Not Dwelling on our Past but Seeking to Gain Christ Today even in our Sufferings

May we be those who do not dwell on our past but seek to gain Christ today, even in our sufferings!

There’s a great contrast between the way Job and Paul reacted to suffering; Job was perplexed and disturbed, even cursing the day of his birth, while Paul never complained but rather took the death of Christ as a mold and wanted to gain God. Wow!

This week in our morning revival we come to a new crystal, still in the book of Job in the Old Testament; the title is, Job’s Experience of God’s Consuming and Stripping in the Old Testament Being Far Behind That of Paul in the New Testament.

Job and his friends had a few rounds of debates concerning Job’s situation and why was he suffering so much, and many poetic speeches were uttered.

What we want to see, however, is not the poetry but something deeper of God’s work in us, even God’s economy, which is being carried out.

God’s economy is carried out not only by the bountiful supply of the Spirit, which we need and we enjoy but also through the matter of the stripping and the consuming of the outer man, the natural man so that we would really be renewed in our inner man to become the new creation that God is after.

In the book of Job, we see so many sufferings, disasters and pain that happened to this godly person, Job, who was upright, godly, and in a very good sense, he was a proper man with much integrity.

In the New Testament, we see a similar person who achieved being blameless according to the law – Paul, and this one suffered many sufferings, imprisonment, and persecutions, but his attitude was completely different.

Paul was possessed by a higher vision, the vision of God’s economy, so he considered all these sufferings as being necessary toward the goal of gaining Christ and obtaining Him.

In the Lord’s recovery we need to become more and more spiritual, not in the warped sense of something self-serving or individualistic, but being one who lives in the spirit and not in the flesh.

A spiritual man is a man who lives not according to the flesh but according to the spirit, one who belongs to the spirit; this is what a normal Christian is, a member in the Body, a person according to the Scriptures.

We need to be those walking by the spirit, walking in the spirit, knowing our spirit and living in our spirit in a deeper way.

Many times we are too shallow in this regard; we are short of this walking in the spirit.

We may enjoy the Lord, love Him, and love His word, but when sufferings come, when something bad happens in our environment when things happen and we don’t understand, we may become disturbed and dismayed, and we may doubt even our faith. Oh, Lord!

We may be just like Job, having this great question of two parts – What is the purpose of God in creating us, and, What is God’s purpose in all these sufferings in our life? Why is there something consuming us, something that causes us to suffer?

We may think that now as believers in Christ, our Christian life should be a joyful life, but it is full of sufferings and difficult things.

Praise the Lord we can see not only the story of Job but also the pattern of Paul, and we can have a deepening of our spiritual life, so that God’s organic salvation may be accomplished in each one of us.

We want that God would really work Himself into us so that our natural man – no matter how excellent we think it is – would be put away, and we would become a new creation.

Amen, what God wants is a new creation, a renewed inner man, a man full of God who lives Christ and expresses Christ!

Job was Disturbed and Perplexed to the Uttermost by his Suffering of the Disasters that Befell him – he even Cursed the day of his birth!

The book of Job shows us not only the sufferings and disasters that befell Job, but how Job was disturbed, perplexed, and entangled to the uttermost by his suffering of these disasters.

He just could not understand why all these disasters befell his possessions and his children, and why was there a plague on his body, in spite of his perfection, uprightness, and integrity.

He was a righteous man of great integrity, a worshipper of God, a person who is perfect within and upright without.

He was a unique specimen of a person – very few like that that have ever lived and attained to that stature, for he attained to such a human perfection that even God said something concerning it.

However, to such an upright person who believed in God, many unfortunate things happened; God allowed Satan to bring forth these adversities upon him so that in a short period of time he lost all his possessions, his children, and even his body had a plague on it.

There were sufferings without and within, for even his physical body was touched with boils from head to toe; in spite of his perfection, uprightness, and integrity, all these things happened to him.

So he asked God, Why are You contending with me, why are You so unkind to me? What’s going on – there must be something in Your heart concerning me that You want, but I don’t understand!

So Job spent chapters debating with his friends, going in circles, trying to understand; many explanations, ideas, and arguments were brought up, but all we in the darkness because they didn’t have the necessary revelation to see why.

