Cooperating with God as we Suffer so that we may be Renewed to become the New Creation

In our Christian life for God’s purpose, we need to pass through the process of renewing, a process that involves suffering; we are destined to suffer so that we may be renewed, to be fully transferred from the realm of the old creation to the realm of the new creation. Amen!

On the positive side, to be renewed is to enjoy the dispensing of God’s ever-new essence into us to constitute us; on the negative side, there’s the need for the consuming of the outer man.

God’s way to renew us is the cross; He doesn’t want only our spirit to be new – He wants that our mind, emotion, will, and even our mortal body would be renewed, made new, by being filled with His life.

God’s life is new, and what He works of Himself into us brings in newness.

Newness, therefore, is in our spirit, for our spirit is the dwelling place of God.

But how can God in Christ as the Spirit spread from our spirit, the innermost part of our being, the hidden man of the heart, into all our inward being and even in our body?

Our soul, our heart, and our body tightly envelop our spirit, and many times the Lord is imprisoned in our spirit.

We need to learn to open to Him in prayer and fellowship with Him, giving Him the permission to spread by enjoying Him in His word and with the saints.

Also, we need to simply say Amen to His sovereign arrangement, for our environment is a tool that God uses to break us, to consume us, and to tear down our natural man.

We are so strong in our natural being, and by default, it is still us who live; though we have Christ in our spirit, and in our spirit, we are a new creation, we are so old in our natural man, and so many times we still live in the natural man.

Just think about it: how much do you live Christ day by day? It is so much us who live, us who is being expressed, our tastes being satisfied, our preferences being expressed, and our natural man being lived out.

As we turn to the Lord, again and again, we are reminded to remain in spirit so that Christ may live in us; then, with the help of the environment and all the things and persons around us, the Lord works to consume our outer man.

May we not become stronger in our outer man as we pass through sufferings and trials; may we learn to open to the Lord and just allow HIm to consume the outer man so that the inner man may be renewed.

May we even ask the Lord to continue to renew us day by day; He wants to renew our mind, emotion, and will, and He wants to give us a new heart and even a new body that matches His body of glory.

May we just open to Him and allow Him to consume us and also renew us!

We are Destined to Suffer so that we may be Renewed to become the New Creation

As believers in Christ, we live a Christian life for God’s purpose, and we are going through the process of renewing; this process involves suffering (see Rom. 8:17-18; 2 Cor. 1:7; 4:10-11, 17; 1 Pet. 4:13; 5:9).

On one hand, the cross implies the termination and death of our natural man, the self, and the flesh; however, in the process of the operation of the cross, invariably there will be suffering.

Though suffering is not the goal, the cross does involve suffering. We are destined to suffer so that we may be renewed to become the new creation.

Rom. 8:17-18 opens this matter up to us when it says that, if we suffer with Him, we will also be glorified with Him.

Without passing through some suffering for His sake, we will not be able to enter into His glory.

Our Christian life is not so much a life of happiness of joy; the human life is a life of suffering.

Especially these days with the covid19 pandemic still raging on around the earth, seeing so many people falling ill and dying, there is sorrow upon sorrow.

There is suffering within us and suffering to see others suffering; human life is a life full of suffering at every level, suffering in our health, our family, our environment, and all the things around us.

We should not try to avoid suffering; rather, we need to realize that we are destined to suffer so that we may be renewed, for all sufferings are the process to make us new (Col. 1:24; Phil. 1:29; 2 Cor. 1:6; 4:17).

We are like olives being crushed and pressed so that the oil may come forth to honour God and man.

However, even though we may go through suffering, not all suffering is for the pressing of the oil; there is the ordinary suffering for all human beings, and the suffering that is the result or consequence of our mistakes – these have no value in this respect.

The suffering that means something to God is the suffering on behalf of Christ and on behalf of the Body of Christ, the church.

As Paul said in Col. 1:24, we need to fill up what is lacking in the Body of the sufferings of Christ. All the sufferings that God has assigned to us have one unique purpose: to renew us (Rom. 12:2; Eph. 4:23; Titus 3:5).

Sufferings in themselves are not the goal – they are the means, part of the process of being renewed; we are destined to suffer so that we may be renewed and become the new creation.

The sufferings that we pass through are the process for us to be transferred from the realm of the old creation to the realm of the new creation (2 Cor. 5:17).

We are like the butterfly, in the process of being glorified; however, we are in the stage of being a cocoon, which is not that positive, for a lot of things are happening inwardly, while outwardly not much is manifested.

Our passing through sufferings helps us to be transferred from the realm of the old creation to the realm of the new creation.

We should not belittle any one of our circumstances, situations, weaknesses, failures, and shortages, and we should not dismiss the environment, our spouse, our children, our relatives, our boss, our co-workers, and all who give us trouble and suffering, for all suffering helps us be transferred into the new creation.

We may experience suffering now, but the suffering we pass through to be renewed does not compare with the glory of our being new (2 Cor. 4:17-18; Rom. 8:18).

The suffering we pass through to be renewed is light and temporary, but the glory we gain is eternal; suffering works out for us an eternal weight of glory.

What we pass through on earth on our human journey is limited and finite, but the end result is that we gain something eternal, the glory into which we will be ushered.

We just need to realize that, as we pass through afflictions as a result of suffering, there needs to be a continual renewing taking place in us day by day so that God can accomplish His heart’s desire.

Our passing through afflictions – the state of pain, distress, or grief resulting from being in suffering – needs to be a continual renewing.

