We Reject any Oldness and Staleness and Keep ourselves Open and Fresh with the Lord

As believers in Christ, we need to reject anything of oldness and keep ourselves empty, open, and new and living with the Lord; we need to be intimate with God, have His present speaking, and treasure and have a high regard for what God speaks to us and is giving to us.

This week we come to the last week in our holy word for morning revival on the crystallization study of 1 and 2 Samuel.

The title for this week is, Spiritual Principles, Life Lessons, and Holy Warnings concerning the Enjoyment of the Good Land Seen with Five Major Figures in 1 and 2 Samuel.

The books of 1 and 2 Samuel can be considered books of history, and they present Christ as our enjoyment so that God may carry out His economy.

In particular, these two books present the right way and even the full way for us to enjoy Christ so that we can be part of God’s economy.

In story after story and example after example, we see how some people joined themselves to God for His economy, while others did not but rather, even rejected God. God desires to gain us, His people, to be according to Him, even to be His duplication.

He wants to have a people that are just like Him, and for this, He’s working Himself into the very constitution of our being to make Himself us and make us Him.

From 1 Sam. 1 to 2 Sam. 1 we see five major figures: Eli, Samuel, Jonathan, Saul, and David; each one of these with its story is meaningful and presents to us certain life lessons and spiritual principles and holy warnings.

On one hand, we need to see and learn the life lessons as seen in these five main characters, and we need to see the spiritual principles.

On the other hand, we need the Lord to shine on us so that we may heed the holy warnings, for with each one of these characters had at least one failure, which can be a warning to us.

Today we want to see the life of Eli and what life lesson should we learn from the divine record of his life; also, we want to see the spiritual principles and heed the holy warnings as seen in the life of Eli recorded in 1 Samuel.

We are looking at Eli’s life through the glasses of God’s eternal economy; we don’t want to merely focus on outward acts or things but on what God is doing in His economy and how can we join ourselves to Him in this.

We Reject anything of Oldness and Staleness and keep ourselves Open, Empty, Fresh, and Young with the Lord

Under Eli, the high priest in the time of Samuel, the old Aaronic priesthood had become stale and waning (1 Sam. 2:12-30), and God desired to have a new beginning for the accomplishing of His economy.

We shouldn’t say that this is what happened in his time and has nothing to do with us.

Sometimes in our meetings or in our church life we may follow a form, a routine, and we may do the right thing, but in a stale and old way.

If we don’t exercise our spirit, everything is stale and old; if we exercise our spirit, we will be full of divine and mystical vigour.

What the Lord wants is Christ as the new wine (Matt. 9:17) to fill us, the new wineskins, so that He may have a proper expression in and through us in the church life.

Praise the Lord, He has given us a new heart and a new spirit (Ezek. 36:26) so that we may contact Him and love Him, and He charges us to walk in newness of life (Rom. 6:4; 7:6).

As believers in Christ, we should live, move, and have our being in newness of life and not in oldness or staleness.

If we see that we are stale and old, we need to repent and turn to God so that our sins may be wiped away and we may receive seasons of refreshing from the presence of the Lord (Acts 3:19-20).

We need to have a new beginning with the Lord every morning; early in the morning, we need to contact the Lord and enjoy Him, for He is our new beginning.

May we reject anything of staleness and oldness, anything of lukewarmness and pride, and may we keep ourselves open, empty, fresh, new, living, and young with the Lord (Rev. 3:15-22; Luke 18:17; Phil. 3:7-14; Gal. 1:15-16; 2:20; 4:19; Eph. 4:16).

May we be one with His desire for us to be one with Christ, filled with Christ, and occupied with Christ to live Christ for the building up of the organic Body of Christ.

To the church in Laodicea the Lord said that, if she doesn’t repent and return and do the first works, He will spew her out of His mouth, for they have become lukewarm.

We may love the Lord a little, go to the meetings as a habit, and read the Bible according to a schedule, but are we hot, boiling, for the Lord? Or are we simply thinking we’re rich and have need of nothing, for we have the Bible and the ministry, so we have everything? Oh, Lord.

