Good morning, brothers and sisters. Thank God, we can still gather this morning.
This morning is the question-and-answer period. I always feel that this is the wrong name, because the questions may be real, but no man can answer your questions. Only God can.
So, even though this is the wrong name, I hope, brothers and sisters, you all remember that God alone is our answer. Whatever question you may have, do not look to men for the answer. Men can help you a little bit, perhaps remove some of your hindrances, but they cannot answer your question. God is the only One who can answer your question.
So, brothers and sisters, do not look at us as if we are able to give you the answers. We cannot. We are here by the grace of God that we may help you remove some of your hindrances and prepare the way for God to answer your question.
Do not put your hope in man. You will be disappointed. Our hope is only in God.
Dear Lord, we want to thank Thee for bringing this conference to a conclusion. Lord, as we gather here with our questions in our hearts, we do not expect that any human being will be able to be the answer.
Lord, Thou knowest that we believe You alone are the answer. So our hearts turn to Thee and say, “Lord, be our answer. Remove whatever hindrance may stand in the way, by the grace of God, that we may be able to get the answer from Thyself.”
We commit this time into Your hands. May Thy name be glorified. In Thy precious name we pray. Amen.
I was given three questions.
The first question concerns whether we are ready. I have heard sharing that we should say we are already overcomers, since we are all in Christ. Yet, though we Christians are all in Christ, are not many still not ready to be overcomers? I am having trouble understanding our standing as Christians concerning our readiness, especially the words in 1 John 5:4, which say that whatever is born of God overcomes the world. Does this imply that all Christians who are born of God are already overcomers?
Brothers and sisters, it is true: we who have believed in the Lord Jesus are overcomers. Why? It is not because of us; it is because of Christ, the Overcomer.
Our Lord Jesus came into the world to be a man, and as a man He overcame. He overcame sin, death, and Satan. He is the Overcomer.
Because we who believe in the Lord Jesus have His life in us, so far as the life of a Christian is concerned, that life is the life of an overcomer. Because He has overcome, therefore we who are in Him have overcome.
This is our position. This is what God has provided for us. This is what God has meant for us. We are to be overcomers. It is not because of what we are; it is because of what He is. Our Lord is the Overcomer.
I think, brothers and sisters, you have no problem with this. If you read the four Gospels, you can see how He came as a man, and yet He was sinless. He overcame all His life. He overcame the world. He overcame Satan. He overcame Himself.
Throughout His life, He sought to do His Father’s will:
Not My will, but Thy will be done.
Not what I want to say, but because You have said it.
Not what I want to do, but because You have done it.
Not where I want to go, but because You have gone there.
So throughout our Lord’s life, He is undoubtedly the Overcomer. On Calvary’s cross, He cast the enemy away. He overcame.
And, brothers and sisters, because we who have believed in the Lord Jesus have His overcoming life in us, He lives in us. Therefore, we are overcomers. So far as our spiritual position is concerned, all believers are overcomers. This is our position.
If we fail to overcome, that is because we fail to trust in Christ. If we trust in Christ, our life will overcome.
But sadly, brothers and sisters, it is a fact that we who believe in the Lord Jesus, positionally, are all overcomers; but practically, we are not.
Why? Because in the spirit dwells Christ, the Overcomer, and by Him we overcome. But in our soul dwells our old self, and this old self is a defeated one. He was defeated in the Garden of Eden, and since then he has always been defeated by the enemy.
So, brothers and sisters, the Bible tells us that within us there is a civil war. In the spirit, Christ reigns; but in our soul, our self still reigns. The enemy had no hold on Christ, but he has every hold on our self.
Our self has been under his domain since we were born, and he will not let go. So I believe, brothers and sisters, that when you first trust the Lord, everything seems rosy and wonderful. But gradually you find that there is a war within you. The spirit wars against the soul, and the soul wars against the spirit.
In the spirit is Christ; in our soul is ourselves. This self has been under the domain of the enemy since we were born. Therefore, you find that the enemy will not let us go.
As you look back on your spiritual experience, you find that at the beginning of your Christian life, when you first believe, everything seems so heavenly, so rosy. You are walking in the air. But very soon it seems as if you have dropped down to the earth.
You discover, as Paul did, that within you there is a civil war going on. In the spirit is Christ, the Overcomer; but in the soul is yourself, your old self, which has been under the domain of the enemy since you were born.
