To be the Lord’s Disciples we should Sell all we have, have no Excess and Follow Jesus

For us to follow the Lord and be His disciple, we need to sell all we have and follow Him; before the Lord, we must continually give away our money, being delivered from mammon and following Him in a pure and unentangled way.

We are a different kind of people, we believers in Christ; we are those who live by faith, not by sight, and we live by trusting in the Lord to provide, not by our striving and working hard.

When the Lord came into us to be our Savior and our life, He became our real riches; what we consider to be treasure is not what we see outwardly but what we can enjoy and experience of Him inwardly.

The riches of Christ are so precious and wonderful, and on account of the excellency of the knowledge of Christ, we are willing to suffer the loss of all things, as Paul did.

This should be our experience.

However, we have to acknowledge that many times we are still pulled down and held back by our love for mammon; we may not be rich or desire to be rich, but we still serve mammon as a slave, for we’re not yet delivered from mammon.

A person may be poor and yet serve mammon, for he desires to be rich and yearns for more money, wealth, and riches; another person may have many things yet not serve mammon, for he is delivered from the love of money.

We need to cooperate with the Lord by faith in Him to be delivered from mammon in our experience.

For us to be truly saved, for us to be saved in actuality, we need to be saved not only from sin, the world, and the flesh, but also from mammon; we find real peace when mammon is no longer our master.

And we can do this not in ourselves but in our organic union with the Lord; in our natural man we’re the same as the rest of the unbelievers, full of lusts and eager to serve mammon, but in the organic union with the Lord, we are spontaneously delivered from mammon.

When we abide in the Lord and He abides in us, in a spontaneous way we sell all we have and follow Him, but when we merely make up our mind to do this, it will not work.

It is truly impossible for a reasonable person to serve the Lord and follow Him, for he is subject to mammon, and unless we are delivered from mammon, we cannot truly follow the Lord to be His disciple.

May the Lord continue to have mercy on us and bring us back to the divine revelation in His holy word so that we may be His disciples today, those who follow Him and serve Him only, not being held back or usurped by mammon.

To be the Lord’s Disciple we need to Sell all we Have, Give it to the Poor, and Follow the Lord

When the Lord Jesus called His disciples, He didn’t want “part-time followers”; He called them away from all they had, even requiring that they sell everything and follow Him.

When others came and asked Him what to do to inherit eternal life, He always told them that they need to sell their possessions, give them to the poor, and thus have treasure in heaven; then, they should come and follow Him (Matt. 19:21; Luke 12:33).

In Luke 14:33 the Lord said that, if anyone doesn’t forsake all his own possessions, he cannot be His disciple.

We can either serve God or mammon – we can’t serve both; we will either hate the one and love the other, or we will hold to one and despise the other (Luke 16:13; see note 2 on Luke 16:13, Recovery Version).

For us to serve God requires that we love Him, give our heart to Him, and cleave to Him, giving our entire being to Him.

When we do this, we are released from being occupied and usurped by mammon so that we serve the Lord wholly and fully.

After the Pentecost, after the Lord poured Himself out as the Spirit upon His disciples and Peter spoke that wonderful gospel message and three thousand disciples were added, they sold their properties and possessions and divided them to all, as anyone had need (Acts 2:45).

An evidence of the Lord’s dynamic salvation is that the believers overcome earthly possessions, which occupy, possess, and usurp all fallen mankind (see Matt. 19:21-24; Luke 12:13-19, 33-34; 14:33; 16:13-14; 1 Tim. 6:17 – see note 1 on Acts 2:45, Recovery Version).

This happened again in Acts 4:34 and 37, with the five thousand that believed and were added to the church.

For us to be the Lord’s disciple we need to sell all we have, give it to the poor, and follow the Lord; we need to sell all we have and give it to the church for the elders and apostles to distribute it to the poor in the church and outside the church as is fit.

When we believe into the Lord, we enter a new kingdom, where material possessions are nothing, even something that encumbers us from advancing; we seek to be delivered from mammon and use this unrighteous mammon for the kingdom.

When we do this, when we distribute our wealth to the poor in the church and outside of the church, our heart’s capacity is expanded and we are inwardly freed to gain more of the riches of Christ.

The Lord tells us to sell all we have and give it to the poor because He doesn’t want us to fall into the bondage of mammon.

Mammon is like a venomous snake; we cannot play with mammon, for we will be bitten – we simply need to shake it, as Paul shook off the viper in Acts.

The Lord Jesus did not have much, and all He had was for those poor, sick, and oppressed around Him.

The twelve apostles sold their all and gave up everything to follow the Lord; the disciples who followed did the same thing.

Generation after generation of believers, we need to learn to be delivered from mammon by selling our all and giving it to the poor.

When men come to the church, what we want them to see is not only our love for the Lord and for one another, our oneness, and our enjoyment of Christ; we also want them to see that we are not subject to mammon but rather, we sell our all to give it to the poor.

In the Lord’s recovery, we need to take the way of voluntary poverty for the Lord’s sake, being the Lord’s disciple as we sell all we have to follow Him.

