Mrs. L went to be with the Lord

It's been one year and a half since I wrote a post on this series, "Conversations with Mrs. L." Yesterday morning, Mrs. L peacefully went to be with the Lord at the age of, I believe, 95. 

Days prior to her departure, Mrs. L was still memorizing Ephesians 1:17, pray-reading His word, and asking some young sisters in the Lord to sing hymns to her.

I had been trying to see her whenever I could but in these recent years, she was too weak to receive out of town guests so I did not get to meet her. It is okay, I have no regret. I treasure the rather brief time that I've had with her. 

Although my tears have not yet stopped flowing, Mrs. L's passing was peaceful, graceful, inspiring, humbling, and fragrant. 

Mrs. L, we called her "our dear sister Lee," had a very particular portion in the church. She is a true pattern for us, the young sisters. The loss is massive because she was a pillar in the church. Her prayer life was strong and stable, both weapons and walls. Her shepherding life nurtured many believers, both young and old. Her person was a treasure house of experiences of Christ as life. I can go on and on, but let's just say her portion in the church was quite immense. 

Do you know why? Not because Mrs. L was a mere refined, perfect person, but it was because with her, the Lord Jesus had so much freedom being lived out and magnified.

Mrs. L poured out her life for the Lord's coming. That means the Bride of Christ to be prepared, the Body of Christ to be built. That means the younger believers to be perfected in life and function, to love the Lord, to serve Him with our whole being, to continue steadfastly in prayer and in the ministry of the word (Acts 6:4). That means the gospel of the kingdom to be spread throughout the nations. Also that means God's people to be recovered to His original intention in creating humanity- to express Him and to represent Him.

In particular, Mrs. L was always burdened to pray for the young generation to rise up and strongly continue what the Lord Jesus has been doing in His recovery. The Lord's recovery is indeed very profound but simultaneously simple. 

Our situation today parallels with the rebuilding of God's house and God's city in Jerusalem mentioned in the Books of Ezra and Nehemiah in the Old Testament. The children of Israel were taken into captivity in Babylon. Later very few of them returned to recover the house and the city in Jerusalem. This recovery was the preparation of Christ's first coming. Imagine if they had never returned, the prophecy of Christ being born in the city of David, Bethlehem, could never be fulfilled.

Likewise, today the building of God's house and God's city is very crucial for the sake of His second coming but not many are willing to choose this way. Many are busy fixing their own houses, some other many are worn out by the endless oppositions against God's building, and yet another many are simply swept into the world system of pleasures and struggles.

I am not criticizing anyone. These tears cannot stop flowing mainly because Mrs. L's life has humbled me to the uttermost. She has set the standard high with her living as a sister in the church, and I fall way too short. The most painful part is the realization that I cannot fix the way that I am.

Yet I am, by no means, discouraged. The vision must always be much higher than what we can presently be. That is why, it's called the controlling vision. Without it, we would live haphazardly.

The journey is still long and it is not just an individual journey. This is the journey of God's people on the road to being wholly recovered to God and His purpose.

So we are simply looking to the Lord, coming to the throne of grace to receive mercy and timely help so that we may go on and continue steadfastly, that we may receive a spirit of wisdom and revelation to know Him, the hope of His calling, and the riches of the glory of His inheritance in His people.

Ephesians 1:17-18,

17 That the ^1aGod of our Lord Jesus Christ, the ²Father of glory, may give to you a ^3bspirit of ^4cwisdom and ^drevelation in the ^efull knowledge of Him,

18 The ^1aeyes of your heart having been ^2benlightened, that you may know what is the ^3chope of His ^4dcalling, and what are the ^5eriches of the glory of His ^6finheritance in the saints,

God's Game Plan: The Secret Weapon

The Secret Weapon

I know. It's not a game, it's a war.

On one hand, Christ has won the victory through His first coming. He died an all-inclusive death that took care all the negative items in this universe, including Satan himself. Not only that, He resurrected and became the life-giving Spirit to indwell us and be everything to us. He also ascended, proving that indeed He had successfully accomplished God's redemption plan.

However, as long as practically He has not yet become the centrality, the center, and the universality, the everything, of our lives, of this whole universe, there's a war.

It seems like the whole world is going against our Bible reading time, our prayer time, our morning time with Lord, and on and on. It seems like we lose our temper and run out of patience all the time. There's a war.