I believe this is our Christian experience in the beginning. I do not know how long you seem to stay in heaven. You are walking, as it were, in the air—so glorious. That is because you first taste the victory of Christ.
But not very long afterward, you find that it seems as if you have dropped down to earth. You begin to experience what Paul did, what every believer does. You begin to experience an inward warfare. There seem to be two people warring against each other.
In the spirit, Christ reigns. You want to go the way of Christ. But in our soul, ourselves reign, and the enemy uses ourselves to fight against our spirit.
I believe this must be your experience. This was the experience of the Apostle Paul, and this has been the experience of all believers. It seems as if you drop down from heaven to earth. There is war with yourself—a civil war: the spirit against the soul, the soul against the spirit; Christ in your spirit against self in your soul.
Sometimes you may think, “How good it would be if, the moment I am saved, God took me to Himself. That would avoid all the problems of my life.” But, brothers and sisters, God knows better.
If this were the case, heaven would be a kindergarten. It would be full of babies who need to be cared for instead of being used of God for His glory.
So, dear brothers and sisters, thank God He has not taken us immediately after we are saved, like that thief on the cross who turned to Christ during his last moments. The Lord said:
Today shalt thou be with Me in paradise.
We think he was blessed. But, brothers and sisters, when you think deeply, you find that he would be in paradise as a baby. God wants grown-up Christians.
So thank God for still leaving us on this earth. How we have mistaken God! We thought that God did not love us enough to take us right away. But thank God, He loves us so much that He does not want old babies in paradise. He wants those who are grown up, fit to be His bride.
The only way to grow up is for Him to leave us here on earth and give us opportunity to experience the inward battle of spirit and soul, and to learn the lessons of denying ourselves, taking up our cross, and following the Lord.
So, brothers and sisters, did you ever thank God for saving you? I believe you did. But did you ever thank God for leaving you in this wretched world, allowing temptations and all kinds of things to happen in your life? Your life may seem very difficult.
But do you thank God for that? As a matter of fact, God is giving you every opportunity to grow up to be men and women in the Lord instead of babies in Christ.
A baby is very lovely. I think everybody loves babies. But a baby is very troublesome. God wants you to grow up to care for others instead of being babies who must be cared for. That is the reason why we are still here.
On the one hand, our prayer is that the Lord will come immediately and take us to Himself. There is nothing better than that. But on the other hand, if it is the Lord’s will to leave us still on earth to learn the lessons He wants us to learn, that we may grow up into manhood and womanhood and be able to care for others, do you see the wisdom behind it?
This is our opportunity, as long as we are still living. On the one hand, we may feel that we pass through warfare all the time. We battle all the time, battling our way to heaven, as it were. But on the other hand, God loves us so much. He wants us to grow up, to overcome ourselves, and to obey God absolutely.
This is God’s thought for us. The Bible says that whom He foreknew, He called; whom He called, He sanctified. He wants every one of us to grow up.
Today is the opportunity. Today is your opportunity to be delivered from yourself. We have to go through the battle, and if we are faithful, by His grace, we will overcome—not only Satan, the world, and sin, but we will overcome ourselves.
Brothers and sisters, the hardest thing to lay down is yourself. But what a hindrance self is to the kingdom of God.
So, dear brothers and sisters, this is a process God has given us. On the one hand, we hope our Lord will come right away and take us to Himself. But on the other hand, as long as it is the will of God to leave us behind, we know He has a purpose. That purpose is to mature you and deliver you from yourself.
But, brothers and sisters, again I emphasize: God allows us to go through this inward warfare to humble us, that we may know we cannot overcome by ourselves. But there is One within us who has overcome.
If we learn to deny ourselves, take up the cross, and follow Him, we shall also overcome. Then, at the return of the Lord Jesus, He can receive us to be His bride, having His stature within us.
So, brothers and sisters, do not murmur and say God does not love you. He loves you so much. He wants you to grow up. This is what the Lord will do.
We all experience how hard it is to give up ourselves. But through this hardship, through our willingness to be dealt with by the cross, to bear the cross and follow the Lord—dear brothers and sisters—a glorious day is waiting for you.
I would say that this is what every Christian must go through. Again, I want to remind you that we cannot overcome, but thank God, we have the overcoming life in us. If we are willing to take the cross and follow the Lord, we too shall overcome, and God’s full will shall be fulfilled.
I think what our brother has gone through is the normal thing. But to remain there too long is abnormal. We have the overcoming life within us. Why should we not overcome?
