to experience the breaking of the cross and let any obstacle be dealt with and removed; may the Lord shine on our rebellion (our unwillingness to cooperate with His inner leading) and on our natural capability and ability, which hinder God’s growth in us. Oh, Lord Jesus!

There are many obstacles to God’s life in us, and for us to see what hinders the Lord in us specifically, we need to come to the Lord in prayer.

As believers in Christ, we want to grow in life by allowing the Lord as life to grow and expand in our being.

However, our small heart is the deciding factor of whether the Lord can expand in us and gain more ground in us. If there are obstacles in our heart, the life of Christ in our spirit cannot spread and grow in us.

The Lord as the Spirit has come into our spirit to be our life; our spirit is life, and whenever we set our mind on our spirit, our mind also becomes life.

What we need to take care of today is not anything else in our being or in our environment but the living Christ in us.

Our Christian life is a life of living Christ, a life of living in union and communion with the Lord.

We need to come to Him again and again and open to Him, being under His shining, and dealing with anything that He is exposing.

Under the Lord’s light, we will realize that our concepts, our thinking, are not only wrong but it is darkness.

There’s darkness in our human concepts, and even though we may think we are helping God by the things we do according to our concepts, we simply do not help Him.

Peter expressed his natural human concern for the Lord when he said that Jesus should not go to Jerusalem to die; this was the darkness of his human concepts.

By this, he opened the gates of Hades to try to hinder the Lord as life to carry out what He needs to carry out.

Our best intentions, our best and most spiritual thoughts, and our most moral concepts are but darkness; instead of doing things according to our concepts, we need to contact the Lord.

We need to take care of the living Christ in us and focus on Him by coming to His word.

The Word of God renews us and changes our human concepts.

When the Lord Jesus was on earth, He was not trying to be contrarian to what the others were saying – He simply expressed God, lived by the life of God, and what He did and said seemed to be quite different and even contrary to the concepts of those around Him.

May we pay attention to the indwelling Christ and follow His leading, remain in the index of His eyes, look at Him, and do all things one with Him, not according to our human concepts.

Seeing that Rebellion is our Unwillingness to Obey the Lord’s Sense and Leading Within and Follow the Sense of Life in our Spirit

As believers in Christ, we may think that we now do not sin as much anymore but rather, we do good things, we even read the Bible, preach the gospel, and do many things that are considered good and spiritual.

However, there’s a big problem in us that hinders the life of Christ, and that problem is rebellion.

We may not outwardly and openly rebel against God and against the church, but we may inwardly not obey the Lord’s leading and sense within.

The Lord Jesus is a living person who lives, operates, and moves in us; He makes us clear concerning His will (1 John 2:27).

Because He is in us, He leads us in all things, and we have no need for anyone to teach us, for the anointing teaches us all things.

The problem is that many times, probably most times, we do not go along with the Lord’s feeling and teaching within us.

We do not obey Him but rather, do what we want to do.

Rebellion is not only outward and visible; rebellion is not going along with the Lord’s feeling and leading within, the unwillingness and opposition to His leading.

We do have our freedom, we exercise our choice, but we do not take the way of life.

Many times we think we obey the Lord in what we do or say, but actually, we’re rebelling against Him.

He may want us to stay home and take time to absorb Him in prayer, but we want to go out and preach the gospel or visit some new ones, because we like to hang out with people and speak to others.

We are not doing something evil or wrong; we simply do not follow the Lord’s inner leading, and this is rebellion.

Christ operates and moves in us to make us clear about His will and requirements for us, and He is leading us and dealing with us.

However, if we don’t obey but go against the Lord’s feeling within us, not accepting His leading or paying the price, this unwillingness and opposition are rebellion. Oh, Lord Jesus!

This is the sin we commit most frequently, and we may not even consider it as sin; it is not a visible sin but it is inward, that is, not going along with the Lord’s leading and sense within us.

The sin we commit most frequently as believers in Christ is disobeying the sense of the living Christ within us; He lives in us, He constantly gives us a sense of life, but we many times disobey Him (Rom. 8:6; 1 John 2:27; cf. Eph. 3:1; 4:1; 6:20; 2 Cor. 2:12-14).

