The age of mystery in which we live today is the age of faith, for faith is the unique requirement God has from us – he who comes forward to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him (Heb. 11:6).
We will not need faith in the next age, for we will see Him even as He is, but we need faith in this age, for faith is the substantiating ability for us to understand, apprehend, and appropriate what God is.
We cannot understand God with our mind; we cannot feel God with our emotions; we cannot will to see God with our will and our eyes.
We need to exercise our spirit of faith; faith is in our spirit, and when we read the Bible under the shining of the Lord’s light, we are infused with a believing ability, which is faith.
If we read any other book in the world, we get knowledge, we may be touched in our feelings, or we may will to do something and set out a plan.
But when we read the Bible not only in the black-in-white letters on its pages but by opening to the Lord and exercising our spirit, we are infused with faith.
We are in the age of faith. And in the church life, those who lead us are patterns of faith, and we should consider their manner of life and imitate their faith (Heb. 13:7).
Actually, we all need to be patterns of faith; our faith needs to be developed, our faith needs to grow, and day by day there has to be an increase in our faith; when we see those who oversee the church and who serve us in the Lord, we should imitate their faith not in a natural way but before the Lord, by having them as our pattern.
Amen, may the Lord raise up many who are patterns of faith! We need to imitate those who through faith and long-suffering are inheritors of the promise (Heb. 6:12).
There are some who go through years and even decades of long-sufferings; they pass through these not because they are strong in themselves nor because of their character or will power but through faith.
Hallelujah, Christ is the Author and Perfecter of our faith, even the soul of our faith, and He will perfect our faith, making us those who through faith and long-suffering inherit the promise, on the road to overcoming!
May we come to the Lord to be supplied by Him to live an overcoming life in the midst of the chaos and lawlessness, with a view to the Lord’s return.
May there be proper brothers in the leadership of the church and among the serving ones, brothers who have sisters who match them, those who are patterns of the faith, patterns of those who go through everything through faith!
1 Pet. 1:7 says that the proving of our faith is more precious than gold; the proving is trial by testing.
There are no exceptions to this: we all have faith, but it needs to be developed, proved, and refined by the trials, and this faith is precious. Amen!
As Paul said to the saints in 1 Thes. 3:10, we need to be completed in the things lacking in our faith. All believers in Christ have faith, but we are lacking in many things concerning the faith; we need to be completed in the things lacking in our faith.
May we be before the Lord concerning our faith and concerning those under our care so that we may sense what is lacking in the faith of the saints and cooperate with the Lord to complete what is lacking. Hallelujah, we live in the age of faith!
We live in the Age of Faith, and God’s Mysteries are Known by Faith, our Believing Ability
God is a mystery; Christ as the embodiment of God is a mystery – He is the mystery of God; the church as the reproduction of Christ is a mystery – the church is the mystery of Christ.
There is a great mystery – Christ and the church. How can we, human beings, understand or apprehend the mystery of God, Christ, the church, and the economy of God?
Is it merely by our mind? Is it by our feeling? Or is it all “spiritual”, up in the air somewhere, and we just need to “believe it”?
All the things related to the mystery of God, Christ, the church, and the economy of God can be apprehended by faith.
Without faith, it is impossible for us to be well-pleasing to God, for he who comes forward to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him (Heb. 11:6).
We live in an age of mystery, and this mystery can be apprehended by faith; we live in the age of faith. It is through faith that Christ makes His home in our hearts today (Eph. 3:17).
It is through faith that we see that God has an economy, and without faith, we cannot realize God’s economy (1 Tim. 1:4), for God’s economy is in faith.
What God requires of us in the New Testament is not merely that we agree with Him or understand Him but that we believe; His unique requirement is faith.
It is through faith that we can apprehend all the spiritual things; if we don’t have faith, we do not understand nor can we receive God, Christ, the economy of God, and the spiritual matters related to God.
It is by faith that we know Christ and realize that He is both in the heavens and in our spirit; by faith, we know that the Bible is the word of God, and by faith we know that we have been saved, regenerated, and forgiven by God.
We live in the age of faith, for it is by faith that we are sanctified, transformed, renewed, and will eventually be glorified.
Everything we read in the Bible needs to be taken in by faith, not by sight or by our understanding – we need to exercise our spirit of faith and believe it, for everything spiritual is apprehended by faith.
Everything that is apprehended by faith is a mystery; faith is not something blind, something that we just believe mindlessly.
Rather, faith is of our spirit – faith is in our spirit, and when we exercise our spirit – the deepest and most hidden part of our being – over the word of God, we have a spirit of faith.
We live in the age of faith, and anything of God and His economy is mysterious and of grace.
God is mysterious, but we can apprehend Him and receive Him by faith; the Spirit of God is mysterious, yet we can exercise our spirit of faith to receive Him.
The Body of Christ is a mystery, but when we exercise our spirit of faith we know that the church is not just a gathering or a congregation of Christians but the church, the Body of Christ, and we all are brothers and sisters in the Lord.
And faith has nothing to do with our feelings; it is not because we feel good that we believe, but when we don’t feel too good, we don’t believe.
