In God’s Economy with His Dispensing we’re being Emptied to Receive only God as our Gain

The Bible speaks of only one thing: God’s eternal economy for the divine dispensing; yes, the Bible speaks about Christ and is focused on Christ, but in particular, the Bible speaks of Christ in God’s economy.

When we come to the book of Job it is quite easy to focus on the sufferings he went through, the pain he suffered, and the arguments he had with his friends; it is easy to see his grief and pain, and how he wanted to know why all these things happened to him.

The entire book of Job leaves us with a great question in two parts, Why did God create us in His image, and, Why do we have to suffer?

We may think that, after believing into the Lord, we shouldn’t suffer anymore, for the Lord Jesus bore all our sufferings and sicknesses, so now we should just enjoy peace, joy, and prosperity.

And there are many so-called “prosperity gospel preachers” who seem to be richer and richer as they preach such a gospel.

But the book of Job seems to contradict this matter, for Job sought God, was upright, stayed away from evil and did good, yet suffering befell him.

And his friends thought that he was suffering because he must have done something wrong, something evil in God’s eyes; so Job justified himself in round after round of debates, and he even wanted to take God to court, for he thought that God is after him and He’s not righteous in what He did to him.

What God was doing is not judge Job, for God was not angry with him but rather, He considered Job as His intimate friend.

What God was doing is to strip Job from his integrity, self-righteousness, and self-made uprightness, so that He would rebuild, remodel, and reconstitute him with Himself.

God wants not a good man but a God-man; for this, however, He needs to tear down what we build up in ourselves and by ourselves, so that He may have a way to work Himself into us.

Everything God does is according to and for His economy; His eternal economy was hidden in God throughout the ages, but it was revealed to us in the New Testament.

Hallelujah, now we can see the mystery hidden in God throughout the ages, what is, God’s eternal intention with His heart’s desire to dispense Himself in His Divine Trinity into His people to be their life and their nature so that they may be the Body of Christ for God’s corporate expression!

We were actually made for this; we were made not for this world or for anything that this world has to offer – we were made for God, in His image and according to His likeness, to be filled and saturated with Him, so that He would work Himself into us and live in us, and we would become His corporate expression for eternity.

Such an economy of God was hidden from Job, but he admitted that there must have been something hidden in the heart of God, something that He doesn’t reveal to him, something related to His purpose in all these sufferings.

What a privilege it is for us to know the eternal economy of God, the purpose of God, and the desire of God’s heart with His intention!

God’s Intention is to make us God-men; we should focus only on God’s Economy with His Dispensing!

In our reading of the Bible, our attention should be focused not on the outward things, the great deeds, the spectacular events, or the miraculous things that God or His people performed.

Rather, our focus should be on God’s eternal economy for the divine dispensing, for unless we know God’s economy, we will not understand the Bible.

God’s intention with Job was not that he would be a good man, an upright and perfect man, or a righteous man in his own eyes and according to his standard; God’s intention was that Job would be a God-man, a man of God, a man constituted with God according to His divine economy.

The entire Bible with its sixty-six books is for one thing: for God in Christ by the Spirit to dispense Himself into us to be our life, our nature, and our everything, so that we may live Christ and express Christ (see John 10:10b; 1 Cor. 15:45b; Rom. 8:2, 10, 6, 11; Phil. 1:19-21a; 2 Cor. 3:6).

This is the principle that should govern our life day by day; our daily life shouldn’t be governed by our doing the right thing versus doing the wrong thing, but by God’s economy with His dispensing.

As we live our Christian life, as we care for the new believers in Christ, and as we spend time with the Lord, we need to simply spend time with the Lord to enjoy Him and be under His divine dispensing.

The Bible is not merely a book of prophecy or divine teachings; the Bible is a book on God’s economy, and in the Bible, we see how God intends to dispense Himself in His Divine Trinity in Christ by the Spirit into us so that we may have Him as our life, nature, and everything, with the result that it’s no longer us who live but Christ who lives in us, and we live in the organic union with Him (Gal. 2:20).

We believers in Christ have Christ as the life-giving Spirit mingled with our spirit, and He is constantly dispensing Himself into us; He wants to dispense all that He is with all His riches and His life into every part of our being.

As we set our mind on our spirit, our mind becomes life; as we open to the Lord as much as we can, the Spirit mingled with our spirit spreads into our mind, emotion, and will, and He will eventually give life to our mortal body through His Spirit who indwells us. Amen!

May we see the eternal economy of God and realize that everything that happens to us is because of God’s economy, and may we focus on God’s economy with His dispensing!

In the case of Job, God’s dealing with Job was to bring him out of the sphere of ethics and into the sphere of gaining God; He wanted Job to be turned from seeking perfection in ethics to seeking and gaining God! Amen!

Our standing before God is based not on what we can do and what we have achieved, but on how much God we have gained (see Psa. 27:8; 105:4; Phil. 3:8; Matt. 25:3-4, 9; Prov. 23:23; Rev. 3:18; 2 Cor. 3:18; 4:17; 1 Pet. 2:7; Dan. 5:27; 9:23; 10:11, 19).

We need to be saved from trying to be a good father, a good mother, a good student, or a good person; God doesn’t want us to be good people but God-men, God-Christians, for only God is good, and only by having Him wrought into us according to God’s economy with His dispensing that we can become good as God is good.

