A Digital Newsletter from Living Stream Ministry
If you see that we have been rooted in Christ as the rich soil, you will be comforted and encouraged. Do not be troubled by your weaknesses. Consider the rich soil in which you are rooted.
In this soil do you not have the fullness, the circumcision, the burial, the raising up, the giving of life, the wiping out of the ordinances, and the stripping off of the powers of darkness? Forget your situation, your condition, your failures, and your weaknesses and simply take time to enjoy the Lord. Take time to absorb Him, to assimilate the rich elements from Him as the soil. If you take time to absorb the Lord, you will be able to testify that in Christ you have no lack.
Every morning we need to take an adequate amount of time to absorb the Lord. Although even ten minutes is good, it is best to spend thirty minutes to enjoy Him at the start of each new day. If you spend thirty minutes to absorb the Lord and to enjoy Him in the morning, you will not be bothered by negative things during the day…Let us turn from our thought, emotion, and intention and open ourselves to the Lord, exercising our spirit to say, “O Lord Jesus, I love You, I worship You, and I adore You. Lord, I give myself to You. I give You my heart and everything concerning this day.” As you contact the Lord in this way, do not be hurried. Take time, the more the better. As you spend time contacting the Lord, spontaneously, you will absorb into you the riches of the soil. (Life-study of Colossians, pp. 459-460)
We must realize that whenever we come to the meetings, whenever we come to worship the Lord, we should not come with our hands empty. We must come with our hands full of the produce of Christ.
We have to labor on Christ day by day so that we produce Him in mass production. We need more than just a little of Christ to satisfy our own needs. We must produce enough of Him so that there will be a surplus remaining for others, for the poor and for the needy: “You must open your hand to your brother, to the poor one with you and to the needy one with you in your land” (Deut.15:11). There must also be a surplus to meet the needs of the priests and the Levites: “This shall be the priests’ rightful due from the people, from those who offer a sacrifice, whether an ox or a sheep: They shall give the priest the shoulder…You shall give him the firstfruits of your grain, of your new wine, and of your fresh oil, and the first shearing of your sheep” (18:3-4). And above all, the best of the surplus must be reserved for the Lord…When they harvested the field, they were to reserve the firstfruits for the Lord. When the cattle were brought forth, the firstborn were for the Lord. We must labor diligently, not only to bring forth enough to satisfy our own needs but also to acquire a surplus to meet the needs of others, with the best reserved for the Lord. Then we will be acceptable to the Lord, and He will be pleased with us.
This is the life in the good land. It is a life in which we are continually laboring on Christ, in which we are producing Him in a mass way. We are reaping so much of Christ that we are fully satisfied, and beyond that we have a surplus to share with others and to worship God. To worship God with Christ does not mean to worship Him individually but to worship Him collectively with all the children of God by enjoying Christ with one another and with God (CWWL, 1961-1962, vol. 4, “The All-inclusive Christ,” pp. 344-345)
A schedule of the upcoming conferences and trainings is provided on lsm.org.