We need to be those who enjoy God as the all-sufficient Mighty One, El-Shaddai, and walk before Him so that we may be perfect before Him!
In order for us to be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect, we need to have God as the element of perfection added to us and wrought into us, and we need to trust in Him, depending on Him as our source and supply; we need to spend time with God to be infused with Him so that we may live because of Him. Amen!
As believers in Christ, we have God’s life and nature in us, and we can be perfect because our heavenly Father is perfect.
Christian perfection, however, is not what the world views as perfection; it is not being perfect in everything we do and say but being made the same as God, who is perfect. Wow!
How can we be made perfect? We are sinners, full of sins and faults and weaknesses; how can we be perfect even as God is perfect?
We can be perfect not by trying and striving to do so; we can be made perfect by living according to the divine nature in us, which is perfect.
We are partakers of God’s divine nature. And we partake of His nature by being in His holy word.
The more we come to the Lord in His word, the more we partake of His precious and exceedingly great promises, and the more we partake of the divine nature.
Praise the Lord, we are partakers of God’s nature and we flee the lusts which are in the world!
God has provided us with all things that relate to life and godliness; He also granted to us precious and exceedingly great promises, that through these we may become partakers of the divine nature. May we learn to enjoy the Lord in His word.
May we practice living according to the divine nature in our spirit.
And may we learn to pray-read the word of God so that we may have His nature infused into us, wrought into our being, and expressed through us.
As we enjoy the Lord in His word, the written word becomes the living word to us, and in our experience, this word becomes the applied word in our daily living.
For us to be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect means that we’re perfect in His love, for love is the nature of His essence.
Our love is flawed and spoiled, but the love of God is perfect, and He is perfecting His love in us and perfecting us in His love.
May we partake of what God is day by day.
May we partake of Him and enjoy Him day by day, even moment by moment.
May we remain in the organic union with the Lord, absorbing His riches, and keeping our inner being open to Him.
He wants us to enjoy Him with His divine nature in us both today and for eternity.
We are meant to enjoy God and partake of His divine nature in this age and for eternity! Praise the Lord!
Trusting in God, Enjoying Him as the All-sufficient Mighty One, Walking before Him and being Perfect
To be perfect is to have God added to us; God is the perfect One, and the only way we can be perfect is by having God added to us as the very element of our perfection.
In Gen. 17:1 God appeared to Abraham and told him, I am the All-sufficient God; walk before Me, and be perfect.
Only God is complete, perfect, and lacking nothing; He is perfect in Himself, being short of nothing.
For us to be perfect is to become the same as God in life and nature.
Abraham tried his best to be perfect, and he even used his own natural effort to produce a seed, which God promised to him.
God promised Abraham that He will give him a seed, an heir, but Abraham and Sarah got tired of waiting, so Abraham used his natural strength and produced a son with Hagar, the maidservant.
This is a seed, but this is not the seed that God wanted.
So God was silent toward Abraham for thirteen years; no word was spoken by God to Abraham from when he was eighty-six to when he was ninety-nine years of age.
And when God came to him, He told Abraham that He is El-Shaddai, the all-sufficient God.
Abraham got it all wrong: he trusted in himself and produced something for God, but this is not what God wants.
God wants to be the all-sufficient Mighty One for us, the One whom we trust and whom we enjoy.
He wants us to enjoy Him as the all-sufficient One.
El Shaddai means the “all-sufficient Mighty One”; God is the all-sufficient Mighty One for us to enjoy.
Shaddai implies the meaning of breast, udder, and means “all-sufficient”; God is the One with an udder, ready to bountifully supply us at any time.
The source of our supply should not be our natural self but God, the Mighty One with an udder.
God is the all-sufficient One who can supply us with everything we need for our living and for us to be perfect.
We need to walk before the all-sufficient One and be perfect.
When we walk before Him, that is, when we are one with Him and take Him as our source and supply, we will be perfect.
God as the source of grace supplies us, His called us, with the riches of His divine being for the fulfilment of His purpose.
The Lord’s grace is sufficient for us, for His power is being perfected in our weaknesses (2 Cor. 12:9; Phil. 4:13; John 15:5b).
Many times we do things in ourselves and by ourselves, and we try to perfect ourselves and better ourselves.
However, God wants us to come to Him, depend on Him, and take Him as our source, our supply, and our everything.
We just need to come to Him and enjoy Him, partake of Him, and depend on Him.
