What a great need is there for us all to be perfected to function in our measure in the meetings of the church for the building up of the Body of Christ!
Our meetings as believers in Christ should always be linked to God’s New Testament economy, and we should speak by focusing on God’s economy, learning to function in our measure, for the Lord wants to recover the God-ordained way to meet and to serve.
Many times, due to the influence of Christianity, we come to the meetings and sit down, just listening and not participating, for we do not feel that the responsibility for the meeting is on our shoulders.
However, if we enjoy Christ throughout the week and have experienced Him, and then come to the meeting, there’s an overflowing of the enjoyment of Christ that issues in the exhibiting of Christ among the saints.
Our meetings are to exhibit Christ; when we come to the meeting, we need to bring to us the Christ we have enjoyed, and we need to exercise our spirit to speak Christ.
Whether we have a proper church life or not depends on whether we the saints exhibit Christ with His unsearchable riches in the meeting.
Even these days when the rules for social gathering are still quite strict due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we can still meet via zoom or skype or any online video meeting software, and we can assemble together in spirit!
The goal of our meeting with the saints is to exhibit Christ; God wants His Christ to be expressed, exhibited, magnified, and when we come together we do the will of God by exhibiting Christ together.
However, our Christian meeting is an exhibition of our daily Christian life; we cannot just live the way we want and not read the Bible, but then when we come to the meeting we talk about God and sing and put on a “spiritual attitude”.
Rather, we need to daily enjoy Christ, experience Christ, pray, read, read the Bible, and open to the Lord to fellowship with Him, and as we do this, we gain something of Christ to share with the saints in the meeting.
We need to take Christ as the reality of all the offerings early in the morning, admitting that we are not the right persons to live and do anything, but Christ is the One pleasing to the Father.
When we come to the Lord’s Table meeting to remember Him until He returns, doing all things in remembrance of Him, we need to realize that our responsibility is to deal with anything that would hinder our fellowship and enjoyment of Christ, and we would exhibit Christ!
And after we enjoy Christ and remember Him by partaking of Him, we need to offer the worship to the Father.
When we do this, when the Father is satisfied and Christ is expressed, we feel that He is satisfied and so we are also satisfied.
But if deep in our spirit we are not satisfied, then God is also not satisfied; we need to exercise our spirit and enter into the practice of exhibiting Christ in the meetings of the church until God and us are satisfied, and God’s will is done on earth.
Meeting with a Vision of God’s Economy and Focusing on the Economy of God in our Speaking
The Father’s eternal will and the desire of His heart are to build up the church as the Body of Christ; therefore, we do the Father’s will by functioning in the meetings according to the scriptural way to meet for the building up of the Body (Matt. 7:21; 12:50; Eph. 4:16; 1 Cor. 14:26).
God’s will is to build up the Body of Christ, the corporate expression of Christ; God’s desire and will are focused on Christ – He wants His Christ to be everything to God and man, and He wants that Christ would be enlarged, expanded, expressed, and universally manifested.
In our meetings as the church, our focus should not be anything else but Christ and the economy of God.
Our meetings as believers in Christ should always be linked to God’s New Testament economy; there are many things that the Bible speaks, but the central line in the Bible and the focus of the Bible is the economy of God.
If we focus on anything else other than God’s economy, this will lead to questionings rather than God’s economy, which is in faith.
When we come together to meet, we need to have a vision of the divine economy; what we speak in the meetings should focus on the economy of God (1 Tim. 1:4; Eph. 3:9; 1 Cor. 14:26).
We may have a psalm, a hymn, a word of encouragement, or something to speak for the Lord from our experience of Him, but all these should be done for the building up, having God’s economy as their focus.
May the Lord enlighten us that we may see this mystery hidden in God throughout the ages!
May we realize what God’s economy is and how we can speak everything unto the building up of the church by focusing on the economy of God in our speaking!
It is easy to speak of our experience or lack thereof in the meetings, and it is easy to overflow with the enjoyment of Christ when we have it; however, in all we do and say in the meeting, our focus should be the economy of God.
All the speaking in the meeting is intrinsically related to the divine economy, to God’s plan to dispense Himself into us to make us His corporate expression.
We need to be governed by a vision of God’s economy, and everything we do in the church life should be with God’s dispensing in view.
When we preach the gospel, we don’t want just to get people saved: we want to bring them under the divine dispensing for them to become members of Christ, part of the enlargement of Christ on the earth.
When we visit people by knocking on their door to bring the gospel to them, we should focus on dispensing Christ into them for them to become part of the kingdom of God, the realm where God can rule and reign.
When we stand up to speak in the meeting, when we visit the new ones, when we meet in a vital group meeting, and when meet to pray with the saints, in all kinds of meetings, our focus should be to dispense God into man for the building up of the Body of Christ!
Lord Jesus, may all our meetings with the saints be linked to God’s New Testament economy, and may we all have a vision of the divine economy as we meet and serve together in the Body! May our speaking and our doing in the meetings of the church be focused on the economy of God for the dispensing of God into man for the building up of the Body of Christ. Amen, Lord, we are here for the will of God, which is the building up of the Body of Christ for God to have a corporate expression on earth!
