The Lord needs to have a drastic recovery of the all-inclusive Christ as everything to us so that we may enjoy Christ, grow in life, and become living and functioning members of His Body to express Him on the earth. The Christ revealed in both the New and the Old Testament is rich, all-inclusive, and all-extensive, and He is everything to both God and man, fulfilling God’s plan, being God’s Beloved, and being everything that man needs.
But because the truths concerning the all-inclusive Christ have been lost, misunderstood, wrongly taught, and even subtly twisted by the wrong people throughout the church history, today Christ is not so real or precious to many of His believers. Therefore, we need to have a change in our system of values and realize that, as believers in Christ, we now should treasure Christ above all things, persons, and matters, and we should pay the price to spend time with the Lord and enjoy Him in our spirit so that He may become the most precious One to us.
We need to redeem the time to enjoy the all-inclusive Christ as the supreme preciousness of God so that we can be constituted with Him. When we enjoy Christ as the most precious One, we can be constituted with Him to be men of preciousness, even preciousness itself, as God’s personal treasure (1 Pet. 2:7; 3:4; Dan. 9:23; 10:11, 19).
The more we spend time with the Lord and live in His precious presence, enjoying Him as our portion – even as He enjoys us as His treasure – He builds Himself into us to make us His spiritual house and His holy and royal priesthood for the accomplishment of His heart’s desire (see 2 Cor. 2:10; Psa. 16:5; Exo. 10:4-6; 1 Pet. 2:1-9; 2 Pet. 3:8, 11-12).
If we value our Christ as the supremely precious One, we will redeem the time so that we would spend more time with Him to enjoy Him; the result will be that we become the same as He is – we will be precious like Him, and we will be called men of preciousness. Then, at His coming, surely the Lord will take us with Him to the Father’s house and we will live one with Him for eternity as the precious New Jerusalem, God in man and man in God for eternity!
We have been Allotted Equally Precious Faith in which we need to Grow!
All the believers have been allotted by God equally precious faith in the righteousness of our God and Savior, Jesus Christ (see 2 Pet. 1:1). Just as the children of Israel were allotted a piece of the good land (Josh. 14:1-5), sow e have been allotted equally precious faith.
This means that all the things which relate to life and godliness (2 Pet. 1:3) – including the divine nature of which we partake through the equally precious faith according to the precious and exceedingly great promises – all these are the real inheritance given by God to His believers in the New Testament.
When we received the Lord Jesus as our Lord and Savior, we received an allotted portion of faith, the same in quality as of the Apostles and as of everyone else who believed into the Lord. This faith is the “linking faith”, the faith which links us to the Triune God; this faith is actually God Himself as our faith. We have the same quality of faith, but we may not have the same quantity.
For example, there’s the same electricity in quality flowing in the electrical installation, but not the same quantity of electricity is distributed to each and every light bulb or electrical appliance. In order for our faith to increase, we need to contact the Triune God. The Apostle Paul and other great men used by God in the past had a great measure of faith because they contacted the Lord and were filled with faith.
We need to contact God day by day so that faith may grow in us. When we contact God, God increases in us, and faith grows in us. When God increases in us, the linking faith grows in us and we have a greater quantity of faith. We all have the same faith in quality, but the quantity of faith depends upon how much each and every one of us contacts the living God so that we may have Him increased in us (see Rom. 12:3; Heb. 11:1, 5-6, 27; Col. 2:19).
How much do we contact the living God day by day? Do we have set times for being in God’s presence? We need to disconnect to anything else and connect to the Triune God at least a few times during the day so that our faith would increase and God would grow in us. This faith, this measure of Christ in us, is precious to God and precious to others.
When we are filled with God as our linking faith, we become men of preciousness, men who are precious in God’s sight and who are precious to others also. The more we contact the Triune God, the more faith increases in us; faith growing in us equals Christ increasing in us, and the more faith grows in us, the more we are filled with the precious Christ as faith.
Thank You Father for allotted us all with equally precious faith, making our regenerated spirit a spirit of faith! Lord, we want to exercise our spirit to contact God again and again so that our faith would increase and thus the measure of God in us would grow! Lord, remind us and draw us to spend more time with You so that our linking faith would increase, thus having more of God in our being! Praise You Lord for the equally precious faith allotted to us! May this faith increase in us through our contact with the living Triune God!
