Experience Christ as Everything and Taking up our Cross for the Genuine Church Life

The way for us to realize the genuine church life is to experience Christ as everything to us; furthermore, the genuine church life requires us to take up our cross and follow the Lord, for only when the self is crossed out can Christ come to be the reality of the church life.

The genuine church life is not merely the outward activities and meetings that the saints do in the realm of the church; it is the life of Christ, Christ Himself, being lived out and expressed through the many members of the Body of Christ.

It’s not a doctrine or a teaching; it is a living, the living of Christ in us.

The genuine church life is Christ Himself being realized, experienced, enjoyed, expressed, and exhibited by us.

When we enjoy Christ, when each of the saints enjoys Christ and experiences Him, there will be an overflow of the enjoyment of the riches of Christ whenever we come together.

Our coming together in the meetings is not so that we listen to a great preacher or an eloquent speaker while we just take notes.

Rather, we come together with the Christ we have enjoyed and experienced, ready to overflow with the enjoyment of Christ.

Our meetings are like a feast: each one of us brings his or her own “dish of Christ”, the Christ that they have “cooked” by their personal enjoyment and experience of Christ.

In our daily life, in all the daily activities of our living, we need to contact the Lord, gain Him, and be infused with Him.

As we open to Him in our personal time with Him and throughout the day, breathing Him in and breathing ourselves out, we will have genuine experiences of Christ, and out of these experiences something can flow for the building up of the church as the Body of Christ.

What builds up the church as the Body of Christ is our experience of Christ and expressing Christ, and we build up by prophesying, that is, speaking for God and speaking God.

Sadly, this is not our constant experience yet. Too many times we come to the meetings of the church and we have nothing of Christ to bring to the meeting.

And too many times when we’re in a meeting and someone shares their genuine experience and enjoyment of Christ, we may not appreciate it because our heart is not turned to the Lord.

We need to advance with the Lord. We need to go on with Him.

We need to know Christ, experience Christ, live Christ, enjoy Christ, be constituted with Christ, and manifest Christ.

When we all enjoy and experience Christ and then we come together, there will be a spontaneous issue of the enjoyment of the riches of Christ.

And it will be so organic and edifying. May the Lord recover this matter among us so that we may live the genuine church life, having Christ enjoyed, experienced, lived out, expressed, and manifested through us.

Experience Christ as Everything to us to Realize the Genuine Church Life

Christ is not our life only when we need life; He’s not our peace only when we need peace; He is not our patience only when we need patience.

Rather, He wants to become everything to us in our experience.

When we wake up in the morning, we can simply tell the Lord, Lord Jesus, I want to experience You today.

We can just open to Him. Little by little, moment by moment, day by day, we experience Christ in so many aspects until He becomes everything to us.

For eternity we will enjoy and experience Christ as everything to us.

We will live with Him forever after we get married at the end of this age, and we will be together for billions and billions of years enjoying and experiencing Christ as everything to us.

And it starts with today, even right now; right now we need to come to the Lord as we are, apply His precious blood to be cleansed of anything that hinders our fellowship with Him, and go on enjoying Him and experiencing Christ as everything to us.

We can tell Him, Lord, I want to experience You today and be one with You in what I do and say today.

The genuine church life comes from our genuine enjoyment and experience of Christ (Eph. 3:17).

As we allow the Lord to make His home in our heart through faith, there will be a spontaneous issue: we will apprehend with all the saints how vast and immense Christ in His riches is, and we will become the church as the fullness of God.

The development of Christ into our inner being issues in the genuine church life (4:13, 15-16).

Christ needs to develop, grow, and increase in our inner being.

As He grows in us, we will live the genuine church life.

We can just tell the Lord, Father, strengthen me with power through Your Spirit into the inner man so that Christ may make His home in my heart a little more today.

Day by day there needs to be a development of Christ in our being.

As He grows in us, as He develops within us, we will spontaneously live out the genuine church life, for the life of Christ is manifested through us.

The genuine church life is Christ realized, experienced, enjoyed, and expressed by us.

Day by day we can open to the Lord by uttering short and living prayers to let Him make His home in our heart.

Even when we realize that He wants to break through in this or that matter, and we may not agree or like it, we can still tell Him, Lord, I don’t like this, and I don’t want You to do this, but I still open to You.