The only wise thing is to look up, for your redemption draws near. Do not look into yourself. Look up. Give the problems to the Lord. He is the only One who is able to save you to the uttermost.
This is what Paul did after he believed in the Lord Jesus: “Not I, but Christ.” This is the secret of overcoming.
So I hope our brother will be comforted on the one hand and encouraged to press on toward the goal until we see the Lord face to face.
The second question is this: In Sunday’s message, you said that the hardest thing to overcome is ourselves—not the world, Satan, or sin. How is overcoming ourselves different from overcoming sin?
Overcoming sin and overcoming self are two different things. Overcoming sin is something outward, but overcoming self is something within.
It is easier to overcome sin than to overcome self, because sin is outside of you, while self is within you. Sin is something that you may commit, but self is what you are. So it is very evident that it is harder to overcome self than to overcome sin.
Do not be content just with overcoming sin. Why? Because self is still with you. As long as self is there, sin will return to you.
So it is not just a matter of overcoming this sin or that sin. It is a matter of overcoming the source of sinning. Unless we overcome the source of sinning, we will continue to sin.
The sure way of overcoming sin is to overcome self. I think that is the difference: sin is what you commit; self is what you are.
Unless we overcome self, we have not solved the basic problem. Then we may have overcome sin, but sin will still be able to touch us.
So, brothers and sisters, do not be content just by overcoming some things that you usually commit. For instance, suppose before you believed in the Lord Jesus, you went somewhere that you should not go. After you believed in the Lord Jesus, the Lord began to speak to you, and you stopped going. It seems as if you have overcome.
But as long as your self has not been dealt with, sooner or later sin will return to your life. Solving sin is not the final solution. The solution is to deny self. As long as you deny self, sin will drop off.
Question number three: How can we be an overcomer after something sudden happens in our life that brings us down spiritually and causes us to stumble? How do we recover from such an event in a short period of time, to be ready for the Lord’s coming?
Life is unpredictable. Sometimes something you do not expect will come. But if you brood over these things instead of dealing with them, you fall into the trap of the enemy.
When in your spirit you sense that it is sin, be quick to deal with it. Do not allow it to continue on. The quicker, the better. If you do that, you will be delivered from sinning.
Our problem is that when we have sinned, we tend to brood over it, to think about it, but not take action. We need to take drastic action. We must not allow sin to remain in our lives even for a moment. Deal with it. Cast it off by the grace of God.
Of course, I know we cannot do it by ourselves. But thank God, the life that God has given to us is a life that overcame sin. So we can overcome—not by ourselves, but by the Spirit of God within us.
So, dear brothers and sisters, if you have any known sin remaining in your life, and you do not deal with it right away but brood over it instead of dealing with it, you will find that you are still under the grip of sin.
When the Holy Spirit begins to show you a sin, you need to deal with it right away.
I remember when I was a young Christian. By the grace of God, I did love God. I wanted to follow Him. I wanted to be His disciple. I was always afraid of being rejected by the Lord.
But there was one thing I could not overcome, and that was my love for my father.
My father was not only a good man; he was a good Christian. He loved the Lord. He gave himself totally to the Lord, and I loved my father. My father was a Methodist pastor.
But I was sprinkled on my head when I was a baby. So after I was saved and seeking the Lord, my friends talked to me about baptism by immersion.
I always argued with them. I said, “No, I have been baptized. My father sprinkled some water on my head and baptized me in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. I cannot despise the name of God.” Therefore, I refused to be immersed.
My friends tried for years to convince me. When I looked into the Bible, I myself was convicted that immersion was the right form, but I refused to do it. I always argued against it.
Why? Because I loved my father. I did not want to offend him. I secretly told the Lord, “When I have grown up and have my own family, then I will be baptized by immersion—but not now. It is not convenient.”
The last time my friend tried to persuade me, I argued with him again. So he went to bed and slept. He thought I was hopeless. I was sitting in his room, meditating and praying. I said, “Lord, I know to be baptized by immersion is the right way, but I cannot do it because I do not want to offend my father. After I have grown up and have my own family, I will be baptized by immersion.”
You know how we argue with God. Then suddenly, a voice came to me. This was the first time I heard a voice, almost audible:
He who loves his father and mother more than Me cannot be My disciple.
That word came with such power that I capitulated. I told the Lord, “If this is Your will, I will do it.”
