God’s intention is to gain man for His purpose so that He may work Himself into man and be lived out and expressed through man in a corporate way for His glory.
We can see God’s intention from the beginning of the Bible (when God put man in front of Himself as life, the tree of life) to the end of the Bible (where we see God fully mingled with man and man fully joined to God to express God and represent Him).
When we read the story of Abraham in Gen. 12-15 we need to realize that the same principle applies. God promised Abraham a seed and in His time He would have brought forth the seed by first working Himself into Abraham to bring the seed forth. However, Abraham couldn’t wait on God’s timing and he had a son with Hagar, his maidservant.
After the birth of Ishmael God didn’t appear to Abraham for 13 years – no God’s appearing and no God’s speaking for a long time. Whenever we join ourselves to the law and do things for God in the effort of our flesh, Ishmael is produced and God cannot appear to us or speak to us anymore.
In Christianity today many “Hagars” are employed by the good-willed and well-meaning believers to do things for God, and many “Ishmaels” are produced – which are not received by God but are rather rejected by Him.
Many Christians use worldly means to preach the gospel, such as “a Christian play”, “Christian rock music”, “Christian hip-hop”, praise and worship bands, loud music to attract people, etc. They may get some people to listen and some even to “accept the Lord”, but what is really produced there?
God is still waiting for us to come to our end and give Him a way to work Himself into us. He is not quick to work and do things; He wants first to work Himself into us as grace and then there will be an overflow of life, which overflow is the work we do for Him and with Him.
God simply wants to have open human vessels who receive His dispensing of grace, a people who allow Him to work Himself into all the parts of their being until He becomes their life, life-supply, and daily living.
God Doesn’t Need the Effort of our Flesh to Accomplish His Purpose
Gal. 4:30-31 But what does the Scripture say? “Cast out the maidservant and her son, for the son of the maidservant shall by no means inherit with the son of the free woman.” So then, brothers, we are not children of the maidservant but of the free woman.
The covenant of the law made with the people of Israel on the mount Sinai came many years after the covenant of the promise was made with Abraham in Gen. 15:7-21. However, in our daily living as Christians many times – too many times! – we live and do things in our flesh according to our good intentions to please God and do things for Him.
We have our own “Hagars”, the efforts of our flesh – even our spiritual flesh! – that we use to do things for God. When we preach the gospel, we may speak the right words – but do we do it as an overflow of the life of God from within, or do we do it because “we need to save sinners for God”? The proper fruit-bearing and gospel preaching, according to the New Testament, is by the overflow of the inner life.
We need to let God work Christ into us, through us, and out of us so that the gospel may be our way of living, spontaneously flowing out of us. God doesn’t need our fleshly effort to accomplish His purpose. God doesn’t need our natural ability to achieve His goal.
The efforts of our flesh to please God and do things for Him according to the law produce Ishmael, something that is rejected by God (see Gal. 4:30). When we seek to be justified by the law by keeping the law and striving to fulfill God’s word in our natural man, we are separated from Christ and have fallen from grace (Gal. 5:4).
God doesn’t need our strong natural life with its abilities – He needs us as redeemed vessels to be open to receive His continual flow of grace. We have received Christ by faith; now we need to live by faith by continually receiving the flow of grace.
Stop and Let God Work Himself into You Today!
All of the revival preachers stir up people, telling them to live for Christ and to work for Him. But in our ministry we are saying that you have to stop living a Christian life by yourselves and doing a Christian work with worldly means. Do not be bothered at our saying this, for regardless how much we tell people to stop, hardly anyone will stop….Although it is easy to be called by God, it is most difficult to stop your natural zeal. If the Lord would come in to stop you, you might say, “No, Lord. Look at today’s situation. Hardly anyone works for You in what I am burdened to do. I’m nearly the only one. How could I stop my work for You?” But blessed is the one who will stop, for when you stop, God comes in. The end of humanity is the beginning of divinity. When our human life ends, the divine life begins. (Life-study of Genesis, p. 624)
It is not about merely knowing that “we need to stop and live Christ”; we need to open to the Lord in prayer and cooperate with Him little by little and day by day by allowing Him to work Himself into us.