The way to fulfill God's ultimate plan in the divine history is by Christ as the sevenfold intensified Spirit in our spirit (Please see references under this post). Without a doubt, there is only one way to accomplish God's purpose-- Christ Himself. The question is, where is He today?

Yes, He is in the heavens, but Colossians 1:27 clearly points out that Christ is also in us. When we received the Lord Jesus into us, He came into our human spirit as the Spirit to indwell us.

Many miss the importance of our human spirit, yet Zechariah 12:1 equals the heavens, the earth, and the spirit of man in one descriptive clause of who Jehovah is: "Thus declares Jehovah, who stretches forth the heavens and lays the foundations of the earth and forms the the spirit of man within him."

Our human spirit is God's secret weapon to fulfill His purpose. 

How? Strictly speaking, what makes human God's masterpiece in His creation is not the humanity itself. What makes human the masterpiece of God is the spirit within. That spirit of man enables him to not only contact God but also to contain Him. The old creation has always been remote, separated, from the Creator. Yet the new creation contains the Creator, thus he is one spirit with Him (1 Corinthians 6:17). This is God's "new invention."

We have to know:

1. That the secret weapon, our human spirit, exists; and
2. That we can activate, or switch it on.

When we switch our spirit on, we are saved. Isaiah 12 shows how our spirit is very much connected to our mouth:

With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation. And you will say in that day- 

“Give thanks to the Lord, call upon his name, make known his deeds among the peoples, proclaim that his name is exalted.  

Sing praises to the Lord, for he has done gloriously; let this be made known in all the earth. Shout, and sing for joy, O inhabitant of Zion, for great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel.”

We need to utter thanksgivings to the Lord, calling upon His name from the bottom of our being, singing, praising, making known what He has done to others. When we strike our spirit and fan it into flame, the Christ within will take over.

Now, another item that God has revealed to us is the enemy's strategy. Since this post has gotten very long, I will continue next time.

References:

• What is the sevenfold intensified Spirit and where is it mentioned in the Bible?
• The Realization of the Triune God: The Life-giving, Sevenfold-Intensified Spirit

"I do not love You, Lord"

I apologize for the long pause I had from blogging these past months. I moved to a new place so I've been incredibly busy and still am.

So in the midst of my busyness. My sister sent me a message telling me, "I think I do not love the Lord," and there she was in the middle of her stay in an intensive Bible truth and character training.

I wrote her back, "Did you mean you do not love Him enough?"

Few minutes later, she replied, "No, I mean like I don't."

Then we decided to pick up the phone and have a little fellowship while she was roaming around the grocery store and I was in the parking lot of another grocery store in another part of the country.

I asked my sister to clarify what she meant by not loving the Lord, and she explained how suddenly it hit her that she may love the Lord because she wanted something from Him.

As I was listening to her, it dawned on me how often I felt like "I don't love the Lord" myself. Yup, actually it so frequently happens that it has stopped being a discouragement to me.

I told my sister, "It's okay. We will always feel short in loving the Lord because we are always looking back. Yet our love for the Lord grows and matures."

Just like little children, oftentimes children's love is motivated by needs. They love you because they need you or need something from you. That is why they cannot have a spouse because they are not mature enough to love a husband or a wife.

Human love matures with growth in life. With time, we gradually learn to give in our loving, to self-sacrifice in our loving, and so forth. Love grows.

Likewise, the more we grow in our spiritual life, we will soon realize how childish and selfish our love toward the Lord has been thus far. But it's okay because back then, we were simply not as mature.

The ultimate truth is no one loves the Lord in the way the Lord wants us to love Him. We love because He first loved us.  

The Lord is our loving ability and our loving element. Without Him, we cannot love Him back. Nevertheless, our love toward the Lord will grow deeper as we spend more time with Him. If we keep looking back we shall realize how we always fall short in loving Him, but that's okay, that means our love has grown a little bit more at that moment in time. 

So my sister and I simply concluded that we truly need the Lord to love Him in a proper way. We ended our phone conversation feeling more encouraged to go on in our walk with the Lord Jesus.

1 John 4:19,

"We love because He first loved us."

That was the highlight of my day today. Thank You, Lord, that You loved us first and You have poured out Yourself as love into our hearts that we may love You back.