Every meeting has been recorded since 2008. Every speaking during this time is according to and because of some real events in the church-life. Every speaking arose out of lived events to parallel and draw out the Lord’s speaking to us. Our literature begins in our experiences. It is in these individual and corporate experiences that we find the Lord’s revelation and speaking.
Excerpt from “Continuing Acts”:
“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. 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. The truth from the Bible can be very objective to us, yet through our subjective experiences it becomes alive as our reality. Therefore, 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.
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“Being empowered to be sent out as sons”
… Do you know how complicated we are? We are complicated because we are not living for Jesus. When we live for Jesus, we are released from everything. I recently have a feeling that you young people might not have because you are just starting your great future. Me, I am almost 50 years old. Even if you are 30 years old today, how many thirties do you still have? Even if you can still have two thirty years to live, the last thirty cannot boast that much glory. Man can only live one life, and throughout their whole lives, they are busy striving for this and that. At the end, nothing they gain is eternal.
However, when we were first brought back to the church, we touched something called eternity. From the first day we got saved, we started to obtain something called the hope of eternity. We have never seen it, but strangely, we believe it. We used to live for success, but when we were saved, our eyes turned toward a different direction. We begin to see something beyond ourselves. We become willing to live for Him. This is the beginning of our consecrated living. Since when did we realize that our marriages are for Him, and since when did we consecrate our career to Him? When we start to love the Lord, we fear doing anything that would grieve Him. How strange that smart people like you and me are willing to live such an unreasonable life! I look back on my whole life and I ask, “What have I been doing?” The more suffering I experience, the more joyful I am. What kind of life is this? People must think we are crazy. And we have been crazy for our whole life. What captured us? How many brothers and sisters in history can be crazy for the Lord for their whole life? Without the Spirit coming upon them and empowering them for an absolutely consecrated life, today we will not be here. We would not even have a Bible that we can use, not to mention those experiences passed down to us to help us know the Bible.
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We hope Continuing Acts can shed light on the purpose of God’s will. It is not meant to be read as a technical manual, but it aims to bring the reader to a fuller understanding of the Church, which is experienced, not taught.
In sharing such excerpts out of our daily church living, we pray we may be those the Lord can send out for His purpose.