Blessed is the man who trusts in God, for he drinks of the fountain of living waters and grows with the growth of God! Amen, may we be those who absorb the riches of God by spending much time with God, so that we may grow in life in a normal and proper way for the building up of the Body of Christ!
This week in our crystallization-study of Jeremiah and Lamentations we come to a new crystal, a new gem, in these books, God’s Economy with His Dispensing in the Book of Jeremiah.
It is easy to read the book of Jeremiah and see mainly the outward things, the poor situation in Israel, their rebellion toward God, God’s chastising of His people, and Jeremiah’s weeping over the situation.
But what this book reveals to us is God’s economy with His dispensing.
Again and again, even though there’s such a dark background and such a terrible situation and condition in the people of Israel, there is a verse here and there, a group of verses in this and that chapter, that show us the real thing going behind the scenes: God has an economy, and He is dispensing Himself into His chosen people for the fulfillment of His purpose. Hallelujah!
Trusting in God to be Rooted in Him and Absorb His riches and Grow with the Growth of God
In Jer. 17:7-8 we read, Blessed is the man who trusts in Jehovah / And whose trust Jehovah is. / And he will be like a tree transplanted beside water, / Which sends out its roots by a stream, / And will not be afraid when heat comes; / For its leaves remain flourishing, / And it will not be anxious in the year of drought / And will not cease to bear fruit.
We should not trust in ourselves but trust in God. In 2 Cor. 1 Paul said that he and his co-workers were excessively burdened beyond their power so that they despaired even of living, having the sentence of death in themselves to not trust in themselves but in the God who raises the dead.
Amen, we should not have any confidence in ourselves but in God.
When we believed into the Lord Jesus, Christ as the Spirit came into our spirit; praise the Lord, God in Christ as the Spirit is now in us, and we can simply call on His name, forget about anything else, and just enjoy Him and contact Him!
We may hear concerning trusting in God and we may agree with it, but what about our experience?
If our spouse is not nice to us, do we trust in God or do we exercise our mind to consider their situation and try to figure things out? If we do this, we still trust in ourselves and put God aside; but if we exercise our spirit first, we contact God, this practically means that we don’t trust in ourselves but in God.
Paul said in 2 Cor. 1:12 that his boasting is the testimony of his conscience, that in the singleness and sincerity of God, and not in fleshly wisdom but in the grace of God, he and his co-workers had conducted themselves in the world and more abundantly toward the believers.
For us to trust in the self is bad, but to have fleshly wisdom is even worse; if we keep trusting in the self, our wisdom will not just be natural but fleshly.
Fleshly wisdom is versus the grace of God, for it connects the soul and the flesh, while the grace of God is in the spirit working through the soul and the body.
May we trust in God so that He may work in us; as God works in us, the grace of God is working in us from within our spirit through our soul and body, so that our whole being is under His working.
May we have no trust in ourselves but in God; may we stop all our doing and allow God to work in us! When we trust in God, we are like a tree sending out its roots by a stream.
We are like a plant, a tree, sending its roots into the soil to absorb the riches in the soil and grow.
However, we need to take care of the soil of our heart; if we have rocks in the soil, the plant can’t grow. If we have hidden sins, personal desires, self-seeking, or self-pity, the seed of life can’t grow properly in us.
When the sun comes up, when trials and temptations and sufferings come our way, if we’re not deeply rooted in Christ the soil, we are not ripened but rather destroyed. Oh Lord!
The plant that doesn’t have deep roots but only shallow roots, when the sun comes out, it die.
May we pray to the Lord and tell Him honestly,
Lord, I want to be deeply rooted in You! I want to have a good root system in You so that I may absorb all the rich nutrients of Christ and grow with the growth of God! I turn my heart to You, Lord, and I want to deal with any personal desires, any hidden sins, any self-pity, and any self-seeking, so that all the rocks in the soil of my heart would be dealt with and proper for the seed of life to grow! Amen, Lord, my roots! Lord, the soil of my heart! I open to You and I want to cooperate with You so that You may grow in me in a normal way unto maturity!
