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Scripture Reading: Psa. 133; Rev. 21:2
I would like to bring out the matter of multiplying the five loaves (Mark 6:35-44; 8:1-9) with respect to God’s blessing. It is not a matter of how many loaves we have in our hands, but whether or not God has blessed them. Even if we had more than five loaves, this would not be enough to feed four or five thousand people. Even if we had ten times or even one hundred times more, we still would not have enough to feed four or five thousand people. It is not a matter of how much we have. Sooner or later, we must be brought to the point of seeing that it is not a matter of what we can pull out of our storage shed, nor is it a matter of how great our gift is or how much power we have. The day must come in which we say to the Lord, “Everything depends on Your blessing.” This is a basic matter. How much blessing has the Lord really given us? It does not really matter how many loaves there are. The Lord’s blessing nourishes people and gives them life.
One matter is troubling my heart: Do we truly treasure God’s blessing? This is a basic question concerning the work. Perhaps we do not even have five loaves today, but our need is greater than four thousand or five thousand people. I am afraid that we have less in our storehouse than the apostles, but our need is greater than the need at the time of the apostles. Our own store, source, power, labor, and faithfulness will be manifest one day that they are useless to us. Brothers, our future holds great disappointment for us because we will see that we can do nothing.
Brothers, if God brings us to the point of seeing that everything in God’s work depends upon His blessing, it will bring about a basic change in our labor for God. We would not consider how many people, how much money, or how much bread we have. We would say we do not have enough, but the blessing is sufficient. The blessing meets the need that we cannot meet. Although we cannot measure up to the size of the need, the blessing is greater than our lack. When we see this, the work will have a basic change. In every matter we must look at the blessing more than we consider the situation. Methods, considerations, human wisdom, and clever words are all useless. In God’s work we should believe in and expect His blessing. Many times we are careless and damage the work, but this is not a problem. If the Lord gives us a small blessing, we can get through any problem.
We truly hope that we would not make mistakes or speak and act loosely in the work. When we have the Lord’s blessing, however, it seems that we cannot err even when we are wrong. Sometimes it seems that we have made a serious mistake, but with God’s blessing the result is not really an error. I once said to Brother Witness that if we had the Lord’s blessing, the things we did right would be right and the things we did wrong would be right as well. Nothing could damage the blessing.
The basic concern today is that we must learn to live in a way that does not hinder God’s blessing. Some habits force God to withhold His blessing, and these must be eliminated. Some temperaments keep God from blessing, and these must be done away with. We must learn to believe in God’s blessing, rely on it, and eliminate the barriers that prevent us from receiving it.
We must see that the Lord withholds no good thing from us. If the work is not going well, if the brothers and sisters are in a poor condition, or if the number of saved ones is not increasing, we should not use the environment or certain people as an excuse. We cannot blame the brothers. I am afraid that the real reason lies with our harboring of some frustrations to the blessing. If the Lord can get through in us, the Lord’s blessing will be greater than our capacity. Once God said to the Israelites, “Prove Me, if you will, by this,...whether I will open to you the windows of heaven and pour out blessing for you until there is no room for it” (Mal. 3:10). God is still saying this today. The normal life of a Christian is a life of blessing, and the normal work of a Christian is a work of blessing. If we do not receive blessing, we should say, “Lord, perhaps I am the problem.”
What is blessing? Blessing is God working without any cause. Logically speaking, one penny should buy one penny’s worth of goods. But sometimes, without spending a cent, God gives us ten thousand pennies’ worth of goods. This means that what we have received is beyond reckoning. God’s blessing is any work He performs without cause. This work surpasses what we should receive. Five loaves fed five thousand people, and there were still twelve full baskets left over! This is blessing. Some people should not get a certain kind of result. They should only have a little, but surprisingly they have much. Our entire work is built upon God’s blessing. The blessing is the result of receiving what we do not deserve, that is, the result of receiving beyond what our gift warrants us to receive. The result that we get, which is beyond what our strength earns, is the blessing. Putting it more strongly, we do not deserve any results because of our weaknesses and failures, but astoundingly we obtain something, and what we obtain is the blessing. If we look for God’s blessing, He will give us unexpected results. In our service do we hope for God to give us great results? Many brothers and sisters only look for results that can be expected from themselves alone. Blessing means that the result is not in proportion to the cause.