In Abraham’s case God waited until he was 99 years old, until it was humanly impossible for him and Sarah to have a seed, and then He came in. If we don’t stop, God will wait.
However, we cannot “stop ourselves”; we are on the “go-go-go” all the time, and the flesh is very active – whether we like it or not. We need to see that the produce of the effort of the flesh is something rejected by God, no matter how “good” it may seem outwardly (see Gen. 17:18-19; 21:10-12a; Gal. 4:30).
Also, when we work for God and do things for Him in our fleshly efforts, we frustrate God’s appearing and break our fellowship with God (as it happened in Abraham’s case).
How much we need God to shine on us and impress us with the fact that GOD INTENDS TO WORK HIMSELF INTO MAN TO FULFILL HIS PURPOSE THROUGH MAN!!! When we see God’s intention, we will stop and open to Him. We will tell Him,
Lord, I want to live in this way today. Work Yourself into me. I come to You under Your precious blood to simply be an open vessel. Lord, I give You today: work Yourself into me all day long. I want to stop anything else and do NOTHING apart from Your dispensing and Your working within me!
The time will come when this will become the reality in our daily living. Today we are learning to live in this way, opening to the Lord constantly in short and fresh prayers to Him, coming to Him as we are based on His judicial redemption and dealing with anything that His light exposes in us.
We are meant to live in God’s economy as open vessels receiving His dispensing of grace and allowing God to work Himself into us (Eph. 3:16-19) for the fulfillment of His purpose. On His side He is faithful to put us in certain circumstances and take us through particular experiences that will facilitate this central work of God.
God worked on Abraham to thoroughly gain him as an open vessel and He made us sons of Abraham and sons of God repeating these experiences today. May the Lord have mercy on us and show us what the flesh is, what are the efforts of our flesh, and what is the result of our fleshly efforts; then, we will agree with God and reject these efforts.
We will then accept God’s answer to the problem of all the well-meaning believers who do their best by their natural life to carry out God’s purpose – the cross (spiritual circumcision). [which is the topic for the next blog post]
Lord Jesus, we come to You under the covering of Your precious blood; work Yourself into us all day long. We simply want to be open vessels to Your dispensing of grace. Expose our flesh and our fleshly efforts to work for You and do things for You. Gain us as those on earth that You can work with, those who know what God’s intention is. We want to learn to allow You to work Yourself into us in all the situations and places and things we go through and are in. We treasure Your appearing and Your presence.
References and Hymns on this Topic
- Inspiration: the Word of God, my Christian experience, bro. Ron Kangas’ sharing in the message for this week, and portions from, Life-study of Genesis (msg. 46), as quoted in, the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, Crystallization-Study of Genesis (2), week 6 / msg 6, The Allegory of Two Women.
- Hymns on this topic:
# Oh, what a joy! Oh, what a rest! / Christ now is being formed in me. / His very nature and life divine / In my whole being inwrought shall be. / All that I am came to an end, / And all of Christ is all to me. (Hymns #499 by Witness Lee)
# Not by wrestling, but by clinging / Shall we be most blest; / Wrestling only brings us sorrow; / Clinging brings us rest. / When we stay our feeble efforts, / And from struggling cease, / Unconditional surrender / Brings us God’s own peace. (Hymns #451)
# Lord, I treasure the sweet flow of life, / And my soul-life at last I lay down; / O Lord, deepen the pure flow of life; / At Your coming may life be my crown. / In the fresh, tender grass Jesus makes me lie down; / He leads me by waters of rest; / No more struggle and strain; all self-effort is vain; / In the flow I am perfectly blessed. (Hymns #1191)
# Now I know myself in part, / And confess my helplessness; / All my temperament is odd, / All my life corrupted is. / Subtle self I cannot trust, / Nor to fleshly strength can cling; / All my trust and all my hope / Is in Jesus Christ my King. (Hymns #412 by Watchman Nee)
About aGodMan
