Experience Transfiguration in the Church Life by Losing our Soul-Life for the Lord

We can experience transfiguration in the church life today by losing our soul-life for the Lord’s sake and for the sake of the church.

The church as the kingdom of God cannot exist in the natural life but only in the realm of transfiguration; if we today are willing to lose our soul-life for the Lord’s sake, we will experience transfiguration and the church life will experience a revival. Amen!

On the one hand, the kingdom of God is Christ growing in us and developing in us to be a realm in which God can rule and reign.

On the other hand, corporately, the kingdom of God is the church life today; however, the church life cannot be in our natural life but in the realm of transfiguration.

For the Lord’s sake and for the sake of the church life, we need to lose our soulish enjoyment today so that He may reward us with His enjoyment and for the church to experience a revival.

To deny the self and lose our soul life is to deal a death blow to the enemy, therefore doing God’s work.

God’s work on earth today is twofold: on one hand, He wants to gain His corporate expression and on the other hand, He needs a group of people to deal with His enemy.

On one hand, we need to enjoy the Lord day by day and partake of His riches, giving Him more ground in our heart and throughout the day so that He may grow in us.

His kingdom needs to expand in us so that He may rule and reign in our being.

On the other hand, we need to cause Satan to suffer fatal loss by paying the price to deny the self and lose our soul-life for the Lord’s sake.

If we preserve our self, if we do not lose our soulish enjoyment today, Satan still has ground in our being, and we are not fully one with the Lord to deal with His enemy.

For us to fulfil God’s purpose, we need to utterly abandon the self and deny the soul its enjoyment in this age.

If we are double-minded persons, we can never deal with Satan in a thorough way.

When we deal with Satan, the enemy of God, we cannot leave even one bit of ground for ourselves.

May we be those who enjoy the Lord to such an extent that we are willing to deny the self and lose our soul-life for the Lord’s sake so that we may deal with the enemy today.

This doesn’t mean that we need to be stirred up in our soul and exercise to deal with ourselves in a strict way; the flesh cannot deal with the flesh, only the Lord and the cross can terminate the self and cause the soulish enjoyment to go.

May we open to the Lord and be enlightened concerning what He wants to do in us today, and may we be absolute for the Lord today in our daily living, contacting Him and learning to deny the self and lose our soulish enjoyment.

Experience Transfiguration in the Church Life by Losing our Soul-Life for the Lord’s Sake

Rom. 14:17 says that the church as the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.

The church as the kingdom of God is not soulish enjoyment or the enjoyment of the flesh but something in the Spirit and of the Holy Spirit.

In Matt. 16:18 the Lord Jesus told Peter that He will build His church; the way to build the church is found in vv. 21-26.

The way Christ builds the church is by Him being crucified and resurrected.

Unless He is crucified and resurrected, the church cannot come into being nor can it be built up.

The way we build the church today is by experiencing Christ in His death and resurrection.

When the Lord passed through death and resurrection, he entered into a realm of transfiguration; here, in this realm, is where the church can exist today.

The church cannot exist in the natural realm or with fleshly people – the church can exist only in the realm of transfiguration.

When we experience transfiguration, we can be in the church life in a practical and real way.

How can we experience transfiguration today? It is by losing our soul-life for the Lord’s sake.

Mark 8:35-36 says that, whoever wants to save his soul-life shall lose it, but whoever will lose his soul-life for the Lord’s sake and for the sake of the gospel, shall save it.

What does it profit us if we gain the whole world yet forfeit our soul-life?

The way for us to have a proper church life, even a church life in transfiguration, having a revival in the church life, is by losing the soul, that is, losing our soulish enjoyment today.

Yes, we need to deny the self and bear the cross, but when it comes to our daily living, the things we do daily, and the things we like to do and spend time with, we need to lose our soul-life for the Lord’s sake.

If we lose our present soulish enjoyment of the Lord’s sake and for the sake of the church, we will find enjoyment in the Lord, and we will experience transfiguration in the church life.

If we are willing to lose our soul-life for the Lord’s sake, we will experience a prevailing transfiguration in the church life, and this transfiguration will be a genuine revival (Mark 8:35-38; Matt. 16:15-27). Amen!

Are we willing to lose our soul-life for the Lord’s sake today? Or are we holding on to our soulish enjoyment, and we also want to have the church life? These two are incompatible.

If we want to enjoy our soul-life today and allow our soul to have its enjoyment in this present age, we cannot have the proper church life.

But if we exercise our spirit and are willing to lose our soul for the Lord’s sake and for the sake of others, the ones around us will be enlightened, nourished, and filled. Amen! In this way, the church is built up.

If all the saints in the church life are willing to lose their soulish enjoyment today for the Lord’s sake, we will have a wonderful situation among us!