If we only look for results based on what we are, if we only look for a little fruit, and if we do not hope for great results, we run the risk of losing God’s blessing. Since we only pay attention to the fact that we are laboring night and day, God cannot do anything beyond our expectation. We must put ourselves in a position in which God can bless us. We must say to the Lord, “Based on what we are, we should not obtain any results, but, Lord, for the sake of Your name, Your church, and Your way, we hope You will give something to us.” Having faith in the work is believing and expecting God’s blessing. In God’s work, having faith means having the conviction that the result will not be in proportion to us. When we practice this, I believe God will bless our way. I hope that as the brothers discuss the matter of the migrations, the Lord’s blessing will exceed our expectation.
The entire future of the work depends on God’s blessing, not on being right. If God blesses, then many sinners will be saved. If God blesses, we will be able to send people out to the remote regions. If there is no blessing, people will not get saved. If there is no blessing, workers will not be produced. If there is no blessing, no one will offer anything. If there is no blessing, no one will migrate. When the blessing is here, even things that seem wrong are right. When God blesses, we cannot go wrong even if we try. One time there was a meeting in which it seemed that we sang the wrong hymn, but we had a good result because we had God’s blessing. Sometimes when we preach, it seems that we are speaking the wrong word to the wrong audience, but God still blesses some in the audience. When we speak again, we still may speak the wrong word, but God blesses another group of people. I am not saying that we can be loose intentionally. I am saying that we cannot go wrong when we have God’s blessing. It seems that our mistakes should be a frustration, but He cannot be hindered. God said, “Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated” (Rom. 9:13). God blesses whom He likes. This is a very serious matter. We should not think that the blessing is a small thing. The blessing is souls and consecrated people. Behind the word blessing perhaps there are fifty souls or one hundred consecrations. The words, attitudes, and opinions of certain people can stop the Lord’s blessing. We must ask the Lord to prick us inwardly until we obtain His blessing. If we do not do this, our sin of losing the Lord’s blessing will be greater than any other sin. The blessing could be hundreds or thousands of souls. We must look to God for the blessing and not let it escape. We must beg God to give us grace. (Expecting the Lord’s Blessing, pp. 1-3, 5-7, 7-8, 13-15, 16-18)
Matthew 14:19 says, “And after commanding the crowds to recline on the grass, He took the five loaves and the two fish, and looking up to heaven, He blessed and broke the loaves and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples to the crowds.” The Lord fed the people; He ministered the life supply to them. By having the crowds recline on the grass, He put the people into good order. This shows the Lord’s wisdom and orderliness. By looking up to heaven the heavenly King indicated that His source was His Father in the heavens. Then He blessed the loaves and fish and broke them. This indicates that whatever we bring to the Lord must be broken for it to become a blessing to others.
After the Lord broke the loaves, He gave them to the disciples. The loaves were from the disciples, and they brought them to the Lord. After being blessed and broken by the Lord, they were given back to the disciples for distribution to the crowds, to whom the loaves became a great satisfaction. This indicates that the disciples were not the source of blessing; they were only the channels used by the Lord, who was the source of the people’s satisfaction. The broken bread was passed on to the disciples, and the disciples distributed it to the crowds. This broken bread became the satisfaction to all the hungry people, and there was great blessing. The principle is the same today. No doubt there has been great blessing in the Lord’s recovery in this country. Nevertheless, we must realize that some dear ones have offered themselves to the Lord. In the Lord’s hand, they all have been broken, and those broken pieces have brought in the blessing. (Life-study of Matthew, pp. 517, 518)
The believers need to practice the oneness of the Divine Trinity in the Divine Trinity as the Divine Trinity does (John 17:21-23). We need to ask ourselves what kind of oneness we are practicing. Some claim to be practicing the oneness of the Body, but they are actually practicing a sectarian, factious oneness. The oneness of the Body is the oneness of the Triune God. We practice the oneness of the Divine Trinity not in ourselves but in the Divine Trinity. The three of the Divine Trinity—the Father, the Son, and the Spirit—are continually practicing the divine oneness. For example, the Lord Jesus said, “I and the Father are one” (10:30). The oneness of the Father and the Son includes the Spirit, who is the consummation and totality of the Triune God. The Spirit is also the Triune God reaching us. When Christ came into us, He came as the Spirit. Wherever the Father and the Son are, there the Spirit is also. (The Secret of God’s Organic Salvation: “The Spirit Himself with Our Spirit,” p. 53)
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We must realize that the practices in the Lord’s recovery are not matters for others to copy. You must have the life. To do anything you need the life. You have to see what the landmark was of the one hundred twenty in the book of Acts. The landmark that divides the Gospels and the Acts was not the baptism in the Holy Spirit. The landmark was the one accord of the one hundred twenty. If you want to experience the baptism in the Spirit, you must have the one accord. If all the members of a local church have the one accord, the baptism in the Spirit will be there. If you really want to practice the proper way to preach the gospel, you need the one accord. Without this key, no door can be opened. The one accord is the “master key to all the rooms,” the master key to every blessing in the New Testament. This is why Paul told Euodias and Syntyche that they needed this one accord (Phil. 4:2). Paul knew that these sisters loved the Lord, but that they had lost the one accord.
