From where does the church receive power to shine in the dark age? We can say that the world today is suffering more lies, more subtleties, and more evil than in previous ages. What gives God’s people power to shine, what empowers them to rise above the worldly trend unto a minister’s calling?
How can we as modern individuals be awakened in this era? We must admit that the world is attractive and the worldly current increasingly pervasive. Oftentimes the words given to us as literature sitting on the bookshelf have no power to us whatsoever. Today’s age is one of the iPhone, of the cloud, of governmental and political turmoil and control, of slackening human values and self-righteousness, and of a disbelief in truth. The world today is darker, more deceitful, and more trying than before; this is the environment of our everyday life, and high truth with no solid landing ground has no impact.
In the modern age, the most dangerous thing and biggest obstacle preventing the absolute reign of Christ and His church is not outright persecution, but the convenience and comfort that pervades this modern generation, which causes God’s people to become weak, faithless, and comfortable. Man has increasingly built upon his Babylon, strengthening his own fortress and his own kingdom apart from the authority and plan of God. Compared to many brothers and sisters before us, who lived and walked more absolutely than we do today, we are weak; our occupation, our environment, and our life are all excuses to resist the Lord’s calling. We are sophisticated and hypocritical. And yet that doesn’t mean that the Lord hasn’t revealed Himself and His word to us, or never gave that personified power of the gospel to us. The Lord did; He does. We all experience the miracle that is every day among us. But in return, we often took it as our blessing — as ours, applying His supply, blessing and revelation for ourselves. For this reason, the Lord’s move has been postponed.
Yet, despite the increasingly complex and overwhelming attractions of the world, the recovery process of God has never strayed. The Lord is still recovering us and His church. The recovery which has been recovering man’s heart to God has been ongoing since God called out to us in Genesis. Each one of us needs to come to our end, to return to an individual experience of being recovered unto Himself from our hearts, and return to a thorough salvation that makes our faith shine forth in this age. In our churching today, recovery is first of our being and it is subjective, yielding the reality, the supply, the building up of our churching. It does not happen by force, by system, by religious scaffolding, or by one’s good effort, but by the revealing of God’s Son in us. The only way we can be utterly freed of ourselves and of this world’s attraction is through this complete revelation and our complete salvation. We cannot deny His calling and His will and His plan, through which our humanity may be utterly succumbed and given up to Him for His use and purpose, and through which, at last, we experience the eternal and incorruptible reality behind every human ideal — marriage, love, friendship, community, nationhood, parenting, honor, meaning, purpose, transformation — that substantiates and satisfies all our human life.
This is what we insist on in the church. We insist that each one of us wake up in the morning with this subjective calling. We insist that we be regulated by and to Him one hundred percent. We insist on no compromises. We insist on being real. We insist on not letting each other go. Only then can we be witnesses, be like-souled, be His true followers and His true ministers; only then can we fulfill and prove His will. We have been given a very high calling from the first day, not just today. That consecration is a privilege for us to give all to the Lord — to serve “full time.” It is a privilege. It is not a favor. It is not a sacrifice. If we understand the meaning of serving the Lord, then this life should not be lightly carried out. The church life is a very precious, very enjoyable, very costly, and very expensive life. We should all carry this calling together, because this calling, from day one, was not for a few. It is for all. It is a kingdom of God’s priests serving Him. It is a nation — it is a whole race.
(Above is part 1 of a series compiled from notes of fellowship taken from gatherings at the end of 2018 and compiled into a booklet entitled “The calling and condition of God’s people in the church today.” Read part 2 here and part 3 here.)