God doesn’t give us a giant suffering that lasts a few minutes and then we are renewed and transformed; rather, He works in our environment to allow us to undergo suffering day by day for the consuming of the outer man and renewing of the inner man.

We are destined to suffer so that we may be renewed to become a new creation.

We may be able to endure great persecutions for Christ and big suffering events, we may be able to endure big crosses, big calamities, and big sufferings for the Lord, but we may not be able to endure the many little sufferings we encounter in our daily life. Oh, Lord!

May we open to the Lord and look to Him day by day so that, even as we suffer day by day and are afflicted, there would be a continual renewing taking place!

Lord Jesus, we want to live a Christian life for God’s purpose. Renew us more today to make us the new creation. May we realize that we are destined to suffer so that we may be renewed to become the new creation. Save us from trying to get out of sufferings and afflictions; may we say Amen to Your sovereign arrangement so that we may remain in the process of being renewed. Amen, Lord Jesus, may all sufferings that we pass through work out in us, more and more surpassingly, an eternal weight of glory! We look not at the sufferings but at the end result, the glory that is eternal! Amen, Lord, have Your way to fully transfer us from the realm of the old creation to the realm of the new creation! May there be a continual renewing taking place in us day by day even as we pass through afflictions so that God can accomplish His heart’s desire!

Learning to Cooperate with God by Allowing Him to Renew us through the Addition of His Element to us Daily and Living According to His Nature in us

We may think we are OK, for we are believers in Christ, saints in the church life, those who have been kept and preserved by the Lord; however, have we been renewed with the divine element, or is it still us who lives and is expressed?

Is there some renewing going on in us, or do we remain the same day after day and year after year? It would be tragic if we pass through many sufferings yet remain the same.

God wants to renew us from within, so He came into us to become our very life and nature; also, He works in the environment to work His life and nature into us.

Inwardly, He adds more of His element to us as we open to Him; outwardly, He works all things to cause our outer man to be consumed and weakened so that He would work Himself into us.

It’s not about being right or doing the good things; we may be so right and so good, yet still so old.

The Lord is faithful to use the environment to expose us how old we are, how much we live in ourselves, and how little we live Christ.

He uses all things around us to trouble us, remind us, and wake us up to realize that, even though we have God as our life and nature, we still do not live Him or according to His nature.

We may enjoy the Lord and possess Him for our enjoyment, but do we live Him out as our nature?

In our speaking to our spouse, in our attitude toward our boss or our neighbours, and in our doing things in the daily life, do we do this according to our disposition and habit, or do we live according to God’s nature? Oh, Lord!

The more the Lord shines on us and we respond in prayer, the more we not only are exposed, corrected, and subdued, but we also get renewed.

We are renewed by the addition of God’s element into our being; our Christian life is a life of being renewed by having God added to us day by day.

We are destined to suffer so that we may be renewed to become the new creation; therefore, we need to cooperate with the Lord by allowing Him to renew us through the addition of His element into us daily and through living according to His nature in us.

We may even tell Him to add more of Himself into us every day. Especially in the morning, as we spend time with the Lord, we need to open to Him and ask Him to add more of Himself into our being.

Our problem today is that we do so many things without God; we do things as if God doesn’t exist, or as if He is not in us to be our life and nature.

The Lord is within us, in our spirit, and He is waiting for us to cooperate with Him to renew us by adding His element into us, and He wants us to live according to His nature within us.

If we just give Him the opportunity and the opening, He will add Himself into our being as the new element to renew us.

He may even allow us and the church to pass through a “storm”; He allows the storm to occur because He wants us to be renewed.

It would be tragic, however, for us to pass through sufferings, afflictions, and storms, yet not be renewed. May we open to Him daily and ask Him in prayer,

Lord Jesus, we don’t want to remain the same. Renew us more every day. Add more of Yourself to us. We just open to You, dear Lord, and we give You the opportunity in us for You to add more of Your element into us. Save us from remaining the same even after passing through sufferings and afflictions. Renew us day by day. We want to cooperate with You by allowing You to work Yourself into us to renew us and make us the new creation. Amen, Lord, we come to You daily to contact You, open ourselves up to You, and let You come into us to be a new addition into us. May there be more of God added to us every day!

References and Hymns on this Topic

• Sources of inspiration: the Word of God, my enjoyment in the ministry, a message by bro. James Lee on this topic, and portions from, Collected Works of Witness Lee, 1989, vol. 2, “Being Renewed Day by Day,” pp. 358-361, as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, Meeting God’s Need and Present needs in the Lord’s Recovery, week 5, entitled, Our Need to Walk in Newness of Life, to Serve in Newness of Spirit, and to Be Renewed in Our Inner Man Day by Day.
• Hymns on this topic:
  – Olives that have known no pressure / No oil can bestow; / If the grapes escape the winepress, / Cheering wine can never flow; / Spikenard only through the crushing, / Fragrance can diffuse. / Shall I then, Lord, shrink from suff’ring / Which Thy love for me would choose? / Each blow I suffer / Is true gain to me. / In the place of what Thou takest / Thou dost give Thyself to me. (Hymns #626)
  – If I’d have Christ formed within me, / I must breathe my final breath, / Live within the Cross’s shadow, / Put my soul-life e’er to death. / If no death, no life, / If no death, no life; / Life from death alone arises; / If no death, no life. (Hymns #631)
  – By the cross discern the spirit, / With the mind by light renewed, / All emotion consecrated, / And the will in love subdued. (Hymns #748)