What we need is to recover this one accord. If we mean business to go along with the Lord’s present-day move, we need this one accord. Who is right does not mean anything; we need this one accord. We need to have the same mind and the same will for the same purpose with the same soul and the same heart. Philippians tells us that this matter starts from our spirit (1:27), yet we must realize we are not persons of spirit only. We are persons also of the mind, will, purpose, soul, and heart. For us to be in the same one spirit with the same one soul, one mind, and one will is to have the one accord, which is the key to all the New Testament blessings and bequests. Otherwise, we will repeat the pitiful history of Christianity by being another group of Christians repeating the same kind of disaccord. (Elders’ Training, Book 7: One Accord for the Lord’s Move, pp. 18-19)
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On one side, God’s move depends upon Himself as the consummated Spirit. He needs us as the other side so there could be the possibility of accomplishment. If we do not render Him any kind of cooperation or give Him any kind of response, nothing can happen, regardless of how powerful, dynamic, and mighty the Holy Spirit of the Triune God can be. God can do the work of creation by Himself but not the work of the new creation. The new creation work must be carried out in the principle of incarnation, the principle of God being one with man, making one entity out of two elements with no third element produced. The Holy Spirit is the power, the means, and the factor for God’s move on this earth, but that is just on one side. There is the need of another side, the human side. There is the need of another factor—the one accord.
The matter of one accord controls the entire revelation concerning the Lord’s move on one side. If there were no Spirit on the Lord’s side, it would be impossible for the Lord to move on this earth at all. In the same principle, without the one accord on our side, God cannot move. We have to match God. He is now the consummated Spirit, and we have to say, “Lord, we are ready here as the very one accord. We want to not only render but we are also ready to offer to You this one accord.” Immediately there is a kind of marriage, and a couple comes out. Then anything can be done. (Elders’ Training, Book 7: One Accord for the Lord’s Move, pp. 99, 100)
All who are sitting here today are elders and co-workers. We must be in one accord to maintain the oneness Christ seeks. Since we are bearing the responsibility of the church, we should see the way for the church to receive grace and blessing. We must all realize that the blessing and grace of God can only come upon a situation of one accord. This situation is the practice of oneness. In the Old Testament, Psalm 133 says, “Behold, how good and how pleasant it is / For brothers to dwell in unity! / It is like the fine oil upon the head / That ran down upon the beard, / Upon Aaron’s beard, / That ran down upon the hem of his garments; / Like the dew of Hermon / That came down upon the mountains of Zion. / For there Jehovah commanded the blessing: / Life forever.” God will only grace and bless the one accord, that is, the practice of oneness.
Hence, we have to be on the alert. If we would first consider and think a little before we speak and would ask if it is Christ or not, there would be no problem. If we love the saints, we should ask ourselves if our love has different classes, degrees, or depths, and should be adjusted by the Lord accordingly. The same is true with our speaking. We should only speak if our speaking is Christ; otherwise, we should not speak. I have a heavy burden within me. We all want the church here to receive grace and blessing. But do not forget Psalm 133. The commanded blessing of the Lord, which is life forever, is upon the brothers dwelling together in oneness. It is like the ointment that flows through the whole body and like the dew that descends on Zion. Tonight we have seen that the oneness of the believers prayed for by the Lord is neither a oneness like the world speaks of nor a oneness according to what we formerly understood. Rather, it is a perfected oneness by all of us being in the Father’s name and life, in His word of reality, and in His divinely expressed glory. Only by this is there the blessing of God. Of course, we should labor and work for the Lord, but if our situation is not in oneness and if we do not practice the one accord, I am afraid our result will not be abundant. Therefore, in order for us to receive God’s blessing, we must practice the oneness, and the way to practice the oneness is by the one accord. (The Oneness and the One Accord according to the Lord’s Aspiration and the Body Life and Service according to His Pleasure, pp. 18-19)
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Only by our being sanctified can we abide in Christ and can Christ live in us. Again I say, to be sanctified is to move out of ourselves and into the Triune God and to allow Christ to live in us. According to chapters 14 through 17 of John, this is the proper concept of sanctification. The more we are sanctified, the more we are out of ourselves and in the Triune God.
