Today in the church life in the Lord’s recovery we are being made ready, willing, and in one accord with the Lord and with all the saints to take the land and possess it by enjoying the all-inclusive Christ, to posses and enjoy the good land.
For us to enter into the possession and enjoyment of the all-inclusive Christ as the reality of the good land, we need to be formed into a corporate Joshua to fight and defeat the satanic forces and take the land.
The good land is ours – God has allotted each and every one of us, the believers in Christ, a portion of Christ for our inheritance and enjoyment.
However, we need to cooperate with the Lord to enter into the possession and enjoyment of the all-inclusive Christ daily by being formed in a corporate Joshua, so that together we may take the land.
We need to go through the experiences of eating Christ as the reality of the Passover, being saved from the world, leaving the world behind, having the testimony of God both personally and in the church life, enjoying Christ and experiencing Him as the reality of all the offerings, and enjoying Christ as the High Priest and entering into our function in the priesthood.
Furthermore, for us to be part of God’s army we need to be in the church life, we need to have the growth in life to maturity, we need to be built up with the saints, we need to exercise submission in the Body of Christ, and we need to be fresh and young with the Lord.
Amen, may we pray over every one of these matters, asking the Lord to qualify us and make us ready to be part of His army, so that we may follow our General Jesus Christ to take the land and possess it by enjoy it both personally and corporately!
Christ as the good land is ready to be taken and possessed by us, His believers, but we need to be those ready to take Him, possess Him, experience Him, and enjoy Him in His all-inclusiveness.
The land doesn’t just come to us automatically, we need to rise up and go and take the land. And as we fight the spiritual warfare to defeat the satanic forces and renounce our natural life, we grow in life and enter into the enjoyment and possession of the good land, the all-inclusive Christ.
May we be such ones, may we be those who cooperate with God by rising up to fulfill God’s commission to possess the land which was allotted to us. On one hand as have to fight the spiritual warfare, being aware of the enemy’s schemes and stratagems to frustrate us from the enjoyment of Christ.
On the other hand, we need to give ourselves to enjoy the Lord day by day, enjoying Him in His all-inclusiveness both personally and corporately with all the saints.
We are being made Ready to Enter into the Good Land to Take the Land and Possess it
In Joshua 1:6 Joshua led the children of Israel to enter the promised land and to take it, possess it, and enjoy it. The content of the book of Joshua is how Joshua led the children of Israel to enter the promised land so that they may take the land, possess the land, allot the land, and enjoy the land.
First, they had to enter into the promise land, then they had to possess it and occupy it; finally, they had to allot the land, apportion it, to each tribe in a particular way, and then they could enjoy the land.
Our victorious General Christ is leading us into the good land so that we may take the land and possess it, and enjoy the good land. We need to be made ready by the Lord to enter into the enjoyment of the all-inclusive Christ, and our response should be, Lord, we are willing to enter into the enjoyment!
We need to be willing and ready, and we need to be in one accord not only with Christ but also with one another, so that we may enter into the enjoyment and possession of the good land.
The people of Israel agreed with Joshua in taking God’s commission, and their response indicated their willingness, readiness, and being in one accord with Joshua and with Jehovah their God (see Josh. 1:16-18).
Similarly, we need to cooperate with the Triune God in the great wheel of His economy to take the land, gain the good land, and enter into the enjoyment of Christ.
Our God is moving; He wants His people to enter into the enjoyment of His all-inclusive Christ so that they may build the temple for His expression and the city for His representation. We simply need to respond to Him by being willing and ready, and by being in one accord with Him and with one another to take the land and possess it.
We need to be formed into a corporate Joshua, a body of the chosen, redeemed, trained, prepared, qualified, and ready people to go on with God to take the land and enter into the enjoyment and possession of the all-inclusive Christ.
The Lord promised that He will drive out the pagan tribes in the good land, but He still needed the cooperation of His people; He needed them to be formed into an army and fight the battle to remove the pagan tribes (see Exo. 23:28-31).
He promised He will not remove all the pagan tribes at once, for His people were not ready, but He will do it one by one, as they march in the good land. In our spiritual life, God wants to remove and cut off all the aspects of our natural life, but He will not do it all at once; He is waiting for our cooperation.
The way we cooperate with the Lord to remove and drive out the natural life is by growing in life and by taking the initiative. As we grow in the divine life by enjoying the all-inclusive Christ, we cooperate with Him by taking the initiative to drive out the natural life, and the Lord will remove it from us.
The Lord is the One who removes the natural life, and we simply cooperate by taking the initiative and by growing in life. This is what the Lord wants from us: He wants our cooperation; He does the operating, and we do the co-operating.