There will be no more offenses, for we all are losing our soul-life, and there’s no need for forgiveness – we all love the Lord and love one another.

We will experience a prevailing transfiguration and the church will be revived.

But if we’re not willing to lose our soul, we will be in darkness, and being in the church meetings will be a suffering to us. Oh, Lord Jesus!

We can testify that sometimes we’re in the meeting and not only are we not enjoying the Lord but even more, we feel that it’s a suffering to be there, and the saints around us may even annoy us.

This shows that we did not exercise our spirit nor did we lose our soul-life for the Lord’s sake.

Others enjoy the Lord and experience transfiguration, but we’re in darkness and gnash our teeth. Oh, Lord Jesus!

May we be saved from being in darkness in the church life to experiencing transfiguration by losing our soul-life for the Lord’s sake!

May the Lord make us willing to lose the soulish enjoyment today for the Lord’s sake so that the church may be transfigured!

When the saints lose their soul-life, the church experiences revival, for the Lord can be manifested in the saints and through the saints.

When the Lord is manifested among us, He rewards His faithful ones positively with transfiguration and the unfaithful ones negatively with darkness.

If we are in the church life and gnash our teeth, being in darkness, this means we are not losing our soulish enjoyment for the Lord’s sake.

May we pray concerning this and tell the Lord,

Lord Jesus, grant us the willingness that we may lose our soul-life for the Lord’s sake today! Amen, Lord, show us that the church as the kingdom of God cannot exist in the natural life but can exist only in the realm of transfiguration! Save us from remaining in ourselves and from enjoying our soul-life today. May we be those who cooperate with You to build up the church by losing our present soulish enjoyment for the sake of the church! Amen, Lord Jesus, we love You and we come to enjoy You. We exercise our spirit to contact You and to live one spirit with You. We don’t want to spend time doing what the soul enjoys doing; we exercise to live in our spirit and deny our soul its enjoyment in this age for Your sake. Amen, Lord, for Your sake, for the sake of the gospel, and for the sake of the church, make us willing to lose our present soulish enjoyment! We want to experience transfiguration in the church life by denying the self and losing our soul-life for the Lord’s sake!

Learn to Lose our Present Soulish Enjoyment for the Lord’s Sake to be Transformed and experience Transfiguration

The church life is based on our daily life; we cannot just come to the meetings of the church as spectators, and then go back to our daily living, having nothing to do with the enjoyment experience of Christ.

What about our daily living, the things we do day to day, and the things we spend time with?

As believers in Christ, we have no outward rules such as do this and don’t do that; we have the Lord Jesus living in us, and He within us gives us a sense concerning things.

However, the Lord tells us in Matt. 16:25-27 concerning losing our soulish enjoyment in this age for His sake.

Each one of us has a certain soul, and our soul loves certain things.

Some may like sports while others like the news. Our soul delights in doing certain things.

If we as believers in Christ today exercise our spirit and are willing to lose our present soulish enjoyment for the Lord’s sake, we will be transformed and we will experience transfiguration.

This also will result in a church life that is revived, full of life, and living and vital.

When husbands and wives argue, neither of them is willing to lose their soulish enjoyment and they fight because each thinks they are right.

You can even say that they find it enjoyable to argue, for this is their soulish enjoyment. Oh, Lord Jesus!

However, if the brother loses his soul by losing the case to his wife, the Lord will reward him by coming in at a certain point to save his soul.

The question is, do we want to save our soul today or do we want the Lord to save our soul?

We may fight for ourselves, fight for our rights, and defend ourselves in this and that way – and we may think it is our right to do so, for the main thing related to the self is self-preservation.

In the family life, the only way we can have a proper family life is if we lose our enjoyment, the enjoyment of our soul, so that we may care for others.

When the mother loses the enjoyment of her soul to serve her children and prepare the best meal for the family, though she loses her present soulish enjoyment, everyone around her is happy, and their happiness becomes her happiness.

We cannot have a proper family life without losing the soul; for the sake of the family, we need to lose our enjoyment.

Similarly for the church life today and for the Lord’s sake, we need to lose our present soulish enjoyment so that we may experience transfiguration.

We need to be those losing our soul-life for the Lord’s sake and for the sake of the church. In the church life we all need to lose our soul, that is, lose our present soulish enjoyment.

When we do this, when we not only deny the self with its opinions and thoughts but even more, exercise our spirit and deny our soul its enjoyment for the Lord’s sake, the Lord has a way of transforming us.

He can spread from our spirit into every avenue of our soul so that He may transform our soul (Rom. 12:2; 2 Cor. 3:18).

Eventually, He will have a way to conform our whole being to His image (Rom. 8:29).