Rebellion is not merely something big, outward, and visible; rebellion is not obeying the Lord’s leading within us. Oh, Lord Jesus!

We fail to be led by the Spirit, for we don’t pay attention to the sense of life within.

We simply don’t follow the teaching of the anointing inside; this is tantamount to a kind of rebellion, which is an obstacle that hinders the growth of God’s life in our heart.

We should not be introspective regarding this matter, shining our own light on ourselves to see how much we obey or disobey the Lord; rather, we need to come to the Lord in His light again and again to be shined on by Him and experience His exposing.

When the Lord shines on us, when in His mercy He exposes our unwillingness to cooperate with Him, we will repent before the Lord and return to Him.

We need the Lord’s mercy in this matter, for in ourselves we are independent, individualistic, and whole; we don’t want to obey anyone else’s leading or instructions, for we have our own ideas, concepts, and suggestions.

May we come to the Lord again and again, even concerning the little things in our daily life, to seek His inner leading and sense.

And may we be aware that not everything that we desire to do and are inclined to do and say comes from the Lord; may we contact the Lord in all things and concerning all things.

Lord Jesus, thank You for coming into us to be our life and our person. Thank You for being a living person in us who moves and operates in order to make us clear about Your will and Your requirements for us. Hallelujah, we have the anointing within, and we can know all things, for His anointing teaches us concerning all things. Amen, Lord, we want to follow Your leading within us. We want to go along with the inner sense of life in our spirit. Save us from committing the sin of disobeying the sense of Christ in us. Save us from not going along with Your inner leading and guiding. Oh Lord Jesus, we treasure the inner sense of life and peace. We set our mind on our spirit so that we may sense Your life and Your peace. We want to be those led by the Spirit. We want to pay attention to the sense of life and follow the teaching of the anointing. May Your life have no obstacle in our being but rather grow and expand in every part of our inner being!

Allow the Cross to Deal with our Natural Capability so that God’s Life may Grow in us

One of the main problems or obstacles that God’s life encounters in us is our natural capability and ability.

The Lord as life wants to flow in our being and grow in us, but He is hindered by what we are by our very nature, disposition, and self.

Our natural being, our disposition, and our self are all problems that prevent the life of God from coming out of us.

The problem of our natural capability and ability is very serious, for it is a strong obstacle that prevents God’s life from flowing out of us.

We may think we’re not that capable or able, but even the capability and ability that we have can be an obstacle to the life of God in our being.

There are many brothers and sisters who love the Lord, pursue Him, are zealous for Him, and are godly, but their capabilities and abilities are very strong, so Christ has no ground or way in them. We need the Lord’s light to shine on us in this matter.

We may not have a problem with sin, we may not love the world, and we may deny the self to enjoy the Lord; however, our natural capability is still there, and we’re strong in our natural capability and ability.

When others touch us, they do not sense the Lord’s presence but rather, they sense how capable and able we are.

This is why, if we want the life of Christ to be unhindered in us, we need to experience the breaking of the cross and allow all obstacles to be dealt with and removed (Matt. 16:24-25).

Moses was a powerful man, very eloquent and able, and he was strong; however, the best his natural capability and ability could do was kill a man, and then he had to flee Egypt.

The Lord had a way to deal with his natural capability and ability in his forty years in the wilderness, and he became very useful to God after he went through this process.

It may not take forty years with us, but as long as it takes, we need to be before the Lord considering our capability and ability.

We all were born with certain capabilities, certain talents, and certain abilities; we may think that these are quite good, and that the Lord can use them for His purpose.

We may not consider that our natural capability and ability are filthiness or sin.

But the Lord does not need our natural ability or capability; He does not need anything from our natural being.

What He needs is the cross to be applied to our natural being so that our natural ability and capability to go through death and be useful to Him in resurrection.

Actually, in resurrection, our ability and capability are uplifted and very useful to the Lord, but if they don’t go through the breaking of the cross, they rather hinder God’s work and His life in us.

The history of Christianity is riddled with stories of capable men and women who did a great work for God, but they used their natural capability and ability, and people were drawn to the person, not to the Lord Himself. Oh, Lord!

