It is God who has blended the Body together, and in our practice of the blending we are adjusted, harmonised, tempered, mingled, and we are losing our distinctions.
In 1 Cor. 12:24 we are told that it is God who blended the Body together, arranging for more glory to be given to members that lack. This means that, in our practice of the blending, we need to let God blend us together.
Blending doesn’t mean that I blend with you and you blend with me; such a blending may be just a kind of social gathering friendship, or affiliation.
God is the blender, He blends us together, and by blending us together He harmonises us so that those who have a high pitch would be lowered and those with a low pitch would be uplifted, He tempers us so that those at different speeds would be brought at the same speed and those who different temperatures would be tempered.
In the practice of the blending, God blends us together by mingling us with Himself and with one another, so that we would lose our distinctions and be made one in Him and with one another.
We need to be in this process of being blended by cooperating with the Lord to go and blend and let Him blend us.
We all are a work on progress, for whenever we think we are blended with these particular saints, there are even more other saints in other areas that we are not blended with.
Whenever we go, we need to strive to be blended. We should not hide, we should not seek to be independent, and we should not seek to do our own thing, living a secret life and staying away from the fellowship.
Rather, whenever we are and wherever we go we should simply seek to be blended with the saints by the Lord, not trying to do anything or be anything but simply enter into the situation and let the Lord blend us in the Body.
This means we need to allow the cross of Christ to operate in us to break us and tear us down, so that we may be fitting for the blending.
Also, we need to do everything not according to our ability and natural man but by the Spirit, through the cross, for the ministering of Christ to others so that the Body of Christ may be built up.
In everything we do we need to stop and fellowship, and we need to allow the Lord to touch us in the fellowship so that we may be tempered, adjusted, and harmonised.
Hallelujah, it is God who has blended the Body together, and we need to remain in this process of blending for the reality of the Body of Christ.
Being Blended by doing Everything in Fellowship, through the Cross and by the Spirit
In order for us to be blended for the reality of the Body of Christ, we have to go through the cross and be by the Spirit so that we may dispense Christ to others for the building up of the church as the Body of Christ.
All the genuine blending, building up, relatedness, fellowship, being adjusted and harmonised all start with us being broken. If we are not a broken person, we can hardly blend.
If we look at the grains being blended, how can a whole grain be blended with the other grains? A whole grain is hard, whole, with a shell, and it can at most be piled together with other grains, but not blended.
But when the grains are being grounded to powder, they can be blended, for the power can be put together, shaken, stirred, and the identity of the grains is lost – only the whole lump is seen.
For us to be broken our natural man, our outer man needs to be broken, and we can be blended with others.
The Lord Jesus is the first One to be blended – He lived a marvellous life on earth, but He could not be blended with us unless He would go to the cross. The cross crushed Christ, grounded Him and made Him blendable, and now He is ready to be blended with humanity.
It is not so simple for us to be blended, for merely visiting others and going to blend with other areas doesn’t mean we are blended together. Unless we are broken to a certain degree, we cannot blend or mingle.
We can still work together, discuss things, have some coordination about things, but we can’t blend. Our blending is through the cross and by the Spirit, so that we may have something of Christ to minister to others for the building up of the Body.
A very practical way for us to be blended is by stopping to have fellowship before we are about to do anything.
We may want to go somewhere or do something, or we may just want to care for some new ones by visiting them, but before we do anything, we need to stop and fellowship with those whom the Lord put us with.
In our coordination in the church life and in the Lord’s work, we need to learn not to do anything without fellowship.
When we fellowship with others by exercising our spirit and allowing the cross to operate within us and among us, we are being blended together by being harmonised, tempered, adjusted, and built up together.
The result of the fellowship or the decision made at the end is not what matters the most – it is the fellowship that counts, the blending, the tempering, and the adjusting, for in this way we are blended together in the Body for the reality of the Body of Christ.
Fellowship requires that we stop and open in the spirit to allow the Lord to come in and apply the cross by the Spirit for the ministering of Christ to others.
When we’re about to do something, and we think it’s of the Lord, we need to fellowship with the other members of the Body.
However, many times we talk together without fellowship, we “coordinate” a lot but without blending. Fellowship is not just brainstorming or making some decision in unity; fellowship is something that should always adjust us, temper us, harmonise us, and mingle us with others.
Where there’s real fellowship, all these things take place. If we have fellowship, we are blended, tempered, adjusted in our ways and concepts, and harmonised with others.
