Living a Life of Labouring upon Christ to Enjoy Him Personally and Collectively for the Body

As believers in Christ, we need to live a life of labouring upon Christ, a life of enjoying Christ personally so that we may enjoy Him together for the building up of the Body of Christ.

Hallelujah for the all-inclusive Christ as our rich, good land for us to enjoy!

This week in our crystallisation-study of Deuteronomy we come to the topic of, Life in the Land and the Issue of the Land — the Church as the Temple, the Dwelling Place of God, and as the City, the Kingdom of God.

We are in the land; we want to know how to live a life in the land, and the issue of the land is the goal of our enjoyment of Christ as the all-inclusive land – the church as the temple (the dwelling place of God) and as the city (the kingdom of God).

When the children of Israel entered into the good land after crossing the Jordan river, the manna ceased, and that year they ate the produce of the good land, for there was no more manna (Joshua 5:12).

When they were in Egypt, they enjoyed the Passover; in the wilderness, they enjoyed the manna, and now in the good land they enjoyed the produce of the land.

When the children of Israel were in the wilderness they had manna every day; they didn’t have to labour for their food but simply follow God’s prescribed ways to eat the manna.

Once they entered the good land, however, the manna ceased, and they entered into the stage of labouring on the good land to enjoy its rich produce.

We need to not only enjoy Christ daily as the manna in the morning, for which we don’t have to labour but simply wake up and exercise our spirit to enjoy.

We need to also labour on Christ, making Christ our industry, and producing Christ in mass-reproduction; day by day we need to produce Christ.

We need to be working on Christ all the time, and we need to seek to enjoy Him and experience Him in every situation; this is to labour on Christ, that is, to enjoy and experience Him in every situation.

But we all have to admit that we are so short in this, for many times we don’t look to the Lord to enjoy and experience Him in all situations.

In Eph. 4:12-13 Paul testified that he learned the secret: he learned to how to enjoy the bountiful supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ in all situations!

So he knew how to be abased (being low) and how to abound (being high), for in all things and in everything he learned the secret to enjoy and experience Christ.

No matter what situation we are in, we need to learn the secret of enjoying and experiencing Christ for the building up of the church as the temple of God and the city of God.

We need to be bountifully supplied by the Spirit so that we can live Christ for His magnification and not be put to shame in anything.

May we seek to walk worthily of the Lord, to please Him in all things (Col. 1:10). May we be like Enoch, obtaining the testimony that we are well-pleasing to God (Heb. 11:5-6).

How do we please God in all things? It is by bearing fruit in every good work and growing by the full knowledge of God.

We bear fruit in every good work and grow by the full knowledge of God; in this way we walk worthily of the Lord and we labour on Christ as the reality of the good land.

Bearing fruit in every good work refers to living Christ, growing Christ, expressing Christ, and propagating Christ in every respect; this is the real essence of every Christian good work.

To labour on Christ as the good land is to live Christ, to grow Christ, to express Christ, and to propagate Christ in every respect.

How to Live a Life in the Eyes of God to Enjoy the All-inclusive Christ as the Good Land

We need to see how to live a life in the eyes of God that will enable us to enjoy the all-inclusive Christ typified by the good land.

Christ is the allotted portion of the saints in the light (Col. 1:12); this is our portion of Christ as the good land. All believers in Christ have Christ as their allotted portion, and they need to labour on Christ and enjoy Him every day.

Christ is the reality of the good land. As therefore we have received Christ, Jesus the Lord, we need to walk in Him; this is to walk in Christ as the land (Col. 2:6-7).

We have been rooted in Him and we are being built up in Him. On one hand, when we were regenerated, we were rooted in Christ as the land, but this rooting on the land is not something once-for-all, but it is a process.

We need to be more deeply rooted in Christ every day, having a root system in Christ.

Having a root system means that we have hidden experiences of Christ, hidden enjoyment of Christ, secret enjoyment of Christ so that we may grow in life for the building up of the Body of Christ.

For this, we need to take root downward and bear fruit upward (Isa. 37:31). For us to grow in life by absorbing the riches of Christ as the good land we first need to grow downward, taking time to absorb the Lord in our personal and private time with Him.

In our personal, private, and secret time with the Lord we can take time to absorb the Lord. In our time with the Lord we want to contact Him, experience Him, enjoy Him, touch Him, and be touched by Him.

When we take root downward by our secret and hidden enjoyment and experience of Christ, we also bear fruit upward.

A lot of time in the morning, however, we rush our time with the Lord; we rush through our reading the Bible or the morning revival, thinking we do our job in contacting Him by just pray-reading a verse and reading a few paragraphs, without contacting the Lord.

We need to take time to enjoy the Lord, not rushing our time with Him but rather praying the word back to the Lord so that we may absorb Him.

May we treasure our time with the Lord! And when we think we don’t know what to do or say in our time with the Lord, we may ask Him to teach us what to do and say, and let Him touch us.

Lord Jesus, we want to spend time with You in Your word every day to absorb You so that we may send roots downward in You and have a proper growth upward. Lord, we just want to touch You, see You, enjoy You, experience You, and be touched by You in our time with You. We come to You again and again to get life in the word. Speak to us, Lord, and we will say Amen to Your word and repeat it back to You. Amen, Lord, we love You and we love Your word!

Living a Life of Labouring on Christ to Enjoy Him Personally and Corporately for the Body

We need to live a life of labouring upon Christ, a life of enjoying Christ personally so that we may enjoy Him together collectively for the building up of the Body as the temple, the house, of the living God (1 Cor. 3:16; 1 Tim. 3:15).