We may not be that capable or able, but still, instead of despising our natural capabilities, we treasure them; if they remain unbroken in us, they will become a problem to the life of Christ in us.

May the Lord enlighten us concerning this matter. May we come to Him again and again to check with Him concerning our natural capability and ability.

And may we remain in the fellowship and coordination in the Body, together with the saints that He put us with.

The Lord as the Head and the Lord in the Body will shine on us and expose how much we rely on our natural capability and ability.

We want the Lord’s life to break through in us, grow in us, and flow in us and out of us.

May we receive and experience the breaking of the cross so that all the obstacles to God’s life in us may be dealt with and removed.

May the Lord’s life be truly lived out of us in a pure way, untainted by any natural ability or capability.

Lord Jesus, we want Your life to be unhindered in us. Shine on us. Expose our natural capability and ability and show us how much these are a hindrance to Your life in us. Oh Lord Jesus, we just open to You! Save us from treasuring our natural capabilities; may we allow the cross to deal with and remove any obstacle in our being. Grant us the experiences we need for our natural capability and ability to go through death and resurrection to be useful to You in resurrection for the building up of the church. Oh Lord, we do not want to damage Your building by living according to our preferences and by being zealous in our natural being to do things in our own ability and capability. Have a way in our being, Lord. May all obstacles be dealt with and removed in us. May there be a pure flow of life in us. May Your life in us be unhindered so that it may grow, expand, enlarge, increase, and freely flow in and out of our being! Amen, Lord, we are willing to deal with all the obstacles to Your life in us.

References and Hymns on this Topic

• Inspiration for this article/sharing comes from the Word of God, the enjoyment in the ministry, a sharing by brother Minoru Chen in the message for this week, and portions from, Collected Works of Witness Lee, 1953, vol. 1, “Knowing Life and the Church,” pp. 138-140, as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, The Enjoyment of Christ and our Growth in Life unto Maturity (2023 Thanksgiving Blending Conference), week 3, entitled, Dealing with Our Heart for the Growth of the Divine Seed of Life within Us unto Our Maturity in Life for God’s Building in Life.
• Similar articles on this topic:
  – Dealing with the self by the cross, a portion from, Messages to the Trainees in Fall 1990, Chapter 1, by Witness Lee.
  – New Jerusalem, not in the Natural Realm, via, New Jerusalem blog.
  – The natural strength and ability becoming useful in resurrection for our service to the Lord, a portion from, Basic Lessons on Service, Chapter 20, by Witness Lee.
  – The Second Great Pillar in the Lord’s Recovery—Life, via, Living to Him.
  – Dealing with the natural constitution, a portion from, The Experience of Life, Chapter 11, by Witness Lee.
  – How Can We Experience Christ Living in Us? Read more via, Bibles for America blog.
  – Being dealt with, a portion from, Life-Study of Genesis, Chapter 68.
  – How Can Christ’s Crucified Life Become Our Pattern? Article via, Holding to Truth in Love.
• Hymns on this topic:
  – As for Thy way, O Lord, / I often am not clear; / I toward seclusion tend / And from the pathway veer. / As for Thy will for me, / I do not know it well; / I substitute my own / And often would rebel. (Hymns #426 stanzas 5-6)
  – How cold my heart has been, Lord, / How slow obeying Thee; / So fill me with Thy Spirit, / I’ll ne’er rebellious be. / I lie upon Thy altar / And dare not move away; / Oh, may Thy flame descending / Consume my all, I pray. / Oh, may Thy Cross within me / Deepen its work and burn / In me enlarge Thy measure, / And me to ashes turn. / Oh, may Thy Spirit fill me / Each day more than before, / And may Thy living water / On me and thru me pour. (Hymns #280 stanzas 3-4)
  – Jesus, my life, Thyself apply; / Thy Holy Spirit breathe; / My vile affections crucify; / Conform me to Thy death. / Conqu’ror of hell and earth and sin, / Still with the rebel strive; / Enter my soul and work within, / And kill and make alive. (Hymns #364 stanzas 1-2)