May we come to the Lord and pay the price to buy more of the Triune God from Him.

We need to gain more of the Father in His divine nature, more of the Son as our subjective, lived-out righteousness, and more of the anointing Spirit to anoint the eyes of our heart to see something new of Christ as the centrality and universality of God’s economy day by day.

The temperature of our Christian life should be boiling – not cold toward the Lord nor even lukewarm to Him, but boiling hot.

May we be boiling and repent, returning to Him again and again, and doing the first works which issue out of our first love.

This requires that we are simple toward Him, receiving the kingdom of God like a little child (Luke 18:17).

We need to have the same attitude as Paul did in Phil. 3 where, though he was well advanced in his experience of Christ, he still forgot the things behind and stretched forward to the Christ he had before to enjoy Him, gain Him, and experience Him to obtain the prize of his calling.

May we not be contented Christians, those who think they know everything and have everything; may we be those who enjoy Christ, pursue Christ, and seek to gain Christ.

Day by day we need to have a new vista of who Christ is in His full ministry.

Day by day we need to have a new revelation of Christ in us (Gal. 1:15-16) so that Christ may live in us (2:20) and be formed in us (4:19).

This is all for the building up of the Body, for when we reject anything of oldness and keep ourselves open and fresh with the Lord, we become living and functioning members of the Body of Christ.

When we reject anything of staleness and lukewarmness and keep ourselves young and living with the Lord, we seek to be filled with Christ and live Christ for the organic building up of the church as the Body of Christ.

May we bring all these matters to the Lord in prayer and be honest with Him concerning our Christian life,

Lord Jesus, we don’t want to be set, settled, or occupied in our Christian life. We reject anything of oldness, staleness, lukewarmness and pride, and we choose to keep ourselves open and empty toward You. Amen, Lord, we want to be fresh, living, and young with the Lord. Our desire is to be filled with Christ, one with Christ, and occupied by Christ so that we may live Christ for the organic Body of Christ. We fully open to You, dear Lord, for Your move on the earth. We give ourselves to You. Come in and occupy us; take, possess, and fill us for Your up-to-date move on this earth. Shine on us, Lord, and expose anything of oldness, staleness, pride, and lukewarmness. Keep us open to You; keep us fresh, new, living, and young with You in our Christian life and church life!

Being Intimate with God and One with God to have His Fresh Speaking and Highly Regarding what He gives us

In the days of Eli the word of God was rare; 1 Sam. 3:1 says that God’s speaking was almost lost. The first thing a priest should do is to speak for God (Exo. 28:30), but Eli lost his priestly function.

A priest must be a person who is intimate with God, who is one with God, who knows the heart of God, and who speaks forth the unique and healthy teaching of God’s eternal economy (1 Tim. 1:3-4; 6:3).

It is the Lord’s mercy that we are here today in the church life in the Lord’s recovery; it is His mercy that we stand on the genuine ground of the church and are under His speaking.

It is here, on the ground of the church, that we are in the right position to have His speaking and enter into the reality of the oneness of the Body of Christ.

In the Old Testament, the priests were those who had God’s speaking; when there was a problem among the children of Israel, they would enquire of God, and He would speak by means of the Urim and the Thummim.

In the New Testament, the Lord’s speaking is abundant and rich, and if we are intimate with God and one with God, we have His fresh speaking.

This requires that we keep ourselves open to God and be fresh, new, living, and young with Him.

The entire Bible is our testament, our will; we can pray short prayers over the verses in the Bible and take the riches in God’s word as our inheritance.

The way to be intimate with the Lord is to open our being to Him and keep in constant contact with Him, even telling Him that we want to be intimate with Him and know His heart.

Our spirit is the bank account for all the bequests of God’s eternal economy; we enjoy the riches of God and His fresh speaking not merely mentally by reading the Bible but by exercising our spirit to take in the word of God.

The way we appropriate the bequests in the New Testament is by praying them back to the Lord and musing on them with much prayerful consideration.