It so happened that my friend lived next door to Watchman Nee. I quietly left the room and knocked next door. Watchman Nee came down to open the door. He knew me, and he knew my father. So he asked me, “What do you want?”
I said, “I want to be baptized by immersion.”
He said, “Does your father know?”
I said, “No, but God told me to do it.” And I did.
But I hid it from my father for a whole year. Whenever the Methodist church broke bread once a month, I tried to find an excuse to be away. My father never said a word. He was watching. I believe he knew something had happened to me, but he did not say a word.
After a whole year, the Lord began to convict me that I had to confess to my father. So I did.
Our family was very strange. We honored our father so much that if we wanted to talk to him, we had to make an appointment. But we were very close to our mother.
So I made an appointment with him, and I told him that I had been baptized by immersion. You know his reaction? He was sad.
He said, “I am not sad because you were baptized by immersion. If you wanted to be baptized by immersion, I would have done it for you. I am sad because you did not trust me.”
But thank God, that baptism by immersion was the beginning of my spiritual life. It opened up the spiritual world to me. It started me on the way of following the Lord.
So, brothers and sisters, how important it is! Even if it is a small thing in your life, if you know it is not the will of God, do not let it remain in you, because that will be the end of your spiritual life.
When the Spirit of God reveals anything to you, capitulate yourself. Deal with it, that the way may be opened for you to grow in Christ Jesus.
If there is something in your life that hinders you, and you know it, it is not a matter of how long it will remain. But if the Lord should come before your problem is solved, how sad you will be. You will be in outer darkness and gnashing your teeth. You will regret what you have done.
So, dear brothers and sisters, may I advise you? If there is something in your life that you know stands in your way of following the Lord, do not allow it to remain. By the grace of God, deal with it. Hand it over to the Lord.
You do not have the strength, but He is your strength. Then the way will be clear for you to follow the Lord with a clear conscience. This is what every one of us must do.
These are the questions that were given to me.
David and I were sitting over there, and Brother Kong has answered all the questions already. But we do want to press on here.
I have one two-part question. The first part asks: Brother Mac and Brother Stephen shared that we need to submit to the Holy Spirit if we want to truly enter into the reality of who we are in Christ. How can we know the will of God?
I believe that, probably next to the question, “Who am I?” the question, “How can I know the will of God?” is asked most often.
The wonderful thing is that our loving heavenly Father wants to reveal His will to us. Not knowing the will of God is not because of His lack of desire. He is a loving One who is anxiously desiring to show forth His will.
When we talk about the will of God, I am not sure exactly what is being asked here. That is one of the difficulties with written questions instead of personal fellowship one on one.
But we first have to make a distinction between the will of God and the will of God in specific things. The will of God is the governing influence throughout our lives. Once we know the will of God—and there is only one will of God—that will impact, in a practical way, every other decision we make in life.
One of the things for which I have been thankful over the years concerning this conference is that every year the will of God is presented to us. Every year it is presented in one aspect or another, bringing us back to God’s full heart and desire: that Christ be all and in all, that Christ would have His full sway in all our lives.
God has an eternal purpose. We look at it in different aspects, but it is really that Christ would be all and in all.
Once we see that, it starts impacting us in very different ways. I love Paul’s testimony in Galatians, where he says that God was pleased to reveal His Son in me.
Sometimes we have a false image of the Father. We think we have to reach a certain level of spirituality, qualify somehow, or do something before He will let us have a little glimpse of what He is and what His heart is. No. He wants to show us from the very beginning all that is upon His heart.
We cannot take all that in. As Paul says, we see in part. But let us not look at our God as a stingy God, trying to hold back and make things mysterious. It is His heart and His desire. It pleases Him to reveal His Son and His will in us.
There is nothing on His side of this equation that is hindering in any way. It always comes back to us: are we in that place of really seeking Him and knowing Him?
Once we really know what the will of God is, it becomes very practical in our life. I have heard many people say, when we talk about vision or knowing God’s purpose, “That is so mystical. Tell me the practical matters of life.”
Unless we know this governing influence in our life, all our practical decisions are based on the wrong foundation, and we will go astray. We have to have it settled.
A sister in California greatly blessed me. When she and her husband were looking for a house, they talked about bedrooms and other things, but two of the key criteria in selecting their home were that they wanted to be near the saints and they wanted room for the saints to come in and have fellowship.
That is the practical application of the will of God: Christ being all and in all, Christ impacting our daily lives and our daily choices.