This sanctification takes place by the Word, which is truth, and by the Spirit, which is the Spirit of truth. In these four chapters of John the Word and the Spirit are mentioned again and again. Actually, the Word and the Spirit are one. I thank the Lord that so many of us have come back to the Word and are getting into the Word every day. As we come to the Word every morning, outwardly we touch the Word, but inwardly the Spirit touches us. By the Word and by the Spirit, both of which are the reality, we are sanctified.
To be sanctified is not merely to be separated from the world; it is to move out of ourselves and into the Triune God. If you check with your experience, you will see that the more you touch the Word and the more the Spirit touches you, the more you move out of yourself. You move from one dwelling place, the self, to another dwelling place, the Triune God. Every day we need to make this move. If we do not move out of ourselves, we are wrong; for in the self there is worldliness, ambition, self-exaltation, and opinion. (Truth Messages, p. 58)
The major symptom of the sickness in the satanic system is division. In the world today there is no oneness. On the contrary, there is division everywhere, among the nations, in the family, in the schools, in business, and in politics. Every society is filled with division. The whole world is ill with the disease of division. This divisiveness is the evil in the world. According to Genesis 11, at Babel division and confusion came in. We see the same on earth today. Every nation and every people are divided. This is the evil in Satan’s system.
We need to move out of ourselves and into the Triune God and remain in Him for the expression of the Father’s glory. We need to allow this glory to swallow up our self-exaltation so that Christ can live in us. When Christ lives in us, all our concepts will be put to death. Then, instead of evil, we shall have the genuine oneness.
This oneness is what the Lord desires; it is the well-pleasing will of God (Rom. 12:2). It is also the real building. The building is possible only in the Triune God, and it is prevailing only when Christ lives in us. Hallelujah, now we are in the Triune God, and we are allowing Christ to live in us! Now we can express the glory of the Father and experience the genuine oneness. May we all bring this word to the Lord in prayer. (Truth Messages, pp. 67, 71-72)
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The oneness revealed in the New Testament is not a oneness where we come together, give up our prejudices, and convince each other to agree to be together. This is a oneness produced by the world. The oneness we are talking about is the full mingling of the Triune God with us. If we do not see this matter to such an extent, I am afraid that the oneness we are talking about is only human-manufactured oneness; it is not the oneness of the Body.
This mingling of the Triune God is in you, in me, and in every saint. Moreover, the common and unique life which is in all the millions of believers has mingled us all into one. This is the oneness of the Body. This oneness has nullified all of our old creation and the natural man. This is accomplished by the Father’s name and the Father’s life. This oneness has also sanctified us from the Satan-ensnared world and has freed us from the world and Satan. This is the effect of the Father’s word of reality. Finally, this oneness will deliver us from the self so that there will be only God, and the splendid glory of divinity will be expressed. (The Oneness and the One Accord according to the Lord’s Aspiration and the Body Life and Service according to His Pleasure, pp. 25-26)
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If we would be under the Lord’s commanded blessing of life, we must be on the ground of oneness. Dissenting ones may claim to have the commanded blessing, but actually they do not have it. (The Genuine Ground of Oneness, pp. 24-25)
The oneness about which we have been speaking is the precious ointment upon Christ the Head and the refreshing dew that descends upon the mountains of Zion. It makes a tremendous difference whether we remain in this oneness or forsake it. Christians today feel free to come and go because they do not see this genuine oneness. They do not have the preserving and keeping element the oneness affords. In His recovery the Lord has shown us that real oneness is the mingling of the processed Triune God with His chosen people. On the one hand, the processed God is the compound, all-inclusive Spirit that anoints us and “paints” us day by day. On the other hand, the processed God is the life supply for our enjoyment. Under this anointing oil and watering dew we experience true oneness. As long as we remain in the experience of the ointment and the dew, it is not possible for us to be divided. Rather, we are preserved in oneness. This is the meaning of Paul’s word in Ephesians 4:3 about endeavoring to keep the oneness of the Spirit. Actually, this oneness is simply the all-inclusive, life-giving Spirit Himself. We guard and preserve this oneness by remaining under the anointing oil and the watering dew. (The Genuine Ground of Oneness, p. 96)
Our work must be a work that builds up such a Body of Christ (Eph. 4:12, 16). This will change our idea. This will change our view. If you have such a view, you cannot carry out any piece of work that is not a part of the Body of Christ. (The Practical Way to Live a Life according to the High Peak of the Divine Revelation in the Holy Scriptures, p. 63)
According to Ephesians chapter 4, the issue of the union of the Spirit of God and the spirit of the believers is the building up of the Body of Christ. This building is not of human work, nor is it a forming together of a group of people by man’s natural way. Hence, it has nothing to do with man’s work, effort, ways, ideas, moral teachings, philosophy, or any religious system or activities. God’s eternal economy is to obtain the Body of Christ. Any work outside of this is not on the central lane of God’s eternal economy.