Our Christ is rich beyond measure, but the church today is grovelling in poverty; why is this? It is because the Lord’s children are indolent; they are lazy.

Many times we are sluggish; we don’t do things in Christ with Christ, by Christ, through Christ, letting Christ live through us and be able to do and be everything in us and through us.

May we start in the morning by not loving our bed but loving our time with the Lord, and may we be awakened by the Father morning by morning to hear His instructions and get His word, so that we may be able to speak a word in season to those who are weary (Isa. 50:4-5).

God’s will for us is to enjoy Christ. As seen in Heb. 10:5-10, His will for us right now is to enjoy Christ; He took away the animal sacrifices and established Himself as the unique reality of all the sacrifices for us to take, receive, and enjoy in a daily way – this is God’s will!

Our God is faithful; He called us in the fellowship, the joint-participation of His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord (1 Cor. 1:9).

It is not merely when we get a better job, a new car, or when we graduate school that God is faithful; rather, our God is faithful to take away all the idols, everything that we have in our being and possess and love more than Christ.

Whatever we possess and even are can be an idol; we are just like the people of Israel in being unfaithful to God. But praise the Lord, God is faithful in calling us into the fellowship of His Son – yet He may not seem to be faithful in caring for our welfare.

God’s faithfulness is not according to our natural understanding. We may expect peace and blessing but may get troubles, health problems, and loss of our possession; do we still say that God is faithful when all these happen to us?

Our God is faithful in His purpose to remove anything that replaces Him so that we may drink only of Him as the fountain of living waters!

God is faithful in leading us in His economy to enjoy Christ, absorb Christ, drink Christ, eat Christ, and assimilate Christ so that He may increase in us to fulfill His economy.

So we must seek to enjoy Christ and experience Him in every situation; to labour upon Christ is to enjoy Christ and experience Him in every situation.

May we consecrate ourselves to the Lord every day to enjoy Him and experience Him.

In Phil. 3:7-14 Paul said that he counted all things loss on account of the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus his lord; he just wanted to gain Christ, be found in Him, and have more of Him, considering all other things as rubbish, refuse, drags, and filth.

To gain Christ is to win Christ; every day we want to gain more of Christ, and in every meeting we want to win more of Him.

Christ is our prize not only in the millennial kingdom but even today! We want to know Him and be found in Him, knowing Christ subjectively and experientially.

For this, we pursue Christ so that, just as He laid hold of us, we would also lay hold of Him.

Amen, may we forget the things which are behind and stretch forward to the things which are before so that we may gain Christ!

Whenever we come to the meetings to worship the Lord, we should not come with our hands empty; rather, we must come with our hands full of the produce of Christ.

In Deut. 16:15-17 we see that we should not appear before Jehovah empty-handed; when we go to the meeting we shouldn’t go empty handed but rather, have something of Christ ready to share with the saints.

Day by day we labour upon Christ, and we come to the meeting with something of Christ to give to the saints!

The real meaning of being a priest is to have our hands filled; our hands need to be filled with the produce of Christ and the enjoyment of Christ so that, when we come together, we may give Christ to others.

We must produce enough of Christ so that there will be a surplus remaining for the poor and the needy, for the priests and the Levites, and with the best for the Lord Himself (Deut. 15:11; 18:3-4; 12:11).

There will always be needy saints in the church life, for the Lord wants us to minister Christ to them. To worship God with Christ is to worship Him collectively with all the children of God by enjoying Christ with one another and with God.

Whenever we come together, each one has a portion of Christ, and each one can share his portion of Christ with others for their enjoyment and edification unto building up (1 Cor. 14:26).

Each one of us has a different aspect of Christ; we possess and keep Christ by labouring upon Christ, and we can bring our portion of Christ for others to also enjoy with God.

Lord Jesus, we want to live a life of labouring upon Christ, a life of enjoying Christ personally so taht we may enjoy Him together collectively for the building up of the Body of Christ! Amen, Lord, save us from being indolent or lazy in the land. May we see the rich Christ and labour upon Christ day by day to gain Him and be constituted with Him. Lord, we forget the things behind and we stretch forward to the vast, inexhaustible Christ that lies ahead to enjoy Him, obtain Him, possess Him, and have a top portion to share with the saints in the meetings and with God! Amen, Lord, we seek to enjoy and experience You in every situation, and we want to bring the Christ we enjoy and experience to the meeting for the building up of the Body of Christ!

Read this article in the Romanian language / citiți acest articol și în limba română la următorul link, Să trăim o viață de ostenire asupra lui Cristos pentru a-L savura în mod personal și colectiv pentru Trup.

References and Hymns on this Topic

• Inspiration: the Word of God, my enjoyment in the ministry, the message by bro. Ed Marks for this week, and portions from, The All-inclusive Christ, chs. 15-16 (by Witness Lee), as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, Crystallization-Study of Deuteronomy, week 6, Life in the Land and the Issue of the Land — the Church as the Temple, the Dwelling Place of God, and as the City, the Kingdom of God.
• Hymns on this topic:
  – Laboring on Jesus, the good land so real, / Plowing and planting and watering the field. / He yields the produce of reality, / God reaps a harvest of Jesus in me. / O Jesus! You’re God’s good land / For me to labor on! / I’ll bit by bit possess You / Until the whole is won! (Hymns #1168)
  – Laboring on the good land, laboring in the morning, / Laboring through the noontime to the early eve, / Laboring for a harvest, reaping all the produce, / Coming to the meeting, bringing in the sheaves. (Hymns #1167)
  – We on Christ, as land, must labor, / Harvest Him for all our fare; / Tasting Him to overflowing, / Christ with others we may share. (Hymns #912)