It impacts our jobs. It impacts our marriages. When young people are looking for a mate, we should ask: Does this person have the heart to enter into all that God wants and the calling He has? Many say, “This person I met is a great Christian.” Well, that is wonderful. But is there a kindred spirit and a kindred heart to walk the way that we sense God has called us to walk in these last days?
Tragically, many young believers marry, and both are good Christians, but one has a vision to go one way and the other goes another way. They get nowhere. This matter of knowing the will of God is vital.
In my own life, I was working for one of the large accounting firms, KPMG, in their national health-care consulting practice. That meant I would get up Monday morning and fly out, then fly back home Friday night. I was on the road most of the week.
In my early days of earthly ambition, I thought it was a great life. But when the people in the hotels and at the car-rental agency start to know your name, you are traveling too much.
Then I began to see something. I remember a magazine called New Wine. On the front, Bob Mumford had written an article called “Living Stones Being Built Together.” The Lord used that to open my eyes that there was something beyond Mac simply being a Christian. God had a desire for these living stones to be built together.
As the Spirit was working within me, I knew: How can I be built with brothers and sisters if I am only there on Sunday morning?
In the past, I was content to be there Sunday morning, go to the meeting, be faithful in that meeting, and fly out for the rest of the week. But then I saw in part that there was something more. Stella and I began to pray, “Lord, there has got to be this change.”
Praise God, He honored that. There was a transition, and I was able to be among the brothers and sisters far more and have the privilege of being built together.
One of the lies of the enemy is that vision is mystical and impractical, and that the will of God is mysterious. It is not. That is a myth. Once we see a glimpse of it, it becomes very practical in our life. It influences the smallest decisions we make because we see that we are related, we are in the Christ.
If I move this way, it impacts my brothers and sisters. If I am not there with them, how can we be built together?
The question says that we need to submit to the Holy Spirit. Yes, but there is another aspect: we need to submit to the Holy Spirit and the cross. Please do not leave the cross out of this.
Anyone who has been through the charismatic movement knows what it is like to have the Holy Spirit without the cross, and you do not want to go there.
As we submit to the Holy Spirit and the cross, the Lord shows us His will in a fuller and greater way. It is a matter of being available to receive and having an honest, open heart toward what He wants for us.
Once we know the will, then the little specific wills about this and that will fall into place.
The second part of the question says, “I think that deep down, I do want to follow the will of God. But consistently, in moments of temptation, I sense part of me making a conscious decision to disobey because I want to. Afterwards, I feel regret. In these moments, I think I am aware that I can allow the Holy Spirit to apply the truth of my death with Christ, but it feels like I have no strength to choose to do so. I am not sure if the problem is a lack of submission, incomplete revelation of the truth, or something else.”
Not knowing the specifics, I do not know either whether it is lack of submission or incomplete revelation. But I want to echo what our brothers have shared. That is the real answer.
There are two words in this question that I want to touch on: “consistently” and “regret.”
Every one of us, as we go through life, falls into temptation. I do not know anybody who is batting a thousand in resisting temptation. We wake up, give ourselves to the Lord, consecrate ourselves, prepare ourselves, and go out. At some point, we fall into temptation. That is why we appreciate the blood of the Lamb more and more. We take the blood over us, cleanse up that sin, and go on.
But if there is something in our life that we keep consistently stumbling over, there is an issue there.
Sometimes, when we have those issues in our life, we get into self-diagnosis. We try to figure out what is wrong instead of allowing the Lord to show us.
I am a CPA by training. Brothers and sisters often come to me and say, “Mac, I have a financial problem.” Ninety-nine percent of the time, I tell them, “No, you do not. You do not have a financial problem. The financial issues in your life are symptoms of another problem.”
Apply that to this question. If there is something consistently bothering us, more than likely that is not the issue. It is a symptom of something deeper in our life that we need to allow the Holy Spirit to deal with.
A person may say, “I have this temper. I lose my temper.” But temper is not the problem. Temper is a symptom of something. The pride of your life always wants its way, and when somebody does not let you have your way, you lose your temper.
We often look at these outward symptoms as the problem. No, there is a deeper problem: the pride of life, the lust of the eyes, and various other matters. It gets back to what our brother was talking about—the root issue of self and the dealing with it.
If there is something consistently going on in your life, remember that we do not have to go through this alone.