He is the almighty God with a bountiful supply of grace for us to enjoy and walk before Him, thus being perfect.
The apostle Paul experienced God as the all-sufficient One who bountifully supplied him; he had a thorn in his flesh, so he asked God three times to remove it, but God comforted him by saying that His grace was sufficient for him.
We need to have such experiences in our Christian life of coming to the Lord again and again, depending on Him and taking Him as the all-sufficient One.
In our married life, we should not try to love our wife with our own love; rather, we need to come to the Lord and take Him as our love.
We need to realize that in ourselves there’s no love, patience, joy, and kindness, but in Christ as the all-sufficient Mighty One in our spirit, all these are in abundance.
We need to simply open our being to Him, ask Him to fill us, and allow Him to flow in us and saturate us with what He is.
To walk before God is to walk in His presence, constantly enjoying Him and His all-sufficient supply.
This is what our Christian life should be: we should not live in ourselves, trying to perfect ourselves or cause ourselves to be better, but we should simply depend on the Lord, enjoy Him constantly, and allow Him to saturate us with what He is.
We need to daily contact the Lord and take Him as our all-sufficient One who is full of a bountiful supply, ready to dispense Himself into us.
May we remain in His presence, walk in His presence, and constantly enjoy Him with His all-sufficient supply; this will cause us to be perfect.
Lord Jesus, we come to You as the all-sufficient mighty One: supply us bountifully with all that You are! We open to You, dear Lord. We do not want to live in the self or in our natural man. We give up our striving and struggling, and we put aside all our efforts to be perfect. We just come to You as the all-sufficient mighty One with a bountiful supply. We take You as our supply. We take You as our source. Supply everything that we need for our living and for the fulfilment of Your purpose. We are not the source, Lord; we take You as our source. We do not want to live on our own or by ourselves: we take You as our life and supply, and we want to live in You and because of You! Amen, Lord, we want to walk in Your presence, constantly enjoying You with Your all-sufficient supply!
Spending time with God to be Infused with God and having God as the Element of Perfection Added to us
![Perfect you in every good work for the doing of His will, doing in us that which is well pleasing in His sight through Jesus Christ; to Him be the glory forever and ever. Amen. Heb. 13:21 So then, my beloved, even as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only but now much rather in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; For it is God who operates in you both the willing and the working for [His] good pleasure. Phil. 2:12-13](https://i0.wp.com/www.agodman.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Perfect-you-in-every-good-work-for-the-doing-of-His-will-doing-in-us-that-which-is-well-pleasing-683x1024.webp?resize=450%2C675&ssl=1 "Perfect you in every good work for the doing of His will, doing in us that which is well pleasing in His sight through Jesus Christ; to Him be the glory forever and ever. Amen. Heb. 13:21 So then, my beloved, even as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only but now much rather in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; For it is God who operates in you both the willing and the working for [His] good pleasure. Phil. 2:12-13")
After God presented Himself to Abraham as the all-sufficient One with a bountiful supply, He told Abraham, Walk before Me and be perfect.
To walk before God doesn’t mean that we walk in fear of Him; it doesn’t mean that we fear God as the Holy One as we live our daily life.
Rather, we walk before God as the all-sufficient One with a bountiful supply to care for all our daily needs.
We need to daily enjoy His supply and walk in His presence; this will cause us to be perfect.
To be imperfect, therefore, is to be short of God; to be imperfect is to lack God, to be short of the element of God.
To be perfect is to have God added to us as the element and factor of perfection.
In a practical way, to be perfect means that we don’t rely on the strength of the flesh but rather, we trust in God as the all-sufficient Mighty One for our life and our work.
The element of perfection is God Himself; without God and apart from God, no one can be perfect.
We need to daily rely on God, trust in Him, and gain more of God.
If we have more of God in our family life, we will be perfect, but if we lack God as we live the family life, we are lacking something.
None of us can be perfect with God; none of us can be perfected without having God being added to us.
We are imperfect because we are short of God; without God, we are not perfect, and without God in our church life, our church life is not perfect.
Without God in our married life, our married life is imperfect.
God doesn’t want us to try in ourselves to fulfil His requirements; He doesn’t require that we try our best to be perfect, and then He will accept us.
Rather, God wants us to come to Him, the all-sufficient Mighty One who is perfect, and He as the Perfect One will infuse Himself into us to make us perfect even as He is perfect.
