Being Dealt with in our Natural Disposition to Grow in Life and be Useful in Service

In order for us to be useful to the Lord in His service, we need to deal with our natural disposition for our growth in life; for us to have a proper church life, even a good practice of the genuine church life, we need to deal with what we are by birth.

This week in our deeper study and prayerful consideration of the vital factors for the recovery of the church life, we come to, The Factor of Dealing with our Natural Disposition for our Growth in Life and our Usefulness in Service.

This is a very important factor, and it needs to penetrate our being; we need to realize that what we are by birth, our natural disposition, needs to be dealt with so that we may grow in life and be useful to the Lord in His service.

When we serve the Lord and live the church life, no matter how much we enjoy the Lord and know His word, what comes out for others to see is our disposition with our character.

Our disposition is what we are by birth, and our character is what we pick up, learn, are trained for, and acquire as habits and traits.

Some are by disposition quick, so everything they do has to be in a quick way; when they are with others, they always think that others are too slow, and they want to hurry them up to do this or that.

Others, however, are slow by disposition, so they take their time when doing things, asking those they coordinate with to slow down and take it easy.

When we speak to others about the Lord, when we shepherd the saints, when we share in the meetings of the church, and when we do anything for the Lord, what comes out is not only the enjoyment of Christ and the experience of the Lord but also our disposition.

If we are dealt with by the Lord in our disposition, our peculiarities – what stands out about us – will be gone and Christ will have a free way to manifest Himself.

As the Lord is working in us and among us to recover the proper and vital practice of the church life, we need to cooperate with Him by dealing with our disposition.

We need to allow the Lord to shine on what we are by birth and expose what doesn’t match Him, what stands out, and what is against His nature.

On one hand, God Himself created us in a certain way, with a certain disposition; on the other hand, for us to be useful to God in His service, we need to deal with our natural disposition.

For us to grow in life in a proper way, for us to serve the Lord in the church life, and for us to be useful in God’s hand, we need to come to the Lord again and again concerning our disposition, allowing Him to touch our disposition.

Seeing what our Natural Disposition is and Dealing with it before the Lord to Grow in Life and Useful in Service

What is our natural disposition, and why is it important for us to deal with our natural disposition?

Our natural disposition denotes what we are in our makeup by birth, and our character is the outward expression of our natural disposition; we could say that the disposition is inward, and character is manifested outwardly.

Natural disposition is what we are within, and character is what we express without.

Our work for the Lord, our usefulness to Him, depends not only on enjoying the Lord in His word and being constituted with the truth but also on our person; our work is the expression of our person.

Our work is our very person, and what matters to God the most is the kind of person we are. God looks at the heart; man looks at outward appearance, but God knows what we really are.

When we minister Christ into others, we need to minister the building God and the builded God into people; the builded God is the God who has been built into our being, the very god constituted into our being.

On one hand, what we speak to others is the life-giving Spirit by speaking the words of life with the exercise of our spirit; on the other hand, what we minister is what we are, so if God is wrought into us, we minister the God who is wrought into our very being.

May we pray that the Father, according to the riches of His glory, would strengthen us with power through His Spirit into the inner man so that Christ may make His home in our heart through faith (Eph. 3:16-19), so that God would build Himself into us.

May we be before the Lord concerning our natural disposition, what we are by birth, and allow the Lord to shine on us, expose us, and enlighten us; as we do this, He is working Himself into us and adding His element into our being.

What matters the most in our service and work for the Lord is our person. Paul testified in 1 Cor. 15:10 that he is what he is by the grace of God; referring to his person, he was what he was by enjoying God Himself as his rich supply and everything.

Furthermore, in regards to his work, Paul said that he labored more abundantly than others, yet not him but the grace of God which is with him.

First, he was a certain kind of a person by the grace of God; then, his work resulted from his person, and he labored by the grace of God.

He labored in the way of “not I but the grace”; this is similar to Gal. 2:20 where we see that it is “not I but Christ”.

The Triune God realized as the sevenfold intensified Spirit for our experience and enjoyment is dispensing Himself into our entire tripartite being so that we can be built up to be the Body of Christ, prepared to be the bride of Christ, to bring in the kingdom of God, so that Christ can come back to this earth and set up His sweet and beautiful kingdom on this earth, and we can have a wedding day for one thousand years.

This is why we are here – to be the Lord’s overcoming bride. In light of this, we need to see that it matters what we are in our natural disposition and how much we open to the Lord to deal with it so that we may grow in life and be useful to God in His service.

May we be those who have the testimony of our conscience, that in everything we conduct ourselves in the grace of God, in the enjoyment of the Triune God as our life and life supply (2 Cor. 1:12).

Furthermore, may we be those who carry out the stewardship of grace which was given to us for others, to dispense the grace of God to all the members of the house of God. Amen!

