The Direction of the Lord’s Move today is Building up the Body for His Expression

Today we start a new topic in our holy word for morning revival, which is, The Direction of the Lord’s move today, and in particular this week we focus on, The Intrinsic Building Up of the Organic Body of Christ (1) – Governed by a Vision of the Universal Body of Christ as the Goal of God’s Economy.

Our God is living and active, the Lord is moving, and the Spirit is flowing: our Triune God is a living, active, moving, and operating God. As a result, He has a move, which is to have the increase and spread of Christ through the propagation of the resurrected Christ by proclaiming the gospel of God.

The Lord’s move has a direction; we need to both be in the Lord’s move and know what it is, and to follow the direction of the Lord’s move. The Lord’s move in His recovery today involves four things, which are crucial to the God-ordained way of meeting and serving.

The Lord’s move is to recover the priesthood of the gospel in all of its fulness; He is moving in His recovery to recover home meetings so that new ones may be nourished and cherished. The Lord moves to have the perfecting of the saints unto the work of the ministry, and to bring us into prophesying for the building up of the church as the Body of Christ.

All these four matters – preaching the gospel, nourishing in the homes, perfecting the saints, and prophesying for building up – are related to and practiced in the local churches, on campuses, and all over the earth.

The direction of the Lord’s move today is to build up the Body of Christ, prepare the Bride of Christ, and to bring in the kingdom of God. The direction of the Lord’s move today is to build up the church as the Body of Christ, and to prepare the bride as the counterpart for the Bridegroom.

The Lord will come openly as the Son of righteousness and as the king of kings, but prior to that He will come as the bridegroom, for what His desire is His counterpart, His bride. Sooner or later in the churches through the saints the Body will be built up, the bride will be made ready, and the kingdom of God will be brought in.

We need to enter into the reality of the Body so that we may be prepared as the bride, and we need to know the kingdom of God both personally and corporately.

We need to know what the reality of the kingdom is, we need to live under the ruling of the divine life, and we need to see the connection between the kingdom of God and the church.

We need to be impressed with the direction of the Lord’s move so that His direction would become personally the direction of our Christian life inwardly.

No matter what is happening outwardly, whether health or sickness, life or death, joy or sorrow, and no matter what our stage is in our human life, inwardly we are on course – we have a direction, and in all the churches we follow the direction of the Lord’s move.

The Direction of the Lord’s Move today is to Build up the Organic Body of Christ

The first aspect of the direction of the Lord’s move today is to build up the organic Body of Christ, which Body is the organism of the processed and dispensing God in His Divine Trinity for His full expression (see Eph. 4:12, 16).

The Body of Christ must be built up, because the building up of the church as the Body of Christ is the turning point in this age. The building up of the Body is the preparation of the bride.

When the Lord estimates that there’s a sufficient reality of the Body built up on earth, He will return as the Bridegroom to rapture the bride; then, within three and a half years, the earth will witness the greatest dispensational change in history.

This change involves the bride being raptured, the great tribulation beginning on earth, the wedding feast taking place in the heavens, and 3.5 years later, the Bridegroom will assume His function as the commander-in-chief of His army, the bride will be His army, and He will return with His overcoming army to destroy Antichrist and his armies.

At the same time, Christ with His bridal army will be the corporate smiting stone to strike the toes of the great image and terminate human government all over the earth. That stone will become a great mountain – the kingdom of God – filling the whole earth.

All this will take place within the three and a half years pending the building up of the church as the Body of Christ. If the enemy keeps on delaying the building up of the Body, the Lord will keep on delaying His return for His bride.

There’s an intrinsic building up going on in the Body of Christ: the Triune God is working Himself into us through His dispensing for His full expression.

The organic Body of Christ is Christ Himself; the Body is built up with Himself as the life-giving Spirit – the essence and reality of the Body of Christ. In the Body of Christ, Christ is all and in all – He is in us, His believers, and He is becoming us, to constitute us as His members (Col. 3:11; Eph. 4:4).

We need to be in the process of being filled with Christ, having the essence and reality of the Body saturating our being little by little and day by day.

The Body of Christ becomes the organism of the processed and consummated Triune God, who is dispensing Himself in His Divine Trinity to saturate the Body of Christ organically, so that it might be His full expression in the universe (John 15:1, 5, 8a; 2 Cor. 13:14; Eph. 3:19).

The Body of Christ allows the Lord to move and be expressed on earth, to accomplish His will, and to carry out His administration.

God and Christ are aspiring to see the Body of Christ built up for the bride may be prepared and the kingdom of God may come in, so that Christ may have a Body and a Bride, and that God may have a kingdom on this earth for His eternal economy. All this relates to us, so we do well to pray,

Lord Jesus, saturate us all day today for the building up of the church as the Body of Christ. Dispense Yourself into us for the Body. Make us in reality and practicality the Body of Christ, the organism of the processed and consummated Triune God. Lord, we want the direction of Your move to be the direction of our life and move; we want to build up the church as the Body of Christ so that the bride may be prepared and the kingdom of God would come in and fill the whole earth!