As we stand before God and He looks at us, our value to Him is determined by how much God we have gained, how much of God is added to our being.

We need to redeem the time by paying the price to gain God; we need to buy the extra portion of oil (the Spirit, see Matt. 25:9), gaining more of God not only in our spirit but also in our soul as our vessel.

We need to pay the price to gain more of the Father in His divine nature, more of God the Son as our lived-out righteousness, and more of God the Spirit as the anointing Spirit to anoint our eyes that we may see.

May we have an unveiled face to behold and reflect like a mirror the glory of the Lord so that we may be transformed from one degree of glory to another degree of glory, even as from the Lord Spirit (2 Cor. 3:18).

Lord Jesus, we focus our attention on God’s eternal economy for the divine dispensing. Save us from trying to be a good man; make us a God-man by Your divine dispensing into us. Amen, Lord, dispense Yourself into us a little more today so that we can flow You out and dispense You into others. Work Yourself into us as our life, our nature, and our everything so that we may live Christ and express Christ. Amen, Lord, bring us out of the sphere of ethics and into the sphere of gaining God so that we may be turned from seeking perfection in ethics to seeking and gaining God! We want to pay the price to gain more God today. We turn our heart to You to behold You with an unveiled face and be transformed into Your image from glory to glory!

God’s Purpose in Dealing with His Holy People is that they would be Emptied of Everything and Receive only God as their Gain

If we have a clear view of the eternal economy of God with His dispensing when we come to the Word of God, we will realize that God’s purpose in dealing with us – especially through sufferings – is to empty us of everything else and fill us with Himself.

We are filled with so many things; we’re filled with our thoughts, ideas, self-made righteousness, integrity, and perfection, and because we’re so filled with these things, we cannot be filled with God.

According to God’s economy with His dispensing, God desires to obtain the one new man, Christ as the Head of the Body with the church as His Body to be His fullness and expression.

We are the many believers in Christ and the members of the Body of Christ, His new creation, to carry out God’s new “career” of building up the Body of Christ for the expression of the Triune God.

Such a building consummates in the New Jerusalem, which is the mingling of the Triune God with us, His chosen, redeemed, regenerated, transformed, conformed, and glorified tripartite people, to be a constitution of God with man for His expression for eternity.

How can God obtain His corporate expression for His glory? It is by first working Himself into us to be our life and our everything.

But how can God work Himself into us to be our life, nature, and everything, if we are filled with so many other things?

First, God has to deal with us to empty us of everything so that we may receive only God as our gain.

He wants us to gain Him, to partake of Him, to possess Him, and to enjoy Him more and more, rather than us enjoying or partaking of other things.

As we enjoy the Lord more and more, the Lord is faithful to bring about situations and things that will help us to be emptied of all things other than Him so that we may be filled only with Him.

We can never graduate from enjoying the Lord; we need to daily be like a little child, open and unveiled, eager to enjoy the Lord more and more, until our enjoyment reaches the fullest extent and we become the New Jerusalem (Matt. 5:3; Psa. 43:4; 73:25-26; Phil. 3:8-9; Rev. 21:2).

The Lord’s presence is everything to us; His presence is the smile of God, and the more we enjoy the Lord, the more we realize that there’s nothing we have on earth or in heaven but Him.

When we have a clear vision of God’s economy with His dispensing, we will realize that suffering is required for us to be emptied and stripped of anything that is not God, so that He may work Himself into us.

The great answer to the great question in the book of Job concerning God’s purpose in His creation of man and in His dealing with His chosen people is that we need to be emptied of everything so that we may receive only God as our gain until we become the New Jerusalem.

May we be those who enjoy the Lord more and more until our enjoyment reaches the fullest extent for us to become the New Jerusalem!

The base for God to rebuild us with Himself so that we may be a new man, a part of God’s new creation, is the stripping and tearing down of God by His dealing with us, for Him to fulfil God’s eternal economy for God’s expression.

Lord Jesus, we open to You to be emptied of ourselves and to be filled with You. Empty us of anything that is not God and lead us into gaining God as our everything. Amen, Lord, we want to gain You, partake of You, possess You, and enjoy You more and more until our enjoyment reaches the fullest extent for us to become the New Jerusalem! We do not want to graduate from enjoying the Lord; rather, we want our enjoyment of Christ to increase day by day! We exercise our being, Lord, to be poor in spirit and pure in heart so that we may be emptied of anything that is not Christ and be filled only with God! Amen, Lord, we say Amen to God’s economy with His dispensing – Amen, dispense Yourself into us day by day for the building up of the church as the Body of Christ consummating in the New Jerusalem!

References and Hymns on this Topic

• Sources of inspiration: the Word of God, my enjoyment in the ministry, the message by Ed Marks for this week, and portions from, Life-study of Job, msgs. 9, 31 (by Witness Lee), as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, Crystallization-study of Job, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes (2020 winter training), week 1, The Great Question in the Book of Job and the Great Answer.
• Hymns on this topic:
  – We all must learn to pay the price, / Christ must be worked into our soul; / ’Tis thus our soul is gained by Him, / This is our aim and this our goal. (Hymns #1298)
  – Pray to fellowship with Jesus, / Bathing in His countenance; / Saturated with His beauty, / Radiate His excellence. (Hymns #784)
  – Emptied that Thou shouldest fill me, / A clean vessel in Thine hand; / With no strength but as Thou givest / Graciously with each command. (Hymns #268)