Most of the work in today’s Christianity is human work, is natural, and has nothing to do with the building up of the Body of Christ. Some people may say that Christianity also preaches the gospel and saves sinners. However, preaching the gospel and saving sinners are not simple matters; they involve many important matters. Christianity preaches the gospel by human work, human effort, human doing; but Paul preached the gospel by supplying the person being saved by him with the Spirit of God, so that within him he might have God, the life of God, and also Christ. (The Issue of the Union of the Consummated Spirit of the Triune God and the Regenerated Spirit of the Believers, p. 49)
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Such a building up of the Body of Christ is formed by organic growth, not organized by human work. All those who are not in life, not walking according to the union of the two spirits, are not in the building up of the Body of Christ. We need to see this vision clearly. The Body of Christ is absolutely not built up by using man’s natural methods or the organization of human work. The building up of the Body of Christ can be attained only through the co-living and co-walking of the Spirit of God with the spirit of man in the believers in their experience of the co-death and co-resurrection with Christ and their growing up into the Head, Christ, in all things. The Body of Christ, which is altogether organic, does not allow anything of human work. We need to see this vision clearly so that we can build up the Body of Christ organically. (The Issue of the Union of the Consummated Spirit of the Triune God and the Regenerated Spirit of the Believers, p. 69)
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We should not have the thought that we can do a particular work according to our way in the recovery. We may be very gifted and have a large capacity to work out something. But what we work out may be the same as worldly people carrying out a certain enterprise. We have to realize that in the Lord’s recovery there is only one work. (Elders’ Training, Book 10: The Eldership and the God-ordained Way (2), p. 118)
According to the entire revelation of the New Testament, the unique goal of the Christian work should be the New Jerusalem, which is the ultimate goal of God’s eternal economy.
The degradation of the church is mainly due to the fact that nearly all the Christian workers are distracted to take many things other than the New Jerusalem as their goal.
Hence, under the degradation of the church, to be an overcomer answering the Lord’s call needs us to overcome not only the negative things but even more the positive things that replace the New Jerusalem as the goal.
An overcomer’s goal should be uniquely and ultimately the goal of God’s eternal economy, that is, the New Jerusalem. (The Vital Groups, p. 131)
The following is Brother Lee’s fellowship given on April 6, 1997:
The co-workers must see that we should do only one work, which is to make God’s chosen people regenerated ones, sanctified ones, renewed ones—the new man—transformed ones, conformed ones—those conformed to the image of the firstborn Son of God—and glorified ones. All those who will be in the New Jerusalem are this kind of people.
Specifically, God proceeds step by step to make a chosen one of God a person who is regenerated, sanctified, renewed, transformed, conformed to the image of the firstborn Son of God, and even glorified by God. In this way, we go up level by level until we reach the highest point, where we become the same. There is no more flesh and no more natural being. All are in the spirit. All are the kingdom of the heavens, and all are beings of the New Jerusalem. This is the highest point. If you understand this, you can explain it to the brothers and sisters, and you can ask them to speak the same. (The Ministry, vol. 1, no. 1, October 1997, p. 49)