Our feelings fluctuate – they go up and down, and according to our feelings one day we think there’s no God and no human spirit.
We need to simply turn to the Lord, exercise our spirit of faith, speak in faith, and believe and speak what we believe according to the word of God.
We speak about God and the things of God not in the spirit of knowledge, not in our feelings, and not because of our strong will, but in the spirit of faith.
Hallelujah, our spirit is of faith, and in the age of faith, we can apprehend all the things of God and His economy by faith!
Lord, we come forward to You; we believe that You are and that You are a rewarder of those who diligently seek You. We want to contact You in spirit and through faith so that we may apprehend the spiritual things and all that God is and has done for us. Thank You, Lord, for Your economy, which is in faith. We exercise our spirit to believe into You and to receive all the things of God, Christ, the Spirit, and God’s economy. Amen, Lord, in this age of faith we want to know You, experience You, and enjoy You by faith, and we exercise our spirit of faith to speak in faith according to what we see by faith. Increase our faith, dear Lord!
God Carries out His New Testament Economy with man through Faith, which Christ Infused into us to be our Believing Ability
This age is the age of mystery, the age of faith; this is how God arranged it, for every aspect of God’s economy is in faith.
Faith is the unique way for God to carry out His New Testament economy with man; without faith, it is impossible to please God, for it is through faith that we can know the things of God and we can come to God (Heb. 11:6).
The unique requirement for people to contact God in His New Testament economy is faith (Heb. 11:1, 6).
The economy of God, His eternal intention with His heart’s desire to dispense Himself in His Divine Trinity into His chosen people to be their life and nature and make them the same as He is to be His corporate expression, is in faith.
God’s requirement for us related to everything in His economy is faith.
The gospel is in faith and of faith, and it leads to salvation through faith; the righteousness of God is revealed in it out of faith and to faith, and the righteous shall have life and live by faith (Rom. 1:16-17).
It is by faith that we can have the experience of being crucified with Christ and no longer live by have Christ live in us; it is by faith that we live such a crucified life, a life in which it’s not us who lives but Christ who lives in us (Gal. 2:20).
It is by faith that Christ makes His home in our hearts; the Father strengthens us into the inner man through the Spirit, and Christ makes His home in our hearts through faith (Eph. 3:17).
The prophecies in the word of God are all apprehended by faith; we should just have faith in God (Mark 11:22).
And when the Lord returns, will He find faith on the earth (Luke 18:8)? What is faith, and how can we have faith? Can we just “muster up” faith? Can we create faith in and by ourselves? No.
Genuine faith is not of ourselves; it is Christ Himself infused into us to become our ability to believe in Him.
He is the Author of our faith – He originates faith, He creates faith in us, and when we read the word of God and touch the Lord, faith rises up in us.
After the Lord Jesus has been infused into us, He spontaneously becomes our faith.
The object of faith is the Word of God; by faith, we know that there’s a God because the Bible tells us there is a God.
It is by faith that we know that God has an economy, the Spirit is with our spirit (Rom. 8:16), Christ makes His home in our heart, and we are the church as the Body of Christ.
The more we read the Bible, the more faith is infused into us; the more we exercise our spirit over the word of God, the more faith rises up in us, and we are happy and living in the Lord.
Through faith in Christ Jesus, we are brought into an organic union with Christ, and in this organic union, we experience Christ and live Christ (Gal. 2:16, 20; John 14:17; Eph. 3:17).
May we all learn to exercise our mind, emotion, and will a little less, and exercise our spirit a little more every day as we read the Word and even as we do this and that, so that faith may increase in us.
May we look away from anything else unto Jesus, exercising to look into His face in spirit, so that He may infuse us with Himself more and more, and He would be our ability to believe into Him, our very faith!
Lord Jesus, we open to You: infuse us with Yourself to be our believing ability to believe in You. Amen, Lord, we do not have faith in ourselves, but we do come to You – infuse us with Yourself much more through Your word. We give ourselves to be in Your word, beholding Your face, and allowing You to infuse Yourself into us to be our believing ability, our very faith. Thank You for bringing us into an organic union with You through faith so that we may experience Christ and live Christ. Amen, Lord, we exercise our spirit of faith to apprehend all that God in Christ as the Spirit is to us!
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, 1990, vol. 2, “Messages to the Trainees in Fall 1990,” pp. 490-493, as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, The Christian Life, the Church Life, the Consummation of the Age, and the Coming of the Lord (2020 fall ITERO), week 1, The Consummation of the Age – the Age of Mystery.
- Hymns on this topic:
– Given us, given us, God has given us / Precious faith, power divine, greatest promises. / We believed, we received, now we have all three; / By these we may grow unto maturity. (Hymns #1211)
– What glory! How attractive was this light! / How we appreciated such a sight! / Our first reaction was belief in Him— / This precious God has placed Himself within. / Our first reflection of this element / Reflected Jesus back to God, Who sent / His own response to count as righteousness / Our faith in Him Who was infused in us. (Hymns #1202)
– Lord, make us now those faithful men / Who pass on what we’ve heard; / Make us examples of the saints / In spirit, faith, and word. (Hymns #1285)
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