CHAPTER TWELVE:
THE WORD IS TO SUPPLY,
AND THE ADMINISTRATION IS TO BUILD
WEEK 9 – WEDNESDAY
Bible Reading: 1 Cor. 10:17; Eph. 2:22; 4:11-12;
Read and pray: "To the church of God which is at Corinth, to those who have been sanctified in Christ Jesus, saints by calling, with all who in every place call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, their Lord and ours: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ." (1 Cor. 1:2-3)
The blessing of God is in the Body, in His dwelling place. This is the age of grace. God grants grace to all believers, including Catholics. He makes His sun rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the just and the unjust (Matt. 5:45); this is grace. However, we cannot say that believers in Catholicism can fulfill the desire and need of God's heart in this age.
In the same principle, we may save many and perfect them to be spiritual, yet this cannot satisfy the desire of God's heart. What He desires is to obtain a built-up Body in this present age. This is what He is working to accomplish.
If God's chosen ones are not yet built up, they must be someday. There are no scattered believers in the new heaven and new earth. Rather, they are all built together as a city, whose foundations and walls are precious stones, and whose gates are pearls. We should not wait for the future to be built up.
Perhaps we do not know how to be built up, but God wants His believers to be. He clearly tells us that after being saved, we must be built up. We are the house being built by God (Eph. 2:22; 1 Pet. 2:5). God gives different gifts for the building up of the Body (Eph. 4:11-12). If we sincerely desire the gifts, we should desire the gift of building up the church.
God desires a dwelling place, a Body, yet He has faced many difficulties over the past two thousand years. It is not hard to lead people to salvation or to help them become spiritual. But it is truly difficult to build up a group of people as one spiritual Body, a corporate dwelling. That is why there has not been much building up throughout the history of the church.
Brother T. Austin-Sparks once asked me what my sense was concerning the Lord’s second coming. I replied that inwardly I felt the Lord's return was not yet near. According to Revelation 14:15, the harvest of the earth must ripen before being reaped. The ripe harvest and its imminent reaping refer to the Lord gathering His mature believers at His coming.
But God's people—His crop—are not ripe. There are only tender shoots. The Lord of the harvest cannot return when there is nothing yet to reap. This matter involves the rapture of the believers and the maturity of life. If the church pursues building earnestly, the believers will mature more quickly, and the Lord of the harvest may return to reap. Anyone who grows rice knows that if the crop is ripe, everyone wants to harvest it as soon as possible. But if the fields are still green, there is no way to reap.
Two thousand years ago, the Lord said, “Behold, I come quickly” (Rev. 22:7, 12). He wants to return, but the harvest of the earth is not ripe. How could He return before it matures? Revelation 14:15 is not based on a timetable—it depends on life. The faster our life matures, the sooner He will come. If we need more time to mature in life, He will come later.
From the perspective of life maturity, the church is full of green and even desolate fields. Since there is no building up, those who have been enlightened will weep over the desolation, for they cannot rejoice. What makes us even sadder is the church’s condition regarding building. We weep day after day for this reason, because no one speaks about building up the church, and there is little building among us.
Of course, we should pay attention to the spread of the work, but we must pay even more attention to the building. Otherwise, the Lord will have no way, and our work will have no way. If we have no way, the saints will also have none.
The time has come when we urgently need building. As we participate in the Lord's work, in everything we do—whether in church administration, in the ministry of the word, or in visiting the saints—we must hold firmly to the principle that our work must result in the building up of believers. We must be able to build them up one by one as parts of the Body of Christ, a corporate vessel of God on the earth.
God wants a corporate vessel, not individual ones. If our desire is merely to perfect people for their individual spirituality, there is not much left to learn. But if we desire to participate in the work of building up, there are many lessons to learn, and we must be corrected in many areas. Church administration must be corrected, the ministry of the word must be corrected, and the way we visit others in their needs must also be corrected. We need to learn diligently. There is little of the building element in our church administration and ministry of the word.
From now on, the administration in all the churches must focus on people, not on administrative matters. We must focus on all the believers, not just on specific individuals, so that they may become a corporate vessel. We are being built up in coordination with others, and learning to administer and help others. We will learn to supply what some lack, and reduce the excess in others — or to add to those with little usefulness and help those who are already useful to grow even more in their service.
We will also learn to help others function in a coordinated way, so that there are no individualistic spiritual members exercising their function in the Body. Instead, all believers should be joined as one to function in coordination with one another. By doing this, we will prepare an excellent way for the Lord’s return.
Enjoy more: Hymn 378
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