In considering what should our heart and spirit be in serving the Lord, we all need to have a new start to maintain the newness of our heart and our spirit, and we can do this by having a continual repentance in our fellowship with the Lord daily.
In serving the Lord and particularly in taking the lead in the church life we need to have a proper heart and spirit; even if we have a large capacity to know and expound the Bible, and we have a good ability to care for the practical matters of the church, these may not necessarily qualify us to be leading ones in the church unless we have a proper heart and a proper spirit.
When it comes to the leading ones, it’s not a matter of their ability, their gift, or their capacity to carry out some service or take care of some situations, but their heart and spirit.
Last week we have seen the critical importance of living Christ for the Body life so that we may be the testimony of Jesus. When we say that we are the testimony of Jesus, what do we mean? When we speak of the church as the reproduction of Christ, what is the real and practical meaning of this?
If we don’t live Christ in our daily life even in the smallest things, the most common things, then we may have the slogan of being the testimony of Jesus, but we don’t have the reality.
There’s a desperate need in the matter of our daily living, our daily life with and before the Lord. If we live Christ, all manners of positive things will issue for the building up of the Body.
If we live Christ, we will preach the gospel, we will shepherd others, and we will take care of many things in the church life and meeting life. But if we don’t practice to live Christ by walking according to the spirit, we may lapse into an hypocritical situation where we know and say so much but without any substance in our living and testimony.
Our work for the Lord and our living Christ must coincide; it is easy to be distracted by working for the Lord, thus neglecting our living Christ.
We may not care that much about our living Christ but we may be very busy with work; the busyness of our work may somewhat take over our living, becoming the fuel to propel us. Oh Lord Jesus!
We need to spend much time before the Lord that He may shine on us, speak to us, and adjust us as He infuses us with Himself and becomes our very person to be expressed through us. May nothing replace Christ in us, and may nothing replace the living of Christ in our daily life.
This week we want to take a closer look at what should the heart and spirit of a leading one be, according to the Bible.
We all need a New Start to Maintain the Newness of our Heart and our Spirit
God’s promise to His chosen ones was that He would give them a new heart and a new spirit, and that He would put His Spirit within them (see Ezek. 36:26-27).
In serving the Lord in the church life we need to realize the importance of our heart and spirit; our heart and spirit are crucial in God’s work in and through us.
We already have a heart and a spirit, but through regeneration God gave us a new spirit and a new heart; He took out the heart of stone and gave us a heart of flesh, and He put in us His Spirit so that we may be able to walk in His statutes and keep His ordinances.
However, many times we become distracted, and our heart and spirit become old; therefore, we need to have a new start every day so that we may maintain the newness of our heart and spirit.
Our heart is our loving organ and our spirit is our receiving organ; while we are fallen or in a backslidden state, our heart toward the Lord is stony and hard, and our spirit is deadened (Eph. 2:1; 4:18).
But when the Lord saves us or revives us, He renews our heart – He makes our hard and stony heart a heart of flesh, a heart that is soft and loving toward the Lord (see 2 Cor. 3:3).
When He regenerates us and when He enlivens us, the Lord renews our spirit with His divine life (Col. 2:13). As a result of His work in us, we love the Lord and desire Him with our renewed heart, and we contact the Lord, receive Him, and contain Him by exercising our renewed spirit.
Now daily we need to have a new start to maintain the newness of our heart and spirit (see 2 Cor. 4:16; Rom. 7:6; cf. Prov. 4:23; 1 Pet. 3:4). Yes, the Lord did give us a new heart and a new spirit, but if we don’t maintain the newness of our heart and spirit, these can become old again, being hard toward the Lord and not receptive toward Him.
Therefore, we need to have a continual exercise of our spirit and heart to maintain their newness and freshness; this is vital not only for our Christian life but also for our service in the Lord in the church.
Every day we need to have a continual exercise to have a new heart and a new spirit again; this is something to be tended on a daily basis, even on a moment-by-moment basis.
Many times we find that our heart is stony and hard toward the Lord, hardened toward Him; we also discover that our spirit is weakened and even deadened.
We need to further exercise our spirit and heart to have a new start all the time. From time to time we need to tell the Lord, Lord Jesus, I love You! When we do this, He renews and softens our heart, and He brings back our fresh love toward Him.
We also need to exercise our spirit by praying, calling, reading the word of God with prayer, so that our spirit will be enlivened once more with His life.