We need to have a secret contact with the Lord, a secret history with Him, so that we can grow in life; this is not only for our personal growth but for the corporate growth in life, for the growth of the Body, which is the sum total of all the saints growth in the divine life.
We need to turn and open our heart to the Lord and allow Him to examine our heart, search our heart, and give us a “heart exam” every day as we come to His word, so that He may expose any rocks in our being.
Our trusting in God is not for the shallow reason of receiving material blessings, but for God’s economy to be carried out by His dispensing!
Hallelujah, according to God’s economy, the one who trusts in God is like a tree transplanted beside water; God as the fountain of living waters is our source, we trust in Him, and we don’t trust in ourselves!
We not only trust in God, but God Himself is our trust in Him; we have been transplanted close to Him as plants, so that we can absorb the living water from Him!
Just as a tree grows beside water by absorbing all the riches of the water into it, so we are under the divine dispensing every day and we must absorb God as the living water for Him to become our very constituent.
For us to receive the divine dispensing, we as trees must absorb God as the living water to be dispensed into our being in order for Him to become our very constituent.
May we spend much time with the Lord to absorb His riches, being in His word in a prayerful way, so that He may be wrought into us and become the constituent of our inner being.
God is not simply Someone we worship; He is not a term or a Person up in heaven, but He is real, rich, and substantial, and we need to take time to absorb God.
As believers in Christ we were rooted into Christ and we daily need to absorb im.
We must exercise our spirit to stay in the Lord’s presence to absorb Him; this cannot be done in a quick way – it takes time.
We cannot deny that we did have some experience of absorbing the riches of God, but we still need to continue to spend more and more time with the Lord, not in our soul but in our spirit, to absorb God, adore Him, prase God, and offer thanks to Him!
As we spend time with Him, we receive His element and He grows in us; the result is that we grow with the growth of God.
May we never rush our contact with the Lord but be exercised in our spirit to stay in His presence and absorb His riches. Only God can give the growth; we can only plant and water, but God gives the growth.
We need to come to the Lord again and again for Him to add Himself to us; as we take time to behold Him and absorb Him, He adds His elements into our being, and we growth with the growth of God in us.
Lord Jesus, we do not trust in ourselves but in You; we come to You to spend time with You, and we take time to behold You and absorb You. Add Yourself to us, dear Lord. We open our whole being to You, and we want to be in Your presence for You to give us the growth. Oh Lord, we love Your dispensing. We love to spend time with You to absorb and assimilate the riches of God in Christ. Save us from being in a rush in our time with You; may we take time to absorb Your riches, allowing adequate time for prayer in Your presence! Lord, we love You! We yearn to spend more time in our spirit to adore You, praise You, offer thanks to You, and speak to You freely, opening our whole being to You to have You wrought into us so that we may grow with the growth of God! Amen, Lord, grow in us!
Absorbing God by having Hidden Times of Fellowship with God to be Constituted with His Element and Grow with the Growth of God
In 1 Cor. 3:6 Paul said that he planted, Apollos watered, but God caused the growth; at most what we can do is plant by sowing the word of God (the seed of life) and water by speaking the word to nurture the plants, but only God can give the growth.
We need to come to the Lord again and again and ask Him to give us the growth in life that we need. Only God can cause the growth.
As a tree transplanted by the water, we grow with God as the Supplier and the supply; the supply is the riches of the supplying God dispensed into us as the plants so that we may grow into God’s measure. Amen!
As we take time to absorb God in our personal time with Him, God grows in us, and we have the same element as He, having the same essence, constitution, and appearance.
May we hold Him as the Head (Col. 2:19) so that we may grow with the growth of God!
To hold the Head is to give Him the absolute authority and realize that He is the Head, the Lord, and He directs every detail of our daily life and function in the Body.