We have brothers and sisters who can walk with us through these things. Too often, it is simply the pride of life. We do not want to open ourselves to a brother or sister and say, “Would you really help me? Would you walk with me through this? Can I be accountable to you in this issue?”
We are thankful that we are in the body of Christ. There are brothers and sisters who are willing to help.
There are those who have been through almost every situation we can encounter in life. Are we willing to allow them to bring Christ into our lives and, as Christ met them, to receive from them?
Proverbs says that he who walks with wise men will be wise. Walk with a wise person. Find someone who has wisdom from God in a specific subject and walk with them.
As our brother said in introducing this time, the brother or sister walking with you is not going to give you the answer. But if that person is truly wise, he or she will walk with you, direct you to Christ, and provide practical help in working through the situation.
Every generation has its own challenges. The specifics may be different, but the root issues are the same. There are those who can help us. We walk through these things together, and that is the beauty of it.
The second matter in the question is this: “Afterwards, I feel regret.”
One of the tragedies of the days in which we are living is that so many precious truths within Christianity have been watered down. Often, people want you to feel sorrow or regret. But the Lord wants to bring us far beyond regret. He wants to bring us to repentance.
In 2 Corinthians 7, there are two kinds of sorrow. There is a sorrow in which you simply feel sorrowful—the sorrow of the world. But there is a sorrow that leads to repentance.
Regret is an element of repentance. You are sorry for what you have done. But if we simply stop there and regret what we have done, we block the Lord, the Holy Spirit, from working.
If we continue—if we regret, are sorry, see the sin we have committed, and repent fully, confessing it to the Lord and allowing Him to come in and meet us—then there is a repentance that leads to life.
Sorrow without repentance leads on to death. But sorrow with repentance leads to life. Do not simply go around regretting what you have done. Allow that sorrow to be used as a stimulus to bring you to your knees and bring you back into the spirit of repentance, so that the life of Christ can lead you on.
As He leads us on, as our brother mentioned, He will get to the root issues within ourselves. He will show us. He will strengthen us to resist sins and temptations from without and to deal with the issues of self from within. But it is only as we allow Him and give Him the freedom and liberty to do that.
I received two questions. One is a two-part question, and the other is more of a parenting question, for which I am not sure I am qualified to answer, but I will do my best.
The first question reads: On Saturday afternoon, Brother Pang talked about God loving us and holding us. But Romans 1:24, 26, and 28 say that God gave them over. In which case will God hold us, and in which case will God give us over?
Before we begin, we should read the verses mentioned. This is Romans 1, beginning with Romans 1:18:
For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness.
Paul continues down to Romans 1:24:
Wherefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts unto uncleanness, that their bodies should be dishonored among themselves.
Then Romans 1:26:
For this cause God gave them up unto vile passions.
And Romans 1:28:
And even as they refused to have God in their knowledge, God gave them up unto a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not fitting.
In the context of this message from Paul, he is referring to unbelievers. These are those who have suppressed the truth. They have turned to human wisdom, then began to worship idols, animals, and created things rather than the Creator.
Because of these things, God gave them over to the lusts already present in their hearts and to impurity. The reference in the question has to do with those who do not belong to the Lord in this way. They are unbelievers.
I once heard a gospel speaker ask, “Are we sinners because we sin, or do we sin because we are sinners?” Which came first?
The answer is that we sin because there is a sinful nature within us. No matter how hard we try not to sin, it is impossible because of the sinful nature we inherited from our fathers, going all the way back through time.
The matter concerning those in Romans is that they never belonged to the Lord. When they were born, they were already sinners and unbelievers. The Lord did not so much let go of them, because they never belonged to Him.
When we are all born, we belong to the world and to the ruler of this world because of the sinful nature within us. We needed, by the wonderful grace of the Lord, for the gospel to come to us; and when we accepted it, we were transferred into a different kingdom.
In contrast, turn to John 10. This concerns what was shared on Saturday. John 10:26-29 says:
But ye believe not, because ye are not of My sheep.
My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me:
And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, and no one shall snatch them out of My hand.
My Father, who hath given them unto Me, is greater than all; and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand.
This passage tells those of us who belong to Him and have been saved that we are His sheep. When He calls us, we hear His voice, recognize His voice, come to Him, and follow after Him. He knows our name, and we know Him.
Then He says, “I give unto them eternal life.” When we were saved out of this world, a life came into our hearts that cannot die. It is the life of our Lord that came into our life, and no matter what happens to that life, it cannot die.