We can pray-read personally, corporately, and in particular, we can be intimate with God in our one-on-one time with Him to privately have conversations with Him concerning His word.

We need to have many private times with the Lord, praying and reading His word, musing on His word, conversing with Him and with ourselves in His Word, and personalizing His word to enjoy the Lord.

In 2 Cor. 2:10 Paul forgave a person in the person of Christ; he was so one with God, so intimate with God, so young and fresh and new with the Lord, that he was intently looking at the Lord’s eyes and, in oneness with Him, he forgave that brother.

On the positive side, Eli taught Samuel to say, “Speak, O Jehovah, for Your servant is listening”; in order for us to speak for the Lord and be one with Him to carry out His eternal economy, we must first treasure and listen attentively to His speaking so that we may know His desire and preference (1 Sam. 3:9-10, 21; Isa. 50:4-5).

This is what our attitude should be today: speak, dear Lord, for we are listening. As we spend time with the Lord and receive His word, we need to heed His word and say amen to it.

In Eli’s case, however, he disregarded the priesthood in his loose disciplining of his two evil sons, even though God warned him twice about it (1 Sam. 2:28-29).

This caused the tragedy of the ending of his history, the termination of his enjoyment of the good land, and the fading of the priesthood in the divine revelation – in the speaking for God.

May we learn from Eli to have a high regard for what God has given us in His recovery.

When He speaks something that is a warning to us, something concerning our situation and condition, we should not neglect it but rather, fall on our face and repent, turning to Him.

When we do this, when we contact the Lord and heed His speaking, we will be one with Him and we can speak what He speaks to us.

May our morning time with the Lord be so rich and sweet. May we learn to open to Him and allow Him to speak to us.

And may we heed His speaking and highly regard it.

We should never think that the Lord’s speaking is not for us, nor should we ignore His speaking.

May we say Amen to His speaking and reject anything of oldness and staleness, keeping ourselves fresh, new, living, and open to Him.

And when He speaks to us, may we have the same attitude as Mary, May it be done to us according to Your word.

On the negative side, we need to heed the holy warnings in God’s word and in His speaking, and on the positive side, we need to allow the Lord to infuse us with Himself so that we may be one with Him and advance with Him in the enjoyment of Christ as the good land for the building up of the church as the Body of Christ.

Lord Jesus, we want to be persons who are intimate with You and one with You. Make us those who know Your heart and have Your fresh speaking. Draw us every morning, Lord, to spend intimate and private time with You in Your word. Amen, Lord, speak to us, for we are listening. We love Your speaking. We highly regard Your fresh word to us. Thank You for Your instant, present, living speaking to us in Your word and in the meetings of the church. May it be done to us according to Your word. Keep us reading and praying Your word in faith, and keep our being open to You. Amen, Lord, we highly regard Your word and Your speaking!

References and Hymns on this Topic

• Sources of inspiration: the Word of God, my enjoyment in the ministry, a sharing by brother Ed Marks, and portions from, CWWL, 1964, vol. 1, “A Young Man in God’s Plan“, chs. 1, 3, as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, Crystallization Study of 1 and 2 Samuel (2021 winter training), week 12, entitled, Spiritual Principles, Life Lessons, and Holy Warnings concerning the Enjoyment of the Good Land Seen with Five Major Figures in 1 and 2 Samuel.
• Hymns on this topic:
  – The Spirit today is the air that we breathe; / What thing more important than breathing to do? / For breathing each moment, new life we receive, / And God’s living freshness is constant and new. (Hymns #1114)
  – Keep our heart, Lord, in love’s freshness, / And our spirit strengthen more, / That in newness of the spirit / We may touch Thee o’er and o’er. (Hymns #743)
  – Feeding and drinking, Lord Jesus, of Thee, / Feeding by reading, and drinking by prayer; / Reading and praying, I eat and I drink, / Praying and reading-Lord, Thou art my fare. / Here, O my Lord, may I feast upon Thee; / Flood with Thy Spirit and fill by Thy Word; / May, Lord, Thou be such a feast unto me / As man hath never enjoyed nor e’er heard. (Hymns #811)