In Exo. 24:16-18 we see that, before God gave Moses the law, he spent time to infuse Moses with Himself.
God’s intention isn’t that He would give us a set of rules and regulations for us to keep; His intention is to infuse us with Himself so that He will have a way to do everything in us and for us to fulfil the commandments He gives to us.
This is what grace is: God becoming our enjoyment and our everything so that we may live one with God and fulfil His purpose by having Him live in us and do everything for us.
The emphasis in the Bible is that we need God to come into us and do everything for us (Phil. 2:12-13); it is God who does the willing and the working.
There are commandments and laws, especially the law in the Old Testament, but these were given not for us to keep but to expose us and prove that we are not able to do it, so that we may come to the Lord to be infused with Him!
The requirements of the commandments in the New Testament were given to prove that God is able to do everything in us!
Outside of us, God gives us many commandments, but inside of us, He is the One who keeps all these commandments for us (Heb. 13:21). Hallelujah!
On the outside, God is requiring many things from us, including that we are perfect as God is perfect.
Inside of us, however, God is there to do everything in us and for us.
May we not rely on the strength of the flesh but trust in the all-sufficient Mighty One for our life and work, and may we come to Him to enjoy Him day by day.
May we live in the organic union with the Lord today, depending on Him for everything and allowing Him to do everything in us and for us.
When we keep ourselves away from the Lord, we’re like an electrical appliance that tries to work without being plugged into the electrical current.
May we learn to keep ourselves in one spirit with the Lord, constantly being in God, so that we may be perfect even as He is perfect.
He as the element of perfection is being added to us constantly, and we simply need to walk before Him by constantly enjoying Him and depending on Him, and we will be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect.
Lord Jesus, grant us to no longer rely upon the strength of the flesh in our living but trust in the all-sufficient Mighty One who is our bountiful supply. Amen, Lord, may we not rely upon the exercise of our natural self but always trust in God’s all-sufficiency for everything. Keep us in Your presence, dear Lord, and infuse more of what You are into us. We come to You and we allow You to come into us to do everything in us and for us. Just keep us in the enjoyment of Yourself. Oh Lord, we can’t meet the requirements of Your commandments in ourselves; we come to You and we allow You to come into us and keep these requirements in us. May we remain in God, walk in God’s presence, and do everything one with God. Hallelujah, God is everything that we need! He is our strength, our energy, our life, our joy, and our patience. We take You, Lord, as everything in our fellowship with You. Live in us today. Make us perfect as we walk in Your presence!
References and Hymns on this Topic
- Sources of inspiration: the Word of God, my enjoyment in the ministry, a sharing by brother Minoru Chen in the message, and portions from, Life-study of Genesis, msg. 47, as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, Loving the Lord and loving one another for the organic building up of the church as the Body of Christ (2022 fall ITERO), week 7, entitled, Being Perfect as the Heavenly Father is Perfect by being Perfected in His Love.
- Hymns on this topic:
– All-sufficient grace He giveth, / With His pow’r He covers me, / Makes me glory in my weakness / And in weakness strengthens me. (Hymns #540 stanza 6)
– Lord, Thy love is the expression / Of Thy loving self divine, / Making life so full of meaning, / Harmonized with God’s design. / Grace of life, how all-sufficient, / Is my portion day by day; / I’m the object of Thy favor / And Thy sweetness taste alway. (Hymns #152 stanza 3)
– Oh, let that grace inspire / My heart with strength divine; / May all my powers to Thee aspire, / And all my days be Thine. / All sufficient grace! / Never powerless! / It is Christ who lives in me, / In His exhaustlessness. (Hymns #312 stanza 6 and chorus)
About aGodMan
![In My Father's house are many abodes; if [it were] not [so,] I would have told you; for I go to prepare a place for you. John 14:2](https://i0.wp.com/agodman.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/In-My-Fathers-house-are-many-abodes-if-it-were-not-so-I-would-have-told-you.jpg?fit=178%2C100&ssl=1)
Since [God] is the all-sufficient Mighty One, there is no reason or excuse for us to be imperfect. Whatever we lack, God is. Do you lack strength? God is strength. Do you need energy? God is energy. God is whatever we need…There is no reason for us to be poor; we have a large deposit in the heavenly bank. Practically speaking, to be perfect means that we do not rely upon the strength of the flesh but trust in the all-sufficient Mighty One for our life and work. We should not rely upon the exercise of our natural self or upon the energy of our flesh. We must always trust in God’s all-sufficiency for everything…Why do we lose our temper at certain times? Because at those times we do not trust in God. The losing of our temper should force us to learn one lesson—never to stay away from God but to trust in Him every moment… If you forget your temper and trust in God every moment, your temper will be overcome. Every imperfection is due to one thing: that we keep ourselves away from the all-sufficient Mighty One. When we keep ourselves away from Him, we are like an electrical appliance that will not work because it is cut off from the supply of electricity. We all must learn to keep ourselves constantly in God. This is the way to be perfect. Life-study of Genesis, pp. 631-633, by Witness Lee
To be perfect is to have God as the element of perfection added to us.
