In order that God may be fully expressed through us, we need to have spiritual emotions and be tenderhearted with one another, and we need to be able to serve God with tears, even as Jeremiah and Paul also did. Amen!
We don’t know when the Lord’s return takes place; we don’t know when His parousia is here, but the world situation shows us that the Lord is very near.
He can change the outward world situation very quickly and even in a radical way, but He is waiting for a generation who would be His overcomers, those who are according to His heart and live one spirit with Him in this age so that He may flow freely.
The ministry that the Lord desires to gain is not something outward, not merely eloquence and knowledge, not merely doctrines and practices, but the ministry through the cross.
The Lord needs to gain people who are not merely gifted but who are going through the cross and are by the Spirit, the ministry produced through revelation plus suffering.
Paul was an example of this; he was a minister of the word of God, he was constituted with the Word, and he ministered what He knew and what he was.
May we be those constituted with the word of God, with the Triune God, and with the all-inclusive Christ, and may we minister what we are in our constitution.
It is not primarily what we know, it is not primarily our gift, and it is not primarily our ability that should stand out, but the ministry produced by revelation plus suffering.
May the Lord raise up so many in all the local churches who are called to the ministry, those who have spiritual emotions through which Christ can be expressed, those who are tenderhearted with one another, those who serve God with tears, those who minister Christ through the cross and by the Spirit.
May we learn to open to the Lord especially on the matter of our feelings, may we open our emotions and sentiments, and may we allow the Lord to thoroughly deal with them so that the Lord will have a way to express any feeling that He has through us, the feeling that matches His word. May the Lord gain such ones that match Him today!
Having Spiritual Emotions and being Tenderhearted so that God may be Expressed through us
If we don’t allow the Lord to have access to our emotions, tears, and feelings, He cannot be expressed through us in a full way; in order that God may be expressed through us, we need to have spiritual emotions.
We all have emotions and feelings, but we need to be trained, perfected, and disciplined so that we may have spiritual emotions, be tenderhearted with one another, and be able to serve God with tears (James 5:11; Eo. 34:6; Psa. 103:8).
We all need to open to the Lord and ask the Lord to save us from being natural in our feelings and emotions; may we ask the Lord to grant us spiritual emotions, that we would be tenderhearted, that we would be able to serve God with tears.
Actually, a spiritual person is full of emotions, and the more spiritual we are, the richer our emotions are (1 Cor. 4:21; 2 Cor. 6:11; 7:3; 10:1; 12:15).
So we need to go to the Lord and allow Him to work on us until our feelings are fine and tender.
The Lord can produce in us tender feelings and spiritual emotions; so we need to come to Him and allow Him to work on us and deal with all things that are in our emotions and feelings for Him to be expressed through us.
It is very serious for a leading brother or an elder to shepherd or try to help and adjust the saints yet without tender and fine feelings; he may be righteous, correcting an error or a major sin, but he may not have loving care or tender heart to care for this person. Oh Lord!
Every time God works on us and chastises us, every time He deals with us, our feelings become finer and more sensitive; this is the deepest lesson in the breaking of the outer man (2 Cor. 4:16).
May the Lord save us from merely growing in the human life yet without being broken and dealt with.
May the Lord save us from merely being gifted and capable, competent and knowledgeable, yet not broken and not dealt with.
There needs to be an unrelenting process of breaking in the lives of many brothers until the real ministry is produced; these brothers need sisters to match them.
In the church life we need to be tenderhearted with one another (Eph. 4:32); this should be a characteristic of the church life everywhere.
We shouldn’t judge or condemn our fellow believers but be kind to them, tenderhearted, forgiving even as God in Christ also forgave us (Luke 6:37; Eph. 4:32).
So we need to experience Christ as our life supply and allow Him to deal with our heart until they become tender, and when they are tenderhearted, we will forgive others.
One way to see whether the Lord has dealt with our heart is our forgiving others and forgetting their offenses and faults; some may get offended and may remember these offenses for many years, and they may not let these offenses go because they don’t allow the Lord to deal with their emotions.
May we realize that it is not too late for the Lord to touch us and give us a tender heart so that we may let go of any offense, anything that others may have done to us or in the church life.
It is not too late to open to the Lord to allow Him to deal with our emotions and feelings; He can make our heart tender and soft so that He may be expressed through us even through our emotions.