He was a good man trying to keep his perfection, uprightness, and integrity, but due to his vexation, he could contain himself but rather, he even cursed the day of his birth (equivalent to him cursing his mother).

When he did this when Job cursed the day of his birth, he surely was not perfect and upright, nor did he hold to his integrity; rather, Job became bankrupt in his integrity (Job 3:1).

He was a perfect and upright man, and when all these things befell him, he started to curse; the real Job came out.

We should not despise him or look down on him, for we all are the same.

In our natural man, when things are good we are happy, but when things happen to us and sufferings come our way, when things don’t go our way but rather, things tragic in nature and unpleasant come to us, the natural man will curse and will stand up to say why?

When sufferings befell us, our natural man is ready to raise his fist against heaven, asking, What is going on? I am so good, right, and perfect, why do these terrible things happen to me? I don’t agree with them: I want to argue with God! It’s not fair: I am so perfect, I didn’t do anything wrong, what more does God want from me?

The natural man is ready to curse; the natural man is ready to vindicate himself.

In its depths, it wants to argue, filled with self-pity, always insisting that he is right and something or someone else is wrong when things don’t go its way.

In good times we are all gentlemen and ladies, but when things don’t go our way, we curse, debate, argue, and even take God to task, questioning Him why this and that happened to us. When Job did this, he became bankrupt in his integrity; he cursed the day of his birth. Oh, Lord!

We shouldn’t laugh at Job because, in principle, we can do the same thing he did; the environment always exposes what we really are like, exposing the righteousness that we possess of ourselves as a cover, a cloak, but the real natural man is there, still not being terminated.

Lord Jesus, have Your way in us and with us. Have Your way to expose our self-made righteousness, our natural integrity, and our self-made perfection and uprightness. Save us from building up our natural man, our self, and our natural being; have Your way to tear down and strip anything that we build up in the self and not in the new man. May there be more addition of the divine element to our being even as we are being consumed and stripped. We open to You, Lord, and we come to You even in the midst of the sufferings, tribulations, and difficulties; keep our being open to Your divine dispensing so that the inner man would be renewed as the outer man is being consumed. Oh Lord, we don’t know ourselves; we don’t know who and what we are, and we can’t really see how much we build up ourselves in our natural man. Have a way to renew us, rebuild us, reconstruct us, and remake us in Your image and with Your element so that we may be a new creation, even the new man, part of the corporate God-man that You desire to obtain!

Not Dwelling on our Past and Sighing over our Miserable Present but Seeking to Gain Christ today even as we’re being Stripped and Consumed

Job did not realize what was God’s intention in allowing all these sufferings to befall him, but according to the New Testament revelation, we can clearly see it.

God’s intention was to tear down the natural Job in his perfection and uprightness so that He might rebuild up a renewed Job in God’s nature and attributes in order to make Job a man of God, even a God-man constituted with God according to His economy!

Such a man would never be entangled by any troubles and problems so that he would curse his birthday and prefer to die rather than to live (Phil. 1:19-25; 4:5-9).

We need to have a deeper view of the book of Job and realize that we all need some deeper and necessary spiritual experiences so that we may be renewed according to the purpose of God and be the real new creation.

What God wants is not human perfection, self-made integrity and righteousness, or hard-earned uprightness in the natural man; God wants to rebuild us with His life and nature to gain a God-man, so that we may gain Christ even as we are being stripped and consumed.

The only One who is good is God; we are not good unless we are reconstituted with God.

Real perfection is with God; real uprightness is God; real righteousness is God Himself.

What we can build in ourselves and work out in our natural man is merely filthy rags which we human beings may call “uprightness” or “righteousness” but they are not the real thing.

Job’s experience of God’s consuming and stripping in the Old Testament was far behind that of Paul in the New Testament; Job cursed the day of his birth, but Paul never regretted anything.

Since the day that Paul was saved, he was a person under God’s consuming and stripping (2 Cor. 4:16); he was born destined to be crucified, for he was reborn with the divine life to no longer live but Christ would live in him (Gal. 2:20).

This is our destiny as believers in Christ: we were regenerated crucified for the purpose that, from the time of our regeneration, it would be Christ who lives in us and no longer us.