Lord Jesus, cause us to be made ready, willing, and in one accord with one another and with You to enter the enjoyment of the all-inclusive Christ. Amen, Lord, we respond to Your call to take the land and enter into the enjoyment and possession of the all-inclusive Christ! Strengthen us, Lord, prepare us, and make us ready to rise up and take the initiative to drive out any aspect of our natural life so that we may enter into the enjoyment and possession of Christ in His all-inclusiveness. Amen, Lord, we say Amen to Your calling to enjoy the good land!
Being the Corporate Joshua Ready to Go on with God to Take the Land and Possess It
In Joshua 3:11, 17 we see how the children of Israel not only followed Joshua’s lead but they became a corporate Joshua; they were chosen, called, redeemed, saved, trained, prepared, and qualified by God to go on with God as one to take the land of Canaan.
This is what God desires to have: He wants to gain a group of people who are chosen, called, redeemed, saved, trained, prepared, and qualified by God, a group of people who are ready to go on with God as one new man to take the land by entering into the enjoyment of the all-inclusive Christ.
For us to enjoy the all-inclusive Christ, we need to be a corporate Joshua, fighting the battle, taking the land, and enjoying Christ as our inheritance. The Lord is taking us through a process to prepare us to be one with Him to enter into the enjoyment of the all-inclusive Christ.
If we look at the situation around us, we can say that, in a sense, God has been chased away from the earth; He created the earth for Himself, but He doesn’t have a way to be the Lord of the earth even as He is the Lord of the heavens.
But praise the Lord, on earth there is God’s spiritual people, the church, whom God has chosen, called, separated unto Himself, and these ones are one with the Lord for the carrying out of His economy.
We in the church life should have nothing to do with idols or the demons; rather, we should be occupied with our God and with His interest.
We need to be formed, constituted, disciplined, trained, and qualified as God’s people to enter into the full possession and enjoyment of the all-inclusive Christ as the reality of the good land.
We need to be the land-takers, the corporate Joshua who are one with God in His move to enter into and take the land and possess it by enjoying the all-inclusive Christ as our inheritance.
This has nothing to do with us, however; we should not look to ourselves to enter into the good land, and we should not try to do this in ourselves. It’s all of the Lord, in the Lord, and in the Body; to take the good land, we need to enter into a full coordination with God in His move, realizing that God will make this possible.
Our calling to enter into the good land is from God; the promise is from Him; the good land is Himself processed and consummated; and even the energy to enter in and the victory is all of Him.
In a sense, God doesn’t want us to do anything: He just wants us to cooperate with Him. He has prepared the good land, the all-inclusive Christ, and He waits for a corporate Joshua to be formed and go on with God to take the good land and enjoy it! How wonderful! We can tell the Lord,
Lord Jesus, we want to cooperate with You to enter into the full enjoyment of the all-inclusive Christ as the reality of the good land! Lord, in ourselves we cannot do this and we may not be even willing to do this; our strength and energy is in You, and our motivation and victory is of You. Lord, we want to be one with You to take the land, enjoy it, and possess it! We are one with You, Lord, to go into the good land, take the land, possess the land, and fight the spiritual warfare, trusting in You that You will remove the natural life and defeat any satanic forces! Amen!
References and Hymns on this Topic
- Inspiration: the Word of God, my enjoyment in the ministry, the message given by James Lee for this week, and portions from, Life-study of Joshua, msgs. 4, 6, 10 (by Witness Lee), as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, The Spiritual Warfare of the Church as the New Man (2018 Memorial Day Conference), week 5, The Formation of a Corporate Joshua to Possess the Good Land by Defeating the Satanic Forces.
- Hymns on this topic:
# Let’s take the land! O Christian brothers, / The land that God has given us. / Be strong and take it, for we can make it / And gain this land so glorious! / We have the church! All saints are needed to possess / The fullness of this vast reality; / Together we will gain this all-inclusive Christ, / And He to us our everything will be. (Hymns #1287)
# Thou art our real Joshua, / By Thee the rest we enter; / Our full salvation is of Thee, / Our faith on Thee doth center. / Thou art the heav’nly rest to us, / Now dwelling in our spirit, / For us to enter as the land / And all Thy good inherit. (Hymns #188)
# Lord, how we bless Thee for this land, / The all-inclusive Christ! / We’ve eaten Him, we’re filled with Him, / O how He has sufficed! / Teach us to labor constantly / Upon this vast reality; / This is our joy, this our employ— / Christ our land! (Hymns #1164)
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