It means that we don’t trust in the strength of the flesh but trust in God as the all-sufficient One, the One who bountifully supplies us.
Amen, O Jehovah El-Shaddai
Amen Lord! Keep us enjoying Your bountiful supply, to be added to us, to perfect us and to walk before You!
Dear brother, the way to be perfect, according to the Bible, is to have God added into us.
When we stay away from God we are full of imperfections in our home life and married life.
We need to walk before God, constantly enjoying His presence, as the All-Sufficient One who can supply our daily need – even our strength and energy – the all-sufficient grace so that we would be perfect as He is perfect!
Amen brother!
O Lord only in Christ can we be perfected by constantly connected to our mingled spirit!
Hallelujah!
So brother, El means strong and Shaddai, implying the meaning of breast, udder, means “all-sufficient”…An udder produces milk, and milk is the all-sufficient supply, having water, minerals, and many vitamins in it and containing ALL that we need for our daily living
He is the all-sufficient One who can supply everything you need for our living and everything we need for the fulfillment of His eternal purpose.
HE IS the source. YOU are not the source. We should not live on by yourself. We have to live by Him as the source of our supply.”
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Mary had a proper attitude. There are at least four aspects to a proper attitude.
(1) She was at the feet of the Lord Jesus, and not at the feet of anyone else. She was drawing near to the Lord. This is the shortest and quickest way to grow in life.
Many who know God in a deep way have found this way. Madam Guyon said, “Our drawing near to God constitutes all service.”
(2) She sat at the feet of the Lord. This means that she put herself in a humble position. Humility is a crucial condition for receiving God’s blessing. God resists the proud and gives grace to the humble (1 Pet. 5:5). Humility is not belittling ourselves; humility is ignoring ourselves, negating ourselves, and considering ourselves as nothing.
(3) She was sitting down. She was not busy like her sister.
The greatest challenge man faces is being quiet before the Lord. His eyes and thoughts often are distracted to the outside world. Of all the members in the body, the eyes are the busiest, and of all the faculties in the soul, the mind is the busiest. Those who are busy cannot receive revelation easily.
(4) She was listening to the Lord’s word. The words that the Lord speaks are spirit and life. Through this word, the Lord dispenses Himself to men.
Brothers and sisters, it is a pity for anyone to just hear man’s voice in a sermon and not meet the Christ behind the voice.
Amen brother. Without Christ, we’re always lacking something.
There’s no perfection without God. However, there’s no reason or excuse for us to be imperfect, for God is the all-sufficient Mighty One.
We all must learn to keep ourselves constantly in God.
May we forget ourselves and our imperfections and trust in God and enjoy Him…
Aaaaameeen! Yes dear Lord, we take You as our all sufficient supply!!
AMEN
* Heb. El Shaddai. El means the Mighty One, and Shaddai comes from the Hebrew word meaning breast or udder. This divine title reveals God as the Mighty One with an udder, that is, the all-sufficient Mighty One. He is the source of grace to supply His called ones with the riches of His divine being that they may bring forth Christ as the seed for the fulfillment of His purpose;
(Fn.”All-sufficient”,- Cf.Gen. 28:3; 35:11; 43:14; 48:3; 49:25; Exo. 6:3; Job 33:4; Ezek. 10:5)
* To walk before God is to walk in His presence, constantly enjoying Him and His all-sufficient supply. To be perfect is to have God added to us as the element and factor of perfection. Practically, it means that we do not rely on the strength of the flesh but trust in God as the all-sufficient Mighty One for our life and our work.
Praise the Lord, brother, our God is the “All sufficient One.” He can supply us and meet all our needs. We need to learn to trust in Him. His grace is sufficient for us!