A Digital Newsletter from Living Stream Ministry
Our burden is to show the brothers and sisters that to touch the tree of life is to touch God and that to touch the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is to touch fire and death. In order to serve God and work for Him, a Christian must learn to stay away from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
For example, a couple may be arguing. Our natural concept is to exhort them to be reconciled with each other, but if we know the principle of the tree of life, we will not exhort them to be patient or humble. If we are clear about the principle of the tree of life, we will lead this couple into life. Only those who touch the tree of life will see their life and work remaining in the New Jerusalem. Those who are sinful will go into the lake of fire. Those who are merely moral will also go into the lake of fire…Within the tree of life there is surely love and humility, but the love and humility that issue from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil end up in the lake of fire. Only the virtues that issue from the tree of life will last in eternity. (CWWL, 1932-1949, vol. 2, pp. 224-225)
If you make Christ the first in everything, you have love. If you have this love, you have life, and you will enjoy the Lord. If you have life, this life becomes light to you. The light of the lampstand, the church, shines forth corporately versus individualistically in the dark night of the church age.
We need to remember these four words that begin with the letter l—love, life, light, and lampstand. These four l words start with love. We must give the Lord Jesus the preeminence in every way and in everything to recover the first love. Then we will enjoy Him as the tree of life, and this life right away becomes the light of life (John 8:12). Then we will be shining in our daily life and corporately as the lampstand. Otherwise, the lampstand will be removed from us individually and from the church corporately.
If today we take Christ as the first in everything, we will have love, we will enjoy Him as life, we will shine forth with Him as light, and we will become the shining lampstand as the testimony of Jesus. (CWWL, 1991-1992, vol. 4, “The Overcomers,” pp. 205-206)
A schedule of the upcoming conferences and trainings is provided on lsm.org.