Lord Jesus, we open to You; we allow You to work Yourself into us and to deal with our emotions to make us tenderhearted and soft toward You and toward others. May we not only have emotions or feelings but spiritual emotions, so that we may be tenderhearted with one another. We open to You Lord and we allow You to work on us until our feelings are fine and tender. We open to Your work, Your chastising, and Your dealing so that our feelings may become finer and more sensitive until we have spiritual emotions and we are tenderhearted with one another, expressing God through our emotions.
Learning to Serve the Lord with Tears with the Spirit as our Person and the Soul as the Organ
The apostle Paul received mercy from the Lord to be a pattern to all those who believe.
In Acts 20:19, while he was on the way to Jerusalem and passed through Ephesus, he asked the elders to come to him and he spoke to them, reminding them of how he was with them.
He reminded them how he was with them, serving the Lord as a slave with all humility and tears and trials which came upon him by the plots of the Jews.
He was with them for three years and was in tears night and day (v. 31). If we have not shed tears this way for our work, for the Lord and for those around us, we did not work for the Lord in a proper way.
No one can be complete without tears; a person may be good at many things, but if he doesn’t weep, he cannot be considered as complete.
We may serve the Lord and serve man, but this has to be done with tears both before the Lord and before men; such tears cannot be fabricated but rather, they need to flow out of our spiritual emotions and our being tenderhearted.
Without tears as an expression of the Lord’s weeping in us for those around us and their situations, our work cannot be prosperous; if we don’t do this one thing in secret, the progress of our work will be hindered.
If we don’t know how to weep or shed tears when the Lord weeps and sheds tears in us, we are not very spiritual.
Jeremiah wept for the people of Israel who were under God’s chastising, the Lord Jesus wept for Jerusalem for He knew what was coming, and Paul served with tears.
When we live in the spirit, using the soul as an organ, we will be able to serve the Lord and admonish the saints with tears.
The key is that we need to live in spirit, having our inner man as our real person and our soul as the organ.
By default, due to the fall of man, our soul is our person; our fallen soul is the person who lives in us until the Lord Jesus came to live in our spirit.
Since the Lord is in our spirit, our spirit is our real person; we need to live in the spirit and have the soul, the organ for expression, as our organ through which we allow the Lord to be expressed.
When we begin to live in our new man, in our spirit, taking the soul as our person, we begin to shed tears.
We may love someone by our soul as our person – and this will not last but it is rather easily spoiled.
Our spirit, strictly speaking, doesn’t have the loving ability, but when Christ is in our spirit as our person, and He has a way to use our soul as the organ, we have a way to love and shed tears.
The loving organ is our emotion, a part of our soul. This is the way the Lord lived; He wept (John 11:35; Luke 19:41) not in a natural way but from His spirit as His person with His soul as His organ.
The Lord didn’t love with the soul as the organ but rather by His spirit as His person with His soul as His organ.
We need to be like the Lord today; our soul must be denied as our person, yet our soul is still useful as an organ.
We need to live in the spirit and use the soul as an organ to serve the Lord and admonish the saints with tears.
These tears are not “planned” or fabricated; rather, they are the expression of our spiritual emotions and being tenderhearted with others, even as the Lord in our spirit weeps and sheds tears in us.
Lord Jesus, we choose to live in the mingled spirit today, taking the soul as the organ so that we may serve You and admonish others even with tears. We give You access to our inner being, Lord. We turn our heart to You and we allow You to make Your home deep down in our heart. Make us those who live in the spirit and use the soul as our organ to love the Lord and others, being tenderhearted toward them and having spiritual emotions. Amen, Lord, we want to give You a way to be expressed through us, even through our emotions!
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, Collected Works of Witness Lee, 1989, vol. 3, “The Experience and Growth in Life,” ch. 3, as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, Crystallization Study of Jeremiah and Lamentations, week 1, Jeremiah, the Tenderhearted Prophet of the Tenderhearted God.
- Hymns on this topic:
– We have been many years in religion, / We have been many years in our mind, / We have been many years in emotions, / Always seeking, but never to find. / Now we’re learning to turn to our spirit, / Now we’re learning to take Christ as life; / Now we’re learning to feed upon Jesus / And be freed from all struggling and strife. (Hymns #1141)
– In our emotions He must grow; / Raw, fragile feelings overthrow; / Our love, our hatred, must be His— / Lord, we agree with You for this. / Another part the Lord must fill— / Our hard, unbending, stubborn will; / Lord, our resistance quickly break, / Subdue us for Thy kingdom’s sake. (Hymns #1300)
– Through the Cross, O Lord, I pray, / Put my soul-life all away; / Make me any price to pay, / Full anointing to receive. (Hymns #279)
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