God’s intention is that we would be persons living in the heavenly vision and the reality of God’s economy; we, however, may be contented with what we are, so He carries out the work of stripping and consuming to tear us down so that He may usher us into a deeper seeking after God to gain God and be rebuilt with God.
This week in our Crystallization-study of Job, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes we are still on the book of Job, and the topic is, Gaining God to Be Transformed by God for the Purpose of God.
In the book of Job we see the great question with two parts, Why did God create us (what’s His purpose in creating man), and why do we have so much suffering (what’s God’s purpose in our sufferings).
Job lived in an early age, approximately at the same time as Abraham, so the divine revelation was still in its early stages; therefore, the book of Job doesn’t give us the reality and full answer to these questions.
However, the entire Bible, especially the Epistles of Paul in the New Testament, gives us an explicit answer to this question, and today we are the beneficiaries of all that God has revealed throughout the ages concerning this.
Whatever happens to us, whatever suffering befalls us, and whatever work of stripping and consuming God is doing on us, we need to be open to God not to argue with Him and ask Him why this or that, but just to gain more of God.
Everyone in the world is passing through suffering of some sort; some suffer and we all can see it, but others suffer and not many know about it.
When we pass through suffering, there has to be a universal meaning to it, not just a personal gain or meaning; there is something called, the eternal economy of God, which is being carried out in the midst of all the sufferings of man.
The whole answer to this great question of what is God’s purpose in His creation of man and what is God’s purpose in His dealing with His holy ones, His chosen people, is that we would gain more of God to be transformed by God for the purpose of God.
We need to be persons who live not merely to improve ourselves, learn to be better people, or cultivate our characters with our morality and ethics; we need to live in the heavenly vision and in the reality of the eternal economy of God.
When we see the eternal economy of God and realize that God desires to work Himself into us to be our life and everything so that we may be transformed and conformed to the image of Christ and be part of the corporate expression of God, we will be governed by this vision.
May this vision guide us, govern us, and control us, to the point that even in sufferings and difficult situations we would open to the Lord and allow Him to dispense Himself into us; may we be those who open to the Lord to just gain God and not be contented with where we are and what we are.
God does the Stripping and Consuming of the Contented Believers to Rebuild them with God for them to Seek God in a Deeper Way to Gain God
Job and his friends spent days and days arguing and debating, and even though there were so much knowledge and human wisdom being expressed, they had no understanding concerning the purpose of what happened to Job.
They were ignorant of the purpose of this most painful and vexing situation; they were puzzled in their godliness, and they were not able to see what was the reason, what’s the purpose, and what is the result of such a thing that befell Job.
Actually, what was happening in Job’s experience is that God took another step in His divine economy to carry out the work of stripping and consuming the contented Job in order to usher him into a deeper seeking after God.
God did this so that Job may gain God instead of His blessings and his attainments in his perfection and integrity.
Job was contented with what he was and where he was, so God had to come in and do a work of stripping and consuming to have a way to rebuild Job with Himself, so that Job may seek God in a deeper way to gain God and nothing else.
We as believers in Christ may be like Job, quite contented with our situation, and is quite OK with what we are, where we are, and what we have gained.
So God has to do a work of stripping and consuming of the contented believers to first tear them down and then rebuild them with God HImself so that they would seek God in a deeper way to gain God and nothing else.
It is easy to be contented as a human being or as a believer; however, God cannot bless a self-contented person, one who doesn’t actively and desperately pursues Him to gain Him.
The apostle Paul was the antithesis of being a contented Christian; from the beginning of his Christian life and throughout his life and experience as a believer in Christ, his life was a quest to know Christ.
Even toward the end of his life, he said that he doesn’t account of himself to have laid hold but he did one thing: he forgot the things which were behind and stretched forward to the things before to purpose toward the goal for the prize to which God in Christ Jesus called him upward (Phil. 3:13-14).
May we never become contented; may we have the aspiration of knowing the Lord more and more, gaining Christ more and more, and being filled with Christ more and more.
We need to be those who pursue after Christ, seeking to gain Christ, and desiring to be found by others in Christ, so that we may gain God and have a deeper seeking after God.
If we are contented, God will exercise His sovereignty and operate in our environment to do the work of stripping and consuming to tear us down and rebuild us with Himself, so that we may be ushered into a deeper seeking after God for us to gain God.
What we need is a deeper seeking after God; we shouldn’t be satisfied with the amount of God we have gained or with the amount of Christ that we know and enjoy.
Actually, we don’t really know how much we know Christ and how much of God we have in us; the only One who really knows is God the Father.
And He always wants us to be seeking Him in a deeper way to know Christ, enjoy Christ, and gain God.
May we not be contented; may we not be set in our ways, settled in our situation and our condition, and occupied with other things, but may we seek God in a deeper way to gain only God!
Christ has laid hold of us, and now we need to lay hold of Him; we don’t account of ourselves to have laid hold, but we forget the things which are behind and we stretch forward to enjoy the Christ before and enter into the experience of the all-inclusive, extensive Christ ahead of us!
And our goal is the utmost enjoyment of Christ, the fullest enjoyment and gaining of Christ; today we pursue Christ to gain Him, and for eternity we will continue to enjoy Him and gain Him to the uttermost.
This is what our living is all about.