We all need to practice having a new start every day to maintain the newness of our heart and spirit, being persons who always contact the Lord to receive Him, contain Him, love Him, and express Him in our daily life.
Thank You Lord for giving us a new heart to love You and a new spirit to receive You and contact You. Hallelujah, we have a heart of flesh to love and desire the Lord and His word, and we have a new spirit to contact Him and receive Him! Oh Lord, we want to practice having a new start daily to maintain the newness of our heart and spirit. Save us from becoming old and dead in heart and spirit. May we daily exercise our spirit and heart to maintain its newness and freshness in our Christian life and church life!
Having a Repentant and Softened Heart to be Transformed and Renewed in our Heart
The New Testament begins by speaking of our heart and our spirit; when John the Baptist first preached the gospel in the New Testament, he said, “Repent, for the kingdom of the heavens has drawn near” (Matt. 3:2).
According to the Greek, to repent is to have a change in our mind or a turn in our thinking; because the mind is the main part of the heart, to repent is a matter of the heart. A repentant heart, a heart that repents thoroughly, becomes a new heart.
Although God promised to give us a new heart, He doesn’t physically remove our heart and puts a new one in its place, like a surgeon would do; rather, He gives us a new heart by transforming our heart.
When we repent, something amazing happens in our heart; when we tell the Lord, Oh Lord, forgive me; I am utterly sinful. I am sorry, and I repent before You! He comes into our heart and transforms our heart.
The Lord touches us, we repent, and He comes into our heart and changes our heart; before, we had a hard heart, but after we repent, our heart is softened and renewed.
A thoroughly repentant heart will become a new heart; because our God is a God of life and is all-powerful, He gives us a new heart by transforming our heart (see 2 Cor. 3:16, 18). When we repent, our heart turns to the Lord, we have a change of mind, and we allow the Lord to touch us, change us, speak to us, and impress us; we need this kind of repentance all the time.
When we have genuine repentance, we maintain the newness of our heart and spirit before the Lord.
As we repent under the Lord’s light in our fellowship with Him, a renewing work begins and takes place, and God is transforming our heart and mind. This doesn’t mean that we should be introspective, self-evaluating our position and situation according to our own self-made light and figuration; rather, what we need is to turn our heart to the Lord!
Let the Lord shine on us, and we will repent in all sincerity under His exposing light. Whenever our heart turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away, and we behold the Lord face to face; in this situation, face to face with the Lord, transformation takes place in our heart from glory to glory.
Repentance is not something that only unbelievers need; we believers need to repent again and again. We may repent for not loving the Lord enough, not living Christ, and not expressing Him in our daily life; every time we repent, we maintain the newness of our heart and spirit, for our heart is transformed and renewed, and our spirit is enlivened.
In Rev. 2 and 3 the Lord repeatedly calls His believers in the churches to repent (see Rev. 2:5, 16, 21-22; 3:3, 19); we need to repent, because repentance is the best dose to heal our heart and the best way to regulate and renew our heart.
Repentance doesn’t make us hopeless but furnishes us with real and living hope. Have you repented today by turning to the Lord?
Lord Jesus, we turn our heart to You; remove all the veils so that we can see You face to face and be transformed into Your glorious image. Grant us a repenting heart. Save us from being introspective or self-evaluating our situation. Keep us contacting You in spirit until You shine on us, and grant us the gift of repentance. Oh Lord, we repent for not loving You enough. We repent for not living Christ in our daily life. We repent, Lord. Have a way to transform and renew our heart so that we may maintain the newness of our heart and spirit!
References and Hymns on this Topic
- Inspiration: the Word of God, my enjoyment in the ministry, the message given by Minoru Chen for this week, and portions from, Collected Works of Witness Lee, 1975-1976, vol. 2, pp. 337-345, as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, Taking Christ as our Person and Living Him in and for the Church Life (2018 spring ITERO), week 4, The Heart and Spirit of a Leading One.
- Hymns on this topic:
# Keep our heart, Lord, in love’s freshness, / And our spirit strengthen more, / That in newness of the spirit / We may touch Thee o’er and o’er. (Hymns #743)
# I need a soft heart, / Repenting to God completely, / To transform each part, / By loving the Lord more deeply; / The Lord is the Spirit / And we all with unveiled face. (Song on, I need a new heart)
# I repent and now return, / Grant my heart for You to burn. / Flame in me this zeal. / Lord, be in me so real! (Song on, Just one touch of You, dear Lord)
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