The Precious Proving of our Faith by Various Trials until we Receive the Salvation of our Soul
Not only our faith is precious to God but also the proving of our faith is precious to Him; the proving of our faith is more precious than of gold which perishes though it is proved by fire, but our faith is to be found unto praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ (1 Pet. 1:7). Gold is proved by fire, and our faith is proved by trials.
We may say that we have faith, but when the trials come, they are used by God to test and prove our faith. In school you may think you know the lessons the teachers give you, but it is the test that proves to everyone that you both know and have studied. The proving of our faith through trials will show everyone that we have the precious faith in an increased measure, so that when the Lord comes, this proving will result in praise, glory, and honor (see Rev. 3:18).
Today we need to pay the price to gain more of Christ as the “golden faith” through the fiery trials so that the proving of our faith, much more precious than of gold, would result in praise by the Lord, glory with Him, and honor before Him and others at the revelation of the Lord.
In Rev. 3:18 the Lord counsels us to buy from Him gold refined by fire; this gold refers to our operating, working faith (Gal. 5:6) and the divine nature of God (the divinity of Christ). By faith we partake of the divine nature of God, and we need to pay the price to gain the “golden faith” that through the fiery trials we may participate in the real gold, which is Christ Himself as the life element to His Body; the result is that we are built up as a pure golden lampstand (Rev. 1:20) for the building of the golden New Jerusalem (Rev. 21:18).
When the Lord comes back, He expects to find a precious proven faith on earth, the linking faith; we need to be His hidden overcomers who live an overcoming and exulting life by the linking faith so that we may be His treasures ready to receive the salvation of our soul as the end result of our faith (see 1 Pet. 1:8-9).
May we not remain infants in faith but cooperate with the Lord to have an increased measure of faith and have the precious proving of our faith through the God-ordained trials so that we may be transformed and eventually glorified, entering into the final stage of our salvation, ruling and reigning with Christ in the millennial kingdom.
May the Lord grant us that we would live according to the precious faith today so that we would eventually receive the salvation of our souls as the result of our faith.
Lord Jesus, may we see that the precious proving of our faith is by various trials that come through sufferings, and may we pay the price to gain more Christ as the precious faith today. Oh Lord, may the “liquid golden faith” be increased in us as we go through times of precious proving of our faith so that this proving would result in praise, glory, and honor at the revelation of the Lord! Lord, we want to live an overcoming life by faith today so that we may be found by You at Your return as the treasures ready to receive the salvation of our souls as the end result of our faith!
References and Hymns on this Topic
- Inspiration: the Word of God, my Christian experience, brother Albert Lim’s sharing in the message for this week, and Crystallization-study of the Epistle to the Romans, msgs. 10-11 (by Witness Lee), as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, The Crucial Points of the Major Items of the Lord’s Recovery Today (ITERO 2015 fall), week 3 / msg 3, The Supreme Preciousness of the All-inclusive Christ.
- All Bible verses are taken from, Holy Bible Recovery Version.
- Hymns on this topic to strengthen this burden:
# Precious faith in each saint, precious equally, / Precious faith holding us, holding ceaselessly. / Disagree or agree, still it holds us fast, / Day by day, eternally this faith shall last. (Hymns #1211)
# Lord, I’ve seen Thy preciousness, / Thy worth, Thy reality. / Now, my Lord, I must confess / My heart is only for Thee. (Song on Christ’s Preciousness)
# “When through fiery trials thy pathway shall lie, / My grace, all-sufficient, shall be thy supply; / The flame shall not hurt thee; I only design / Thy dross to consume, and thy gold to refine.” (Hymns #339)
The believers who live an overcoming and exulting life by the linking faith will be found by Christ at His return as the treasures ready to receive the salvation of their souls as the end (result) of their faith (1 Pet. 1:8-9). In a sense, we do not know anything or do anything. We only know how to overcome and how to exult by the linking faith. Those who live by faith today will eventually receive the end of their faith, that is, the salvation of their souls. We have received a salvation, but this is just the initial salvation. The progressing stage of salvation is the stage of transformation. The completing stage of salvation is the stage of glorification. If we live by the linking faith in the progressing stage to be transformed, we will be kings with Christ in the millennial kingdom. (Witness Lee, Crystallization-study of the Epistle to the Romans, p. 122)