As He breaks through in us, as He makes His home in all the parts of our soul – our mind with its thoughts, considerations, way of thinking, and concepts, our will with its decisions, stubbornness, and intentions, and our emotion with its desires, wants, ups-and-downs, and loves and hates, He increases in us and develops within us.

May we allow the Lord to develop and spread within us. May we learn to give in to Him as He does something in us.

May we learn to open to Him and just ask Him to make us willing.

We may not be willing to let Him remove something in our being or rid us of a particular desire or thought, but we can tell Him, Lord, I am not willing, but make me willing. I want You to break through in me so that You may develop in me for the genuine church life.

We are not perfect nor are we docile in cooperating with the Lord; rather, we struggle with Him, bargain with Him, and even desire to defeat Him and impose our own desires and will.

But as we open to Him and pray to open our being to Him, He will develop in us, He will break through in us, and there will be an increase of Christ in our being.

At the same time, we decrease; He increases, but we decrease, so that Christ would be realized, experienced, enjoyed, and expressed by us.

Lord Jesus, we want to realize the genuine church life by experiencing Christ as everything to us. We open to You, dear Lord; grant us new experiences of Christ today. May every day be a day of experiencing Christ. Become everything to us, dear Lord. We take You as our life and everything. May we have the genuine enjoyment of Christ day by day so that we may live the genuine church life. Make Your home in our heart a little more today. We open our mind, emotion, and will with all the inner chambers of our being to You. Break through in us. Even if we’re not willing to open to You, Lord, make us willing, so that You may spread in our inner being. May there be an increase of Christ every day in our being. May there be a development of Christ in our inner being day by day. Oh Lord, grow in us and grow in all the saints. May Christ be enjoyed, realized, experienced, and expressed by us for the genuine church life!

The Genuine Church Life Requires us to Take up our Cross and Follow the Lord in our Spirit

Since the genuine church life is the issue of our experiencing Christ as everything to us, such a life requires us to take up our cross and follow the Lord.

The Lord told us that, if we want to follow Him, we must deny the self (Matt. 16:24).

On one hand, we have the divine life of God in our spirit, and we are learning to live by this life, grow in this life, and allow this life to be expressed through us.

On the other hand, we have within us a natural, soulish life called “the self”, and within the self, Satan is expressed and it is here that he dwells.

When we take care of our self, sympathize with it, and do things for it, going along with the self, we develop the self and we’re under the hand of Satan.

When we live in the self, we cannot have the genuine church life, for the self is contrary to the church life.

The church life is the life of Christ, not the living of the self, not even the improved living of the self.

We build up the church not with the natural life but with the spiritual life, the life we live in our mingled spirit.

If we want to save our soul-life today, we will lose it, but if we lose our soul-life (the life of the soul) today, we will find it (Matt. 16:25).

The soul-life is the natural life, which is our self living out.

When we live in the self, do things in the self, and speak in the self, we stand with Satan and damage the building up of the church.

Therefore, for us to live the genuine church life we need to take up our cross and follow the Lord.

It is our experience many times that we spend some time to enjoy the Lord and see such a high revelation of the church, but right after that we live in the self and the natural life, and we get upset or have an exchange of words with our spouse.

The enemy is right there within us, having a solid base in our self and in the natural life, and he frustrates the building up of the church.

So we need to deny our self, take up and bear the cross, and follow the Lord. We need to bear the cross, that is, apply the death of Christ to our self (Rom. 8:13; Gal. 5:24; Col. 3:5).

On the Lord’s side, He bore the cross His whole life and then was crucified.

On our side, when we believe into the Lord and are baptized, we are crucified with Christ, and then we bear the cross throughout our Christian life.

The Lord put us on the cross when we believed into Him, and today we need to apply the cross to ourselves.

On the positive side, we need to be those who are experiencing Christ as everything for the genuine church life.

On the negative side, we must bear the cross, apply the Lord’s death to our self, and recognize that in the Lord our natural life, our self, and our old man have been put on the cross (Rom. 6:6; Gal. 2:20).

We need to realize that the Lord already put us on the cross, and we need to remain on the cross.

We apply this to ourselves by exercising our spirit to be one with the Lord and by not giving any ground to the self.

We may tell the Lord, Lord, thank You for putting me on the cross. My natural man has been crucified and the self has been put to an end. Amen, Lord, I now follow You by living and walking in the spirit.

