“Our living as God’s eternal church literature produced by the church in Toledo”
Excerpt:
Power from a divine commitment between God and man
There is a fundamental thing in the Christian life called consecration. Whether a believer is powerful or not depends on his consecration towards the Lord. The more he consecrates himself to the Lord, the more power he has. If he consecrates a little, God can only have a little power on this person. Then the world and sin have a lot of power on him. Many people have been Christians for many years, but they have never known what consecration is. Another fundamental thing is commitment. Today, none of the riches we have are ours. The Lord uses people in each generation who are committed and consecrated to Him to continue the precious truth. Through these people, the truth can be continued, and their experiences in life can be passed on.
The Bible is difficult because it is truth on the one hand, and on the other hand it is reality. For people who translate the Bible, it is a headache to decide where in the Bible it should be translated as reality and where it should be translated as truth. Because in Greek, truth is reality and reality is truth. If you don’t have the experience, you will not know how to translate. In fact, truth has to be reality, and reality has to be truth. There is no need to struggle because only the real things are true. Brothers and sisters before us throughout the generations have had this subjective experience of living in the reality. In this reality, they were able to trust, commit and consecrate themselves to the Lord. Likewise, today, when we live in the reality, we are living in the truth; when we have the truth, we are able to live in the reality.
Truth in the subjective knowing brings about consecration. A person without this truth is not able to consecrate. A person who does not know God cannot be committed. Our difficulty in the church today is that we lack people who are committed. We do not lack people who appreciate the truth or who come to be entertained and leave afterwards. God has no power on these people and they cannot become God’s power either. God can only be objective to these people. He cannot be subjective to them.
From the human perspective, we may think a certain brother seems very promising. Yet strangely, God does not have much work on this brother, nor does the brother have much portion in God’s work. It is not because he is not qualified or that he is not educated, nor is it because he does not love God. It has nothing to do with these. The principle of God’s work in each generation is to produce a group of people who are sent out and burdened. What kind of people can be burdened by God? What kind of people can be sent out by God? People who are in the substance of a divine truth. This substance is a divine commitment, and in this commitment, the truth is realized in that person. Even a basic thing in Christian life, such as salvation, is a truth, and it is also a reality. For us, salvation must be a subjective experience that happens in the substance of a divine commitment. It is a matter of divine sending-out.
When we say “The Holy Spirit comes upon you,” we are talking about this commitment. Do you know how marvelous it is for the Holy Spirit to come upon you? Why does the Holy Spirit come upon me but not you, or come upon you but not me? Because of this commitment. The Holy Spirit coming upon man is a very strong commitment and recognition between God and man. It is like a marriage. It is impossible for you to marry a person casually or indecisively. A marriage cannot happen in this way. For a marriage to happen there has to be a very strong commitment and recognition, just like the recognition of a head finding its own body. The nature of God’s truth is ingrained in us in this way. God must recognize the commitment to the truth in each generation.
This group of people is consecrated, is committed. The receiving of this commitment is absolutely according to revelation; otherwise, God is only a mystery to them, and the mystery has no power on man unless the mystery becomes a reality.
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