Paul experienced much consuming and stripping; he was not constricted under the pressures on every side, neither did he perish despite his being cast down (2 Cor. 4:8-9).

Rather, Paul considered this matter thoroughly, and his conclusion as that he still preferred to live, not to die, for to him to live was Christ (Phil. 1:21-25).

Paul lived Christ and magnified Christ; his desire was to magnify Christ – whether through life or through death (v. 20).

He suffered distresses for the sake of Christ (2 Cor. 12:10) but he was well-pleased, even happy, rejoicing in the Lord for his experiences (Col. 1:24).

Paul pursued to be conformed to Christ’s death in the fellowship of His sufferings (Phil. 3:10), taking the death of Christ as a mold for his life.

He said that he was always bearing about in the body the putting to death of Jesus and was always being delivered unto death for Jesus’ sake so that the life of Jesus might be manifested in his mortal flesh (2 Cor. 4:10-11).

Job, on the other hand, was dwelling on his excellent past and sighing over his miserable present (Job 29:1 – 30:31); he held fast insistently to – and even boasted of – his uprightness, righteousness, integrity, and perfection (Job 27:1-7; 31:1-40).

Paul, however, exercised to forget the things that were behind in the past in order to gain the present Christ, the Christ today, to the fullest extent (Phil. 3:8, 13-14).

Paul went through great sufferings for a more extended period of time than Job, but he didn’t dwell on his past but rather, he wanted to gain Christ more to possess Him more, so that he would become more like Christ.

Paul wasn’t a person of yesterday but a person of today (Heb. 3:7-8, 15; Psa. 95:7-8); we should not look ahead to the future and not look back to the past; we are people of today (Matt. 6:11, 33-34; Luke 19:9-10; 23:43).

Our need is not to dwell on our excellent past and sigh over the miserable present but rather, enjoy and gain Christ today for our moment-by-moment salvation at the present time.

We may be suffering, but we should forget what is in the past and not dwell in the future but gain Christ right now!

The Christ whom we love is the Christ now, the Christ today, and the Christ on the throne in the heavens; such a Christ is our daily salvation and our moment-by-moment supply.

He sustains us to live a heavenly life on earth as we gain Christ more and more, even in our sufferings (Matt. 28:20; 1 Pet. 1:8; Heb. 8:2; 4:14-15; 7:26; 2 Cor. 6:2; Rom. 5:10).

Lord Jesus, we refuse to dwell on our past and sigh over our present – we simply want to gain the now Christ, the Christ today! Amen, Lord, we exercise to forget the things that are behind to gain the Christ today to the fullest extent! Even in our sufferings and difficulties, we simply turn to You, dear Lord, to gain Christ, possess Christ, be gained by Christ, and be conformed to the image of Christ. Amen, Lord, we come to You as the now-Christ, the today-Christ, the Christ who is our daily salvation and our moment-by-moment supply! Our desire is to be conformed to Your image even as we partake of the fellowship of Your sufferings so that Christ may live in us and we would magnify Christ! Yes, Lord, be magnified in us and through us, no matter the outward environment!

References and Hymns on this Topic

• Sources of inspiration: the Word of God, my enjoyment in the ministry, the message by Minoru Chen for this week, and portions from, Life-study of Job, msgs. 4, 16 (by Witness Lee), as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, Crystallization-study of Job, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes (2020 winter training), week 3, Job’s Experience of God’s Consuming and Stripping in the Old Testament Being Far Behind That of Paul in the New Testament.
• Hymns on this topic:
  – Crucified with Christ my Savior, / To the world and self and sin; / To the death-born life of Jesus / I am sweetly ent’ring in: / In His fellowship of suff’ring, / To His death conformed to be, / I am going with my Savior / All the way to Calvary. (Hymns #481)
  – Press on, press on, this one thing do, / Forget the things behind; / Press onward to the Christ before, / Press onward with this mind! (Hymns #1205)
  – Blest assurance! God has fully ordered / Every matter by His sovereign hand; / Every person (though we see so dimly), / Every thing’s according to His plan. / Every trial is but the Father’s answer / To the groaning of the Spirit’s prayer; / May He gain in every tribulation, / Until we Christ’s glory fully share. (Hymns #1210)