We do not apply the cross of Christ by outwardly limiting or restricting ourselves from the things of the world, nor do we seek to have the experience of limitation or suffering so that we apply the cross.

The cross is applied when we’re in our spirit.

We realize that the self is the enemy of the Body, so we turn to our spirit, for that’s where the Lord lives.

Today the Lord is in our spirit (2 Tim. 4:22), and He is for the church. To follow the Lord, we need to walk and live in the spirit and for the church.

When we’re in our spirit, when we contact the Lord in the mingled spirit, we realize the genuine church life, and the self is denied.

How we thank the Lord that we, His believers, were crucified with Christ, and now we simply need to bear the cross by living and walking in the spirit.

For Christ to come and be the reality of the church life, the self must be crossed out.

There really is no other way to realize the genuine church life but to deny our natural life and the soul life and follow the Lord in our spirit.

We see that the self and the natural life are not good for God’s building but rather, are a frustration to the building of the church, so we turn to the Lord, we contact Him, and we remain in spirit so that the self may be denied and the soul-life would be put to death and we would live the genuine church life.

Lord Jesus, we want to live the genuine church life by taking up our cross and following the Lord Jesus in our spirit. Thank You, Lord, for putting us on the cross when we believed into the Lord. We want to remain on the cross day by day so that Christ may live in us. We want to follow You, Lord, as we live in the mingled spirit. Hallelujah, Christ in our spirit, and we can live and walk in the mingled spirit so that Christ may live in us. Amen, Lord, may the self be crossed out so that Christ can come to be the reality of the church life. May we realize that we have been crucified with Christ so that we would live not in the self or the natural life but in the spirit. Lord Jesus, we want to realize the genuine church life by experiencing Christ as our everything and by denying our natural life and soul life! Amen, Lord Jesus, we take up our cross by exercising our spirit to follow the Lord!

References and Hymns on this Topic

• Inspiration for this article/sharing comes from the Word of God, the enjoyment in the ministry, a sharing by the brothers in the message for this week, and portions from, Collected Works of Witness Lee, 1963, vol. 2, pp. 145-146, as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, Knowing Experiencing, and Living the All-inclusive Christ for the Genuine Church Life (2023 spring ITERO), week 1, entitled, Being Brought Back to Christ Himself for the Genuine Church Life.
• Similar articles on this topic:
  – May Christ Have First Place in All Things in Us, via, New Jerusalem blog.
  – Dealing with the self by the cross, a portion from, Messages to the Trainees in Fall 1990, Chapter 1, by Witness Lee.
  – 70 Aspects of Christ as Everything for Your Enjoyment, article at, Holding to Truth.
  – Taking up our cross to follow the Lord, a portion from, Collected Works of Watchman Nee, The (Set 1) Vol. 01: The Christian Life and Warfare, Chapter 7, by Watchman Nee.
  – Seeking the Full Knowledge of Christ (1): Knowing Christ by Revelation, via, Living to Him.
  – The human spirit in the experience of the Triune God, article by John Peter in, Affirmation and Critique.
  – The Key to Experiencing Jesus Christ in Your Everyday Life, article at, Bibles for America blog.
  – The experiences of life being the experiences of Christ, a portion from, Basic Principles of the Experience of Life, Chapter 2, by Witness Lee.
• Hymns on this topic:
  – Hallelujah! In the body we / Bear the death of Christ continually: / Thus His life comes forth for all to see as / The outer man is broken down, / The inner man is shining so that— / In these earthen vessels men can see / There’s the treasure of reality! / Thus the gospel’s glorious light will be / Shining out from us. / Not just doctrines and theology, / But the content of reality: / Christ as everything in you and me, / He’s everything to us! (Hymns #1178 stanza 2)
  – By the cross discern the spirit, / Put the soul to death alway; / Bear the cross, deny the self-life, / Walk in spirit day by day. / By the cross discern the spirit, / Through the living Word of God, / Separating soul from spirit, / That the right path may be trod. (Hymns #748 stanzas 1-2)
  – From my spirit within flows a fountain of life— / The Triune God flowing in me; / God the Father’s the source, Christ the Son is the course, / And the Spirit imparts life to me. / Lord, I treasure the sweet flow of life, / And my soul-life at last I lay down; / O Lord, deepen the pure flow of life; / At Your coming may life be my crown. (Hymns #1191 stanza 1 and chorus)