May we bring this before the Lord in prayer and tell Him,

Lord Jesus, we want to be Your disciple; we want to follow You in purity and with no entanglement. Make us those who are not usurped by mammon but who sell all we have to follow You. May Your dynamic salvation operate in us to cause us to overcome earthly possessions so that we may not be possessed, occupied, and usurped by mammon. Amen, Lord, our treasure is in heaven, and here we have nothing that we treasure besides You. We want to forsake our own possessions, sell all we have and give to the poor, and come follow You. We cleave to You, dear Lord, and we love You; we give our entire being to You. Release us from being occupied and usurped by mammon so that we may serve the Lord wholly and fully!

Having No Excess but Continually giving away our Money in our Following the Lord

The matter of selling all we have and giving it to the poor by giving it to the leading ones in the proper church life to care for the needy is not a once-for-all matter.

In 2 Cor. 8:15 we are told that he who gathered much had no excess.

After we hand over our all, we will gain new possessions gradually; we don’t expect to gather much when we sow, since we let go of what we have, but the Lord will bless us.

Actually, we can never outgive God; we can never give to God more than what He gives us, for the more we give what we have, the more He gives us.

As we gather things and acquire possessions, we should keep the same principle: we need to have no excess but continually give away our money and possessions in our following the Lord.

Our giving away of our things is our sowing; if we sow much by selling all we have and giving it to the poor, we will reap much, but if we sow little, we will reap little.

If we sell all we have and give it to the Lord and to the poor, we will reap much.

We need to realize that mammon is an idol; we should not keep idols in our house but rather, give them away.

Whether we have much or we have little, we should not have excess but sell all we have, give to the poor, and follow the Lord.

If we are not absolute in having no excess but continually giving away what we have in following the Lord, others cannot be absolute in this matter either.

We need to realize that money is a greater bondage to man than sin; sin is obviously evil, but the desire to have money and keep money may not seem that evil, for we think we need money for this and for that.

Satan doesn’t come to us as Satan to tell us to worship him; rather, he masks himself, he disguises himself as money, so that we worship him and are usurped by him.

If we are delivered from the love of money, one result of our preaching the gospel is that those who believe give up all they have and follow the Lord.

However, we should not do this unless we contact the Lord, are one with Him and have the leading of the Spirit; we do not have a mere outward practice of selling all we have to give to the poor – we follow the Lord’s leading.

What we are talking about here is not something we should do in ourselves and by ourselves because that’s what the Lord tells us to do; it is something we do under the leading of the Holy Spirit.

Actually, in ourselves, we can’t sell all we have and give it to the poor, and we can’t be those who have nothing in excess; rather, we want to accumulate more and more things, and all these pull us down and hinder us from serving the Lord.

In ourselves we can’t follow the Lord, we are not inclined to, and we have no desire to be His disciple, for the Lord requires absoluteness.

But when we turn to the Lord, enjoy Him, contact Him, and are one with Him, all the outward things, all our possessions, and all our money become insignificant, and we will gladly give our all to Him.

May we not be like Ananias and Sapphira, who sold their property and kept a part of their money, while giving the others the impression that they sold their all; may we be saved from being hypocrites in following the Lord.

In ourselves we can’t do it; we may sell this and that, we may give us this and that, but we may still lack one thing.

The Lord blesses and increases our income, but we surely have to pour out more, for we should have no excess but rather, have only what we need.

May we deal with money in an absolute way; may we be before the Lord and continually give away our money in following the Lord.

We need to empty ourselves, again and again, taking the way of being voluntarily poor in this world to serve the Lord and follow Him.

Lord Jesus, we love You and we want to follow You to be Your disciple. Keep us enjoying You and absorbing You in our contact with You day by day. Amen, Lord, make us those who, though they gather much, have no excess. We want to follow Your leading within us to sell all we have and give it to the poor so that we may follow You in an absolute way. We cannot do this in ourselves, Lord, but we come to You; we want to be one with You in this matter. Fully deliver us from mammon. Save us from sowing only a little; may we sow much by giving our all so that we may reap much. May we send our treasures in the heaven and invest in what is in Your heart so that You may abundantly bless us in Christ and we would follow You in an unhindered way!

References and Hymns on this Topic

• Sources of inspiration: the Word of God, my enjoyment in the ministry, and portions from, The Collected Works of Watchman Nee, vol. 59, ch. 8, as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, Material offerings and the Lord’s Move Today, week 1, entitled, Principles of Material Offerings (1).
• Further reading: CWWN, vol. 59, ch. 7; CWWN, vol. 41, ch. 14; the footnotes in the Recovery Version on the verses above.
• Hymns on this topic:
  – Give up the world, Christ to obtain, / He is your heart’s very need; / What else can you desire or seek? / All things are empty indeed! / He is so rich, He is so full, / He can fulfill all your needs! / He is so good, He is so sweet, / All your desire He exceeds! (Hymns #1025)
  – I’ve given up the world because / I’ve found something more: / He’s better than anything / I’ve ever found before. / Yes, I have found the Living One, / Oh, how my spirit soars! / I called His name, I’m not the same, / I am for the Lord! (Song on, I’ve given up the world because)
  – All to Jesus I surrender, / Humbly at His feet I bow, / Worldly pleasures all forsaken; / Take me, Jesus, take me now. / All to Jesus I surrender, / Now I feel the sacred flame. / Oh, the joy of full salvation! / Glory, glory to His name! (Hymns #441)