The recent camping experience and fellowship resonated with some of my recent reading from Experience of Life. I see how the Lord’s words always align in a timely way. During the camping trip, I was reading about how Abraham’s life with the tent and the altar served as an anti-testimony to the living in the city, which is the system of the world developed by Satan out of Cain’s line to ensnare, usurp, and possess God’s people from fulfilling the purpose of our existence.
Abraham’s life was a sojourning life—a nomadic life—and yet it was an overcoming life. The Lord called him out of the city of Ur to live a different life; wherever he put his foot the Lord had given the land to him, promising his seed would be as numerous as the sand and the stars. In this tent-living, he had the altar. Abraham was able to serve God.
The Israelites, however, ended up in Egypt—enslaved by the world. The Lord called them out to worship and serve Him—to be an opposing testimony to the surrounding nations. He was with them as a pillar of cloud and a pillar of fire, and was the water and bread to them. These things were all given to Israel only after their departure from Egypt and when they were living a testimony for God, in opposition to the world. Just as the book of Deuteronomy records, the Lord wanted them to “live and multiply, and enter and possess the land that was sworn” to their fathers. But the world was also still in them; their time in the wilderness also tested and exposed what was in their hearts.
Our recent camping is both of these pictures; there was very rich speaking among us that came from leaving behind our modern mindset to come back to the essential core of our purpose. The first Lord’s day of our camping, we talked about how our enjoyment has an expression—an overflow; that expression is the result of something already enjoyed, not the other way around. Singing, reading, praying, physical camping—these are all out of an overflow, not the source or method to enjoy or to come to enjoyment. I think this echoes the sharing about how we call on the Lord. The calling is not a method, but from a turning within; the cry begins within, not without. Heaven is in us, not just physically existing above us.
The other perspective of camping is just like the wilderness in Numbers and Deuteronomy. We are tested and exposed concerning the things in our heart. The Lord allows us to be in hunger; hunger is a sense of life—a warning sign that we are short of supply. Yet the Lord provides us manna, serving as our encountering of His sovereignty—as an irrefutable proof of His provision that man does not live by bread alone but by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of Jehovah.
The Lord wants us to remember. In the book of Numbers, He spoke regarding His own oath to the Israelites’ forefathers, and also reminds them—and us—to remember the experiences in the wilderness, “lest we forget.” The Lord wants us to know who we are and humbles us to see what is really in us; He wants us to remember, to have those experiences in us so that we can truly go in and possess the land. That’s our church life: we have the Lord’s speaking to us and we have each other to make these experiences become fruitful—to become part of our constitution.
What the camping and the recent speaking also urges is for us to pursue our substance with reality. Failures happen, but we have to truly gain a deposit from them. During the camping, there was a lot of exposure about how we parent, how we react to things, what we have or don’t have as fallen human beings; we can’t remain shallow. Our vessels have to be deepened for His need. What are our experiences for? Those experiences and history are for this specific line today—we need to know our spirit, to have the word of the Lord, and to have the ministry. We need to be equipped to understand the signs of the times and our own genealogy; these are interwoven for accomplishing His desire today.
– TW