To hold the Head is to stay intimately connected to Christ as the Head. When we hold Christ as the Head, something comes out of Him in our intimate contact with Christ, and we receive the element of God to grow with the growth of God.
In Himself God doesn’t need to grow nor can He grow, but in us He needs to grow with the growth of God.
May the growth of God in us never stop until we are eventually conformed to Christ’s image, brought unto maturity, and glorified!
For this to take place, we need to see the crucial significance of absorbing God as the living water so that we may be constituted with His element and essence, and so that we may grow with the growth of God.
If we lack growth in life, our Christian life will be a mess, the church life will be damaged, and the body life will be destroyed.
The church life and the Christian life depends in our growth in life personally; if the saints in the church don’t growth in life with the growth of God, their Christian life is a mess, the church life is damaged, and the Body life is non-existent. Oh Lord!
May He grow in us and may all things else recede!
How does God grow in us? We need to be those trusting in God and spending time with Him to absorb God by taking root downward to bear fruit upward (Isa. 37:31).
This means that in our daily life we need to have hidden times of fellowship with God (Matt. 6:6; 14:22-23); without anyone’s else knowledge, we need to spend secret, hidden, personal time with the Lord to be infused with Him, beholding Him and reflecting Him, and opening our whole being to Him to allow Him to infuse us with Himself.
Everything depends on our secret fellowship with God through prayer and God’s word (Dan. 6:10; Col. 4:2; 2 Tim. 3:14-17).
Even in reading this article on this blog, in reading the words in the Bible, and in reading the ministry portions for the day, we need to have secret fellowship with God, pray short prayers, and bring all things to God in prayer.
When we have a secret fellowship with God, trusting in God and not in ourselves, we are empowered, enlightened, enjoy rest, rejoice, believe, have our problems solved, we overcome trials and temptations and hardships, and we are comforted.
May we be those who take root downward in the rich all-inclusive Christ so that we may bear fruit upward; may we never expose our roots but pray, pray-read the word, and spend much time with the Lord to fellowship with Him and absorb Him so that we may grow with the growth of God.
May we come to the word of God not in the way of knowledge or of gaining doctrines but in the way of life; may we spend much time in the Lord’s word praying His words back to Him and making them part of our conversation with Him.
Lord Jesus, we want to grow in life for the building up of the Body of Christ. We come to You to spend time with You in Your word by taking root downward and bearing fruit upward! We give ourselves to You Lord to spend much hidden time of fellowship with God, so that we may secretly and hiddenly receive the element of God into our being, absorbing God to be constituted with God. Dear Lord Jesus, we love You. We take You as the living water the rich soil into whom we’re rooted; we want to absorb You so that we may be constituted with You and grow with the growth of God. Oh Jesus Christ grow in us, and let all things else recede!
References and Hymns on this Topic
- Sources of inspiration: the Word of God, my enjoyment in the ministry, the message by Ed Marks for this week, and portions from, Life-study of Jeremiah, msgs. 12, 16 (by Witness Lee), as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, Crystallization Study of Jeremiah and Lamentations, week 8, God’s Economy with His Dispensing in the Book of Jeremiah.
- Recommended reading: Chapter 2 of, An Autobiography of a Person in the Spirit, by Witness Lee (see Ministry Books).
- Hymns on this topic:
– O Jesus Christ, grow Thou in me, / And all things else recede; / My heart be daily nearer Thee, / From sin be daily freed. / Each day let Thy supporting might / My weakness still embrace; / My darkness vanish in Thy light, / Thy life my death efface. (Hymns #395)
– Take time to absorb Him, to gain the supply, / That we may be watered and nourished thereby; / The deeper the roots spread, the deeper the flow, / And richer and higher within us He’ll grow. (Song on, Take time to absorb Him)
– Take time to behold Him, / Speak oft with Thy Lord, / Abide in Him always, / And feed on His Word. / Wait thou in His presence, / Submissive and meek, / Forgetting in nothing / His blessing to seek. (Hymns #643)
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