When this happens, we will be ready to be co-kings with Him for our enjoyment of His kingship and participation in his joy in the coming age (Matt. 25:21; 2 Tim. 2:12; Rev. 3:21; 20:4, 6).

Are you willing to lose your soul-life?

Rev. 12:11 says that the enemy accuses us before our God day and night, but we can overcome him because of the blood of the Lamb and because of the word of our testimony, and by not loving our soul-life even unto death.

When we sin and make mistakes, we can apply the blood of Christ and be cleansed from all unrighteousness; in this way, we overcome the enemy with his accusations.

Furthermore, if the enemy keeps attacking us, we can declare the truth to him, standing on the Lord’s word, and he will be defeated.

The ultimate way to defeat the enemy is to lose our soul-life for the Lord’s sake; in this way, the enemy has no ground in us, and he is utterly defeated.

May we be such ones today.

Lord Jesus, we exercise our spirit and deny our soul its present enjoyment for Your sake and for the sake of the church. Amen, Lord, we choose to exercise our spirit and not to allow our soul to enjoy himself in this age so that we may enjoy You and be transformed! Shine on us, dear Lord, and expose what is our soulish enjoyment presently. May we cooperate with You today by exercising our spirit to lose our soul-life for the Lord’s sake and experience transformation and transfiguration. Amen, Lord, just as we lose our soulish enjoyment for the sake of the family life, may we also exercise our spirit and lose our soul-life for the church life! Hallelujah, we can overcome the enemy by the blood of the Lamb, by the word of our testimony, and by not loving our soul-life even unto death! May we be such ones today. May we apply the blood of Christ, declare the truth, and be willing to lose our soul-life to defeat the enemy, experience transfiguration, and live the kingdom life in the church life!

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 brother Ron Kangas in the message for this week, and portions from, Collected Works of Witness Lee, 1978, vol. 1, “The Exercise of the Kingdom for the Building of the Church,” chs. 3 and 5 as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, Experiencing, Enjoying, and Expressing Christ (2024 July Semiannual Training), week 4, The Kingdom as the Subduing of Rebellion and as the Transfiguration of the Lord Jesus.
• Similar articles on this topic:
  – Human love – Now we come to this issue: How can we discern the spirit from the soul? More via, The Economy of God, Chapter 13.
  – Our Preparation for the Lord’s Coming (3) Losing the Soul-life, via, Uni Students.
  – The cross and the “self” of the soul, a portion from, Collected Works of Watchman Nee, The (Set 1) Vol. 12: The Spiritual Man (1), Chapter 14, by Watchman Nee.
  – Not Loving the Soul Life – Examples, via, New Jerusalem blog.
  – Discerning the spirit from the soul, a portion from, The Economy of God, Chapter 11.
  – Our Preparation for the Lord’s Coming (3) Losing the Soul-life – Truth Series #11, video sharing via Youtube.
  – Not Loving the Soul Life for New Jerusalem, via, New Jerusalem blog.
  – The salvation of the soul, article via, Affirmation and Critique.
  – The Cross, a portion from, Collected Works of Watchman Nee, The (Set 1) Vol. 01: The Christian Life and Warfare, Chapter 7, by Watchman Nee.
  – 3 Greek Words for Life in the New Testament and How They Apply to Us, via, Bibles for America blog.
  – The proper church life for the kingdom, via, The Church in Regina.
  – The consummation of the age and the coming of the Lord, article by Ron Kangas in, Affirmation and Critique.
  – Whether or not you are really broken is tested by the coordination with others, via, Livingly Wrong.
  – My Experience of being Cared for by the Believers in the Local Churches, via, Living to Him.
• Hymns on this topic:
  – First the blood, and then the ointment, / Cleansing, then anointing comes; / If we pass not thru Golgotha, / Ne’er to Pentecost we’ll come. / If the blood has never cleansed us, / Ne’er the Spirit’s pow’r we’ll know, / If for Christ we’d truly witness, / Self-life to the Cross must go. / Through the Cross, O Lord, I pray, / Put my soul-life all away; / Make me any price to pay, / Full anointing to receive. (Hymns #279 stanza 1 and chorus)
  – And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, / And by the word of their testimony / And they loved not their soul lives unto death. / Therefore rejoice, rejoice, rejoice! (Hymns #1347, chorus)
  – Christ comes quickly for His Bride, / Wedding feast He will provide, / Garments bright and pure supplied— / Dress in time! / Taking Christ as life she’s dressed, / By much suffering stitched and pressed; / Righteous acts are thus possessed— / Dress in time! / Be in time! Be in time! / For the marriage feast of Jesus / Be in time! / If your soul life you deny / And the Spirit you apply, / Then you’ll fully qualify— / Be in time! (Hymns #1304 stanza 1 and chorus)