Being Perfected to Function in our Measure in the Meetings for the Building up of the Body
The church is the organic Body of Christ; the church is not an organism but an organic entity composed of many members of the Body.
Eph. 4:16 says that there’s joints of the rich supply and there’s each one part; the gifted persons perfect the members of the Body, who in turn function in their measure for the building up of the Body.
The Body grows by being joined closely together through the joints and by being knit together through the operation in the measure of each one part.
Just as in our human body all the members are needed, and if one of them doesn’t function we need to help it to function, so in the Body of Christ all the members of the Body are needed, and those who don’t function need to be perfected and supplied in order to function.
For the organic building up of the Body of Christ, the gifted persons must do their best to perfect every saint; the apostles, prophets, evangelists, and shepherds and teachers shouldn’t replace the members and over-function (as it is common in Christianity today) but they should perfect the saints to do what they do for the building up of the Body.
The Lord doesn’t want ten giants apostles to over-function in the Body; He wants millions of saints who function as apostles by being perfected by the gifted members to function even as the apostles do.
The apostle Paul testified how he lived in Ephesus, ministered to his own needs and to the needs of those with him, and he visited to perfect and shepherd all the saints in their homes night and day, even with tears, declaring to them all the counsel of God (Acts 20:20, 31).
The elders, co-workers, and gifted members in the Body need to visit the saints in their homes to perfect them day and night, even with tears, so that the saints would be cherished, nourished, and perfected to function in their measure in the meetings of the church for the organic building up of the Body of Christ.
The Lord wants to destroy and smash all the clergy-laity system in the church, for He desires that all the members would be perfected to function in the Body.
All the saints need to be perfected, equipped, and furnished to speak forth Christ; this will issue in the accomplishment of the Lord’s heart’s desire, the organic building up of the Body of Christ.
It is NOT normal for only a small number of members to function in our human body, while the others are paralysed; similarly, it is NOT normal for only a small number of gifted members to function in the Body of Christ, while the other members sit quietly and listen.
There needs to be a corporate man comprised of many living, active, functioning members who do the will of God and fulfill the purpose of God.
For this, the Lord needs to recover the God-ordained way for us to meet and to serve, the scriptural way of meeting in the church life; this needs to be cone by individual contact with people, individual perfecting of the members, and face-to-face fellowship and perfecting.
This is the most difficult thing to do, for it is easy to call out meetings and speak from the pulpit to great crowds, but it is not easy to shepherd the saints one by one and perfect them to function in their measure in the Body.
But we need to pay the price to be perfected to function in our measure in the church meetings for the building up of the Body of Christ!
The enemy designed the clergy-laity system to kill the function of the members of the Body; we need to advance from just knowing this to experiencing being brought out of it, until the clergy-laity system is replaced by the scriptural way to meet for the building up of the Body.
It is not normal for us to come to the meeting and sit quietly, not enjoying the Lord and not functioning in our measure.
It is normal, however, that we enjoy the Lord, sing, speak, declare, and praise the Lord when we’re in the meetings, so that the church would be built up and Christ would be exhibited.
For this to take place, however, the Lord needs to bring His believers into the scriptural way for us to meet and to serve for the building up of the Body of Christ – out of the clergy-laity system and into the God-ordained way to meet and the serve!
May we all be willing to be perfected to function in our measure in the meetings to build up the organic Body of Christ!
Lord Jesus, bring us out of the clergy-laity system and into the scriptural way to meet and to serve for the building up of the Body of Christ! Recover us further, Lord, until we all function in our measure in the Body of Christ. Save us from being non-functioning members in the Body. Save us from not functioning in our measure in the Body. Oh Lord, we open to You and to the perfecting in the Body so that we may function in our measure in the meetings for the building up of the organic Body of Christ! Yes, Lord, recover us and recover all the saints to Your way to build up the church – each one has, each one functions for the building up of the church!
References and Hymns on this Topic
- Sources of inspiration: the Word of God, my enjoyment in the ministry, the message by Ron Kangas for this week, and portions from, CWWL, 1991-1992, vol. 1, “Elders’ Training, Book 11: The Eldership and the God-ordained Way (3),” pp. 215, 218, as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, The Will of God (2020 spring ITERO), week 8, Meeting to Know and Do the will of God.
- Hymns on this topic:
– Members one of another, the Body will grow, / As we’re knit together in our inward parts. / Open firstly to Christ our Head, then life He will bestow / Through the function in measure of each part. / Christ is Head of the Body; we’re His members true. / When we hold fast the Head, life freely flows. / As we’re daily enjoying, we with Christ are infused, / All His heart for the Body we’ll know. (Song on, From the Head to the Body)
– Though the gifts are many, / Yet the Spirit one; / Many too the functions, / But one Lord, the Son. / Each fulfills his duty, / Shows his usefulness, / Fervent in the spirit, / Girt with faithfulness. / Knitting and supplying, / Bearing much in grace; / Not a trace of discord, / Christ is giv’n His place. (Hymns #854)
– ’Tis by serving in the Body / Riches of the Head we share; / ’Tis by functioning as members / Christ’s full measure we will bear. (Hymns #913)
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