Lord Jesus, we open to You concerning our natural disposition, what we are in our makeup by birth; we open to be dealt with You so that we may grow in life and be useful to You in service. Amen, Lord Jesus, we come to You as we are and we allow You to work Yourself into us; make Your home into all our heart so that You may build Yourself into our inner being. May we be what we are by the grace of God, and may we labor and serve the Lord by the grace of God which is with us. Keep us enjoying You as grace, taking You in as grace, and doing everything in You and by You as grace. Amen, Lord, we open to You to be dealt with by You in our natural disposition so that we may grow in life and be useful to You in service!

Dealing with our Natural Disposition, our Self, which includes our Mind, our Self, and our Soul-life

The words “character” and “disposition” cannot be found in the Bible, but they are modern terms to express what the Bible already speaks about.

The New Testament speaks of the soul-life, the self, the “I”, and the old man.

The self is our soulish life, and the soulish life is something natural; the soul life is also called the old man.

All these things – the self, the soul-life, and the old man – are all something natural, of the natural life.

Our disposition is what we are within, and our character is what we express without.

We could say that the inward disposition and the outward character are the essence, the extract, of our being; if these two are taken away, there’s nothing left to our being.

In Matt. 16:25 and Luke 9:25 we see two parallel portions using “self” and “soul-life” as synonyms; we could say that the soul-life in Matt. 16:26 is the self in Luke 9:25.

The soul is the life of the self, and our disposition and character are very much related to both the self and the soul.

Our disposition includes the elements of the mind, the self, and the soul-life; actually, we may say that our natural disposition is our self.

Our disposition is what we are in our natural makeup by birth; if we are slow, we are slow by birth, and slowness is our disposition.

Some may be quick, others may be slow; some may be silent, others may be talkative; this is what we are by birth, in ur natural disposition, this is what we are made by God.

Although our disposition is something made by God, it still needs to be dealt with by God.

This is not contradictory; rather, this is what the divine revelation says and our experience confirms – for us to grow in life and be useful to God in service, we need to be dealt with in our natural disposition.

In Matt. 16:23-26, we see the natural disposition of Peter being implied; he expressed his good opinion based on his kind feeling toward the Lord, saying that He should never go and be crucified.

The Lord’s reply was quite frank and surprising: He didn’t try to adjust Peter but rather, He exposed Satan being expressed through his opinion, and told Peter and the disciples that they need to deny the self, take up their cross, lose their soul-life, and follow Him.

Peter did not set his mind on the things of God but on the things of men.

Whenever we set our mind on the things of men, we live according to our natural disposition and we frustrate God’s plan; when we set our mind on the things of God, paying attention to our mingled spirit, we are part of the fulfilment of God’s purpose.

To set our mind on the things of God is to set our mind on our spirit, that is, to pay attention to our spirit; our spirit needs to be the most prominent part of our being, the capital city of our being.

We need to set our mind on the things of God by setting our mind on our spirit.

If today we deny the self and lose our soul-life for the Lord’s sake, we will find our soulish enjoyment in the next age of one thousand years as a reward.

When we exercise to lose our soul-life, we are rejecting the enjoyment in this world, realizing that our soul with its mind, emotion, and will, was created to enjoy Christ.

Nothing is higher than the enjoyment of Christ; nothing compares to the enjoyment of Christ, and when we enjoy Him, we automatically and spontaneously lose our soul-life.

Lord Jesus, we love You and we set our mind on the things of God, not on the things of man. We come to You to enjoy You and set our mind on our spirit. Amen, Lord, may our spirit be the most prominent part of our being, the capital city of our whole being. We exercise to lose our soul-life by rejecting the enjoyment in this world and choosing to enjoy Christ! Amen, Lord, we give ourselves to You with all that we are and have – we just want to enjoy You, be filled with You, and be inwrought by You. We open to You and we want to cooperate with You to deal with our natural disposition so that we may grow in life and be useful to You in Your service for the building up of the Body of Christ.

References and Hymns on this Topic

• Sources of inspiration: the Word of God, my enjoyment in the ministry, the message by Ed Marks for this week, and portions from, Collected Works of Witness Lee, 1989, vol. 3, “The Experience and Growth in Life,” pp. 129-131, as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, Vital Factors for the Lord’s Recovery of the Church Life (2021 ITERO), week 6, The Factor of Dealing with our Natural Disposition for our Growth in Life and our Usefulness in Service.
• Hymns on this topic:
  – Exercise the spirit! / Soulish life deny; / Helping one another, / On the Lord rely. / Freed within the spirit / From self-righteousness, / From self-condemnation / And self-consciousness. (Hymns #866)
  – Freed from self and Adam’s nature, / Lord, I would be built by Thee / With the saints into Thy temple, / Where Thy glory we shall see. / From peculiar traits deliver, / From my independent ways, / That a dwelling place for Thee, Lord, / We will be thru all our days. (Hymns #840)
  – So now we have to set our mind on Him; / Each day, each hour, our mind on Him must be; / That by this Spirit we’d be saved within / By life and reign in life eternally. (Hymns #1195)