We need to know the crystallized significance of the Body of Christ, especially that the church is in God the Father (see 1 Thes. 1:1). Also, when Paul speaks about the church in Ephesians 4, he says in verse 6,
One God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.
What does it mean that God the Father is over all? God is the One who governs and rules over each one of us – He is in control, and He has the right to determine the destiny and the course of our life.
Especially in the Body of Christ we can learn the absolute sovereignty of God the Father – it is uncontested!
What does it mean that God the Father is through all? It means that He as the Father wants to pass through our being at will – He needs to have the thoroughfare in us.
Yet we are not such beings – those who allow the Father to pass through us fully; rather, there are layers of resistance in our whole being, there are opinions, thoughts, wilful resistance, etc. In Acts 13 we see a group of five brothers from different backgrounds and upbringings that were a vital group – the Spirit could fully pass through them!
For the Lord to pass through us, we need to see that He is the source, the unique source of our life! When we see this, we will simply deny ourselves and terminate anything that produces something of the old ME.
When we have confidence in the flesh, we cannot see the Body – rather, we have lots of ideas and we’re full of strength to do things (even for the Lord) – this is something absolutely intolerable to the Lord!
God even wants to bring us to the point of human impossibility, as He did with Abraham and Sarah, so that He may come in and do it in us! God the Father is the only legitimate source – He can enable someone 100 years old to bring forth the promised son!
God the Father is not only the Source, but He is also the destiny – we are unto Him! This is why we need to not allow anything good or anything that comes from Him, however precious, to replace God from whom we got it!
There may be things happening in our lives that bring us to the “nexus of contradictions”, where God Himself may ask us for the very thing He gave us. We need to learn to deny anything in us that can rise to be the source – we stand against anything that rises up to be the source.
O, Lord, may we experience taking You as the source in everything and us NOT being the source! Lord, detach us even from the most precious things You gave us – we don’t want our “Isaac” to become a replacement for You!
The fact that the church is in God the Father also means that God is our Father and we all are simply brothers and sisters! No matter our culture, background, disposition, or position in society – as long as we are regenerated by God with His divine life, we are brothers and sisters in the Lord!
We have been born of God with the divine DNA! And there is no safer place to be in the whole universe but being in the Son in the Father’s bosom… The church as the Body of Christ is a group of people who is united, mingled, and incorporated with the Triune God!
This is the church – a composition of all the sons of God, for whom He sent His Only Begotten Son to die, redeem, and regenerate, an on whom He’s continually working to transform, renew, sanctify, and conform to Christ’s image!
[sharing from the recent conference on the Crystallised Significance of the Body of Christ, message 4]
O, Lord, reproduce Your heart of love in us – Your loving heart would be our heart! Make our heart the duplication of Your heart, Lord! Thank You we are the church of God in God the Father and in the Lord Jesus Christ!