Lord Jesus, may You blend us as we learn to do everything in fellowship, through the cross, and by the Spirit for the ministering of Christ to others. Save us from remaining whole and un-blend-able. Save us from escaping the work of the cross and from not allowing You to cross us out. Oh Lord, have a way in us for the sake of Your Body. Give us the experiences we need so that we may be blendable and we would fellowship in spirit with the saints for the reality of the Body. Amen, Lord Jesus, may there be much blending in the church life as we all are learning to fellowship by going through the cross and be by the Spirit to dispense Christ into others for the building up of the Body of Christ!
Learning to Blend for the Building up of the Body of Christ to Consummate the New Jerusalem
Many times we meet together to “fellowship and coordinate” yet we are not being blended; to be blended means that we allow the Lord to touch us, we are touched by others, and we touch others by going through the cross, doing things by the Spirit, and doing everything to dispense Christ for His Body’s sake.
This doesn’t mean that, when we get together, we should “touch others” by pointing out their failures and problems, having the excuse that “the Lord needs to touch them”; rather, we need to open to the Lord to be touched by Him in fellowship, and if the Lord may use us to touch others, we should be one spirit with Him.
When the Lord’s touching of our natural life, the self, and the flesh takes place, we are broken, we are made weak, and we go through the cross and are by the Spirit, so that we may have true fellowship in the blending life of the Body.
When we blend together, we have the cross and the Spirit; without the cross and the Spirit, all we have is the flesh with opinions which bring in division.
But if we come together and keep quiet in ourselves so as “not to offend others”, we live according to our natural man; we need to experience the terminating of the cross, learning to follow the Spirit and dispense Christ to others, so that the Body may gain a benefit.
The Lord is sovereign in arranging things and persons and situations in our life so that our trust in ourselves is overthrown, our natural man is broken, and the self is put to death; however, we need to cooperate with the Lord’s working outside of us and inside of us, and we need to allow Him to work in us.
The Lord may use us, but He wants us to be first tempered and crossed out, so that whatever we do and say would be in the mingled spirit for the ministering of life to others.
When we come together to blend, we don’t merely have a social gathering with exchange of good things and experiences we enjoyed; rather, our blending meetings should be the blending of the very Christ whom the individual members, the district churches, the co-workers, and the elders enjoy, experience, and partake of.
Therefore, the more blending we have, the better it is, for we are learning to blend for the building up of the Body of Christ, consummating in the New Jerusalem!
As we blend together, we need to read the Word and the ministry, and allow the Lord to blend us by blending away our differences and sharp edges; in the fellowship the Lord adjusts us, harmonises us, and tempers us.
We must pay the price to be blended, and we must allow the blending times to inconvenience us, for in these times the Lord can take a further step toward the reality of the Body of Christ.
If our situation is fragmented, broken, separated, and we’re diversely minded, we need to blend; we need to come together and pray, enter into the Word of God and the ministry, and allow the Lord to blend us together; this will bring in the Lord’s blessing.
The blending is for the building up of the universal Body of Christ (Eph. 1:23) to consummate the New Jerusalem (Rev. 21:2) as the final goal of God’s economy according to His good pleasure (Eph. 3:8-10; 1:9-10).
Dear Lord Jesus, blend us together more for the building up of the church as the Body of Christ. May our gatherings for the blending be in the spirit, through the cross, and for the ministering of Christ to others. Lord, may You advance in us and may Your blending work take a further step in us and among us. Strengthen us to choose You and allow You to blend us by adjusting us, harmonising us, and tempering us in the fellowship, through the cross, and by the Spirit. Lord, have Your way in us. Blend us for the building up of the Body to consummate the New Jerusalem!
References and Hymns on this Topic
- Inspiration: the Word of God, my enjoyment in the ministry, the message by Minoru Chen for this week, and portions from, Collected Works of Witness Lee, 1994-1997, vol. 4, “The Divine and Mystical Realm,” ch. 6, as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, The Reality of the Body of Christ (2018 Thanksgiving Conference), week 4, Blending for the Reality of the Body of Christ.
- Hymns on this topic:
# Blend us, Lord, blend us, Lord, ’til we are in one accord. / Hallelujah—the saints going on! / Blend us, Lord, blend us, Lord, open hearts we can afford. / Hallelujah—the churches go on! / As the members of / His organic Body, / We need the others to go on. / As local churches, / We do also need / One another for our going on. (Song on, Blend us, Lord, Blend us, Lord)
# We were brought forth in Thy nature / And the many grains became; / As one loaf we all are blended, / All Thy fulness to proclaim. (Hymns #203)
# No longer I alone that live, / But God together lives with me. / Built with the saints in the Triune God, / His universal house we’ll be, / And His organic Body we / For His expression corp’rately. (Song on, What miracle! What mystery!)
