The Cross—Our Unique Way

Suppose in the afternoon you are made unhappy in some way by your wife or husband. At bedtime you need to apply the cross to your feeling of unhappiness. If you do this, the feeling of unhappiness will disappear. This indicates that our way is the cross…Realizing that we have already died in Christ, we should go to bed at night with a consciousness of the cross. If we practice going to bed through the cross, lying down with the realization that we have died in Christ, the next morning we shall wake up in resurrection as a new person. We not only have Christ, the unique Person who is versus all things; we also have the cross, the unique way, which is versus all other ways.

Driving down the street can be a reminder of the way of the cross. As we drive, we come to many intersections…Every intersection is a cross…Only by passing through many crosses can we get to our destination. Speaking of spiritual experience, we also must pass through many crosses before we can reach the New Jerusalem…We cannot progress spiritually without passing through the cross…Until we come to the New Jerusalem, we need to pass through the cross day by day in our walk with the Lord. (Life-study of Colossians, pp. 214-216)

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The Kind of Teacher We Need

Ezra was this kind of person. He proclaimed a fast, and he fasted; he was simply one with the Lord by contacting the Lord continually. He was not a letter-scribe, but a priestly scribe.

Some people have a certain amount of knowledge, and they like to teach what they know, but they themselves are not that kind of person. The Lord’s recovery today does not need this kind of teacher. We need Ezra, the priestly scribe, the priestly teacher. This is the teacher who contacts God constantly and instantly, who is saturated with God and one with God. Ezra was very much with the Lord. He was in a position to ask the king for an army to protect him while returning to Jerusalem, but [instead] he put his trust in the Lord…We need the life; we need the priesthood to be mingled with the teaching. We need the priestly scribes like Ezra. Mere knowledge does not build; it kills. It is the priestly teacher who builds…Ezras—those who are one with God, saturated with God, filled with God, and skillful in the Word of God…are the right ones to bring in a good number of returned captives and to bring more riches of Christ into the recovery of the Lord. (CWWL, 1969, vol. 2, “The Recovery of God’s House and God’s City,” pp. 374-375)