The Body of Christ is a Divine Constitution of the Triune God with the Believers

What is the Body of Christ? Is the Body of Christ merely Christ Himself, or is the Body merely the believers in Christ put together? The Body of Christ is a divine constitution of the Triune God (who has been processed and consummated to be the life-giving Spirit) with the believers in Christ.

In Eph. 4:4-6 we see a crystallised description of the Body of Christ: the believers in Christ are the frame, and the Triune God in Christ as the Spirit is the content and reality, with the two being mingled and blended to become one organic entity.

The Father, the Son, the Spirit, and man are blended and built up together to become the Body of Christ (Eph. 1:23; 4:12, 16).

The Triune God has passed through a process to be consummated and become the life-giving Spirit; He passed through incarnation, human living, crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension, and today He is the Spirit to be the essence and reality of the Body of Christ.

We as God’s redeemed people are also passing through a process: we are regenerated, sanctified, renewed, and transformed, to become the outward framework, the structure, and the visible expression of the Triune God on earth.

Without the essence of the Spirit, the Body of Christ is merely a corpse; without the believers built up in the divine life with the Triune God, the Triune God is mysterious and abstract.

Therefore, God passed through a process and now we are passing through a process so that God and man, man and God, would be built up, blended, and constituted together as the Body of Christ to express the Triune God.

The building up of the Body of Christ is the constitution of the Triune God and the tripartite man in the Spirit of God and the spirit of man. This constitution is the union and mingling of God and man. It is divinity constituted into humanity to be man’s dwelling place, and it is humanity built into divinity to be God’s dwelling place. (The Issue of the Union of the Consummated Spirit of the Triune God and the Regenerated Spirit of the Believers, p. 54, by W. Lee)

Our mind needs to be renewed regarding the building of God; the Body is not a social or organisational thing, but an organic constitution. We first need to have the Triune God built into us, and then we are built up together in the Triune God as the Body of Christ.

The extent to which God is built into us is the extent to which we can be built up with others who also have God built into them. The Body of Christ is the union, mingling, and incorporation of God and man (John 14:20).

Union refers to oneness in life, mingling refers to the natures being mingled, and incorporation refers to the persons dwelling in each other mutually.

We need to be able to testify to others what it is like to have a union in life with the Lord, what it is to become divinely-human and humanly divine by being in the mingling of God and man, and we need to experience the abiding in the Lord so that He may abide in us.

When we live in the mutual abiding of God and man, there’s a tremendous love flowing among us for all the fellow-branches and for all human beings, and we will be filled with the joy of the Lord (see John 15).

The Body of Christ is a matter of divinity constituted into humanity to be man’s dwelling place, and of humanity built into divinity to be God’s dwelling place (see Eph. 3:16-17; 2:21-22; John 14:23; Rev. 21:2-3, 22).

The consummation is the New Jerusalem as a corporate person: here we are the tabernacle for God to dwell in us, and He is the temple for us to dwell in. How glorious and wonderful this is! We can experience these high truths and wonderful destiny by simply telling the Lord,

Lord Jesus, build Yourself into us for the building up of the church as the Body of Christ. We want to experience You as our home, and we want to be Your home and dwelling place. Lord, make Your home in our heart more today for the Body of Christ. Mingle Yourself more with us and keep us abiding in You so that we may be fully one in life, mingled in nature, and incorporated in person for the building up of the Body! Amen, Lord, gain a divine constitution of the Triune God with the believers in Christ, the Body of Christ!

References and Hymns on this Topic

• Inspiration: the Word of God, my enjoyment in the ministry, the message by brother Ron K. for this week, and portions from, The Conclusion of the New Testament, msg. 210; (by Witness Lee), as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, The Direction of the Lord’s Move (2016 Thanksgiving Conference), msg. 1 (week 1), The Intrinsic Building Up of the Organic Body of Christ (1) – Governed by a Vision of the Universal Body of Christ as the Goal of God’s Economy.
• Hymns on this topic:
  # But holding to truth in love / We may grow up in all things / Into Him who is the Head / Christ is the Head / Out from Whom all the Body / Being joined together and / Being knit together through / Ev’ry joint of the rich supply / And through the operation / In the measure of each one part / of each one part / Causes the growth of the Body unto the / building up of itself in love, / in love, in love. (Scripture song)
  # Build us up, build us up, as with one another sup’. / Hallelujah—the riches of Christ! / Build us up, build us up, as with You we all rise up. / Hallelujah—the living Body! / As blended members / Of His one Body, / We, the Lord do glorify! / His Light does shine! / Reviving Life does flow! / And we do see that Satan is crushed! (Song on building the Body)
  # One God, one Lord, one Spirit- / Her elements all one- / One faith, one hope, one baptism, / One Body in the Son; / The triune God is in her, / One Body members own, / By faith they are united, / In hope of glory shown. (Hymns #824)