But when we become contented when the Lord sees that we are content with what we are and where we are, He will have to do the work of the stripping and consuming to have a base and a way to rebuild us with God Himself so that we would not be merely a good man but a God-man, the same as God in His life and nature but not in His Godhead, in order for us to express God.
Lord Jesus, we open to You and we come to You again and again to enjoy You seek after You in a deeper way, and just gain You! Save us from being contented with what we are, what we have enjoyed of You, and where we are. May we be open to Your work of stripping and consuming so that You may tear down our natural man and have a way to rebuild us with Yourself. Have a way, dear Lord, to usher us into a deeper seeking after God so that we may gain God instead of gaining anything else. Amen, Lord, we forget the things which are behind and we stretch forward to the things before to gain more of Christ! We do not account of ourselves to have laid hold of, we are not contented with what we know and have experienced, so we pursue after You to enjoy You, obtain You, and gain You more and more!
God’s Intention in Dealing with us, His People, is that we would be Emptied to Gain God as our Everything
In Psa. 73 we see a similar situation with Job’s situation, for the psalmist saw how the evil men prospered while he, a righteous man who sought after God, was being distressed and persecuted.
It seems that the one who doesn’t care for God may gain many things and is prospering, but the one who cares for God’s will is restricted by God and even stripped of God of many things (Psa. 73:1-15).
God’s intention with us, His loving seekers, is that we would find everything in Him and not be distracted from the absolute enjoyment of Himself (vv. 16-28).
He is behind the work of stripping and consuming through our environment; He does care for us, for we seek after Him, but He has to have a way to empty us from anything else for us to gain God as our everything.
In the natural realm, what seems to happen is that the more we seek after God and pursue Christ, the more there’s a work of stripping and consuming taking place; it seems that we are restricted by God and even stripped by Him of many things.
God’s intention with us, His seekers, is that we would find everything in Him and not be distracted from the absolute enjoyment of God Himself.
This is something that Job didn’t realize in his time since the divine revelation in his time had reached only the level of Abraham’s time, that is, that sinners need God’s redemption with the shedding of the blood of the burnt offering (see Job 1:5; 42:8).
It is only in the New Testament that we see divine truths regarding matters such as regeneration (John 3:6; 1 Pet. 1:23), renewing (2 Cor. 4:16), transformation (Rom. 12:2; 2 Cor. 3:18), conformation (Rom. 8:29), and glorification (vv. 23, 30) being explicitly revealed to us.
Job and his friend were in a primitive stage of the divine revelation (see John 3:7-12; 16:12-13), but we today have the complete divine revelation in the full Bible.
Paul received a full and explicit revelation of things concerning Job and his friends had no understanding; Job knew there was something hidden in the heart of God, but he did not see what this was (Eph. 3:3-6, 9-11; Col. 1:25-27).
Praise the Lord, today we can clearly see that God’s purpose in dealing with us, His chosen people, is that we would be emptied of everything and receive only God as our gain, for His desire is that we would gain God as our life, life supply, and everything to us.
Even when we pass through difficulties and sufferings, when we are under the work of stripping and consuming, we need to realize that God is seeking an opening into our being to work Himself into us.
We may be puzzled concerning our situation, we may have so many questions concerning what’s going on; our solution is only to enter into the sanctuary of God, which is our spirit and the church with the meetings of the church.
When we come to the meetings of the church and we exercise our spirit, we receive divine revelation and obtain the explanation to all our problems.
Maybe what is spoken in the meeting has nothing to do with our situation, or what we read in the Bible with the exercise of our spirit doesn’t address that problem directly, but the Lord has a way to answer our questions.
When the Lord shines in us through His word and in the meetings of the church, He kills all the germs in our being and enlivens us.
May we allow the Lord to shine on us and dispense Himself into us so that He may build Himself into our intrinsic constitution! Amen!
May we realize that His purpose in dealing with us is to strip us of all things and to consume so that we may gain God more and more!
Lord Jesus, have a way to empty us of everything so that we may gain only God as our life, our life supply, and our everything! Amen, Lord, we just want to gain You in full as life and as everything for the fulfilment of Your purpose! May we look to You and realize Your intention is to strip us and consume us so that You may have a way to work Yourself into us. Amen, Lord, we want to find everything in You and not be distracted from the absolute enjoyment of Yourself! May we not look at the work of stripping and consuming but look unto Jesus in our spirit and seek to fellowship in the meetings of the church so that our natural man would be consumed and our inner man may be renewed! Oh Lord, may our desire be only to gain God more and more, no matter what happens to us and what we are going through!
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. 30-31 (by Witness Lee), as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, Crystallization-study of Job, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes (2020 winter training), week 6, Gaining God to Be Transformed by God for the Purpose of God.
- Hymns on this topic:
– Earthen vessel I was made, / Christ in me the treasure laid; / His container I must be, / As the content He in me. / In His image I was made, / Fit that Christ should all pervade; / Thus the vessel God did form / With the content uniform. (Hymns #548)
– Dear Lord Jesus, precious Jesus, / Can I tell it all to Thee? / Thou my love and satisfaction, / Thou my everlasting portion; / Thou art all that I desire, / Nothing else I would pursue. (Hymns #1158)
– May my self be put to death, Lord, / Under Thy control I’d be, / Transformed to Thy living image, / I’d forever flow out Thee. / Fill me now! Fill me now! / Fill me with Thy Spirit now! / Strip me wholly, empty thoroughly, / Fill me with Thy Spirit now! (Hymns #1360)
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