Meeting God’s Need and Present Needs in the Lord’s Recovery

October 2021 International Training for Elders and Responsible Ones

Faith Operating through Love

Circumcision is simply an outward ordinance having no power of life. Hence, it avails nothing. It has no force or practical power. Faith receives the Spirit of life (3:2), which is full of power. It operates through love to fulfill not only the law, but also God’s purpose, that is, to complete the sonship of God for His corporate expression.

Love is related to our appreciation of Christ. Without such an appreciation, faith cannot operate. When we have the hearing of faith, this hearing awakens our loving appreciation, and this appreciation causes faith to operate. Faith operates because it participates in the riches of the life-giving Spirit. The more we have the hearing of faith, the more appreciation and love we have. The more love we have for the Lord, the more faith operates. The more faith operates, the more it brings us into the riches, the profit, of the all-inclusive Spirit. (Life-study of Galatians, msg. 25, p. 225)

---

The Love of God Poured Out in Our Hearts

This is not merely a matter of feeling. On the contrary, something substantial, something essential, has been poured out in our hearts. This means that, as believers, deep in our hearts we have something of the divine essence, and this is God as love. In other words, God as love is the divine essence that has been poured out in our hearts…[Therefore,] the heart of every Christian is a heart of love. I can testify that from the time of my regeneration my heart has been very different from what it was before regeneration. Because we have been regenerated, we have the loving essence within us, even if we are temporarily angry about something. This loving essence is God Himself as love. The Father’s nature, His essence, has been poured out in our hearts, and now we have this essence within us. (CWWL, 1983, vol. 2, “The Divine Dispensing of the Divine Trinity,” ch. 43, p. 512)