Then He says that no one shall snatch them out of His hand. He holds on to us and does not let us go. I do not know anyone strong enough to pry the Lord’s hands open and steal us away from Him.
So these are different groups of people. The Romans 1 passage concerns unbelievers; what we shared on Saturday concerned those who are saved.
Brother Nee described God’s purpose as a line going toward the horizon. When man sinned, it was as though we fell off that line. The Lord had to come, intervene, give His life for us, and save us. When we were saved, we came back up to the line, and the purpose goes on.
Salvation means that we were lost, and the Lord sought to gather us back. But after we are saved, we come back to this line, and we find that the Lord’s purpose is much more than merely saving us back to where we were before. He has had an eternal purpose from the beginning.
As we move on and desire in our hearts for that purpose to be fulfilled in the Lord’s church and in our own lives, we experience the full force of the enemy’s attack.
The enemy cannot bear that a saved person might move toward the purpose of God. So among Christians, the warfare is tremendous. If the Lord did not hold us during these times, many of us could say that we could never go forward.
This holding speaks, in the context of what we shared, not so much of salvation, but of the Lord holding a saved one so that he may keep going toward the purpose of God.
We really need it, because we underestimate how much our enemy is against this.
There is one further point: remember that the Lord desires every person to be saved. There is no one whom the Lord is not longing to save. Before we are saved, we have chosen not to belong to Him; nevertheless, there is not one person whom He does not desire to save.
The second question reads: “Dear Brother David Pang, how do we help the next generation know who they are in Christ and have a sense of identity in Christ, given the influence of the media trying to tell them who they are?”
I mentioned my teenage son last night, and I asked him a little about this question.
This is a question all parents are asking and praying about. I do not know the answer, but as our brother reminded us, I know the One who knows the answer. So I pray for my children.
My son said something interesting: the media is not telling us who we are; it is reflecting what we already want to be. There is a nature in us, and the media knows the things we like. It responds to those things, and there is a communication between a teenager’s interests and longings and what the media presents. It just keeps spiraling.
How do we prevent that dialogue from being controlled by the media and the soul-life of our children? I do not know the full answer. All I can say for my family is that every morning when I wake up, I pray for my children. I try to know what is happening in their lives so that I can pray for those things.
Sometimes, when I know something is going on in my son’s life, I text him to tell him that I am praying for him about it.
I try to remind them that I love them. Sometimes it drives them nuts. I try my best to communicate with them in whatever language they use. Sometimes I have to type to them even though they are two rooms away, because the door is closed and they have earphones on.
On Monday nights, I try to play video games with them. I have an account on some website, and I play a game where I am on a horse trying to take over a fort. I am not good at it. When I start to die, my sons come and save me from the other team.
But it is a way for me to communicate with them. I think the Lord does not want the dialogue to be controlled by somebody else. The Lord wants a voice in the dialogue.
When they are children, the Lord’s main way of communicating with them is through their parents, if we are believers. Brothers and sisters, we cannot cede that to someone else.
If we are the Lord’s, we need to engage with our children. We need to engage in ways beyond asking to see their report card or merely teaching them right from wrong. We must do those things, but communication needs to be in a form in which they can understand us and we can engage with them.
The Lord also convicted me that I need to find time to spend with them.
Work is so all-consuming in the world today. We barely have time for the Lord, and we do not have time for our children. We need to carve out time specifically to be with them—not just to get it over with, but to try very hard to engage with them.
Children are very observant. If we want to teach them that we have an identity in Christ, we need to live that out in real life.
My children are always watching. They know whether what I share on Sunday or pray in a prayer meeting is the same as how I live throughout the week. They begin watching us much earlier than we think.
If we really care about their having an identity in Christ, we need to let the cross come upon our life. We need to have a longing in our heart to engage with the Lord and have Him be the Head in our house.
This is hard. Sometimes we come home tired and in a bad mood. But we need to let the Lord have the headship in our house. That includes how I interact with my wife. My wife and I need to have a relationship bound together in the Lord and in His purposes. I think the children can see this.
We also need to make sure that identity in Christ is not merely learned behavior. I remember sharing with youth at a conference. A family was driving me to the airport afterward, and the mother said, “We really want to teach our children to be good kids like you.”
I was sitting in the back seat, and I felt terrible. I did not know what to say. But I felt the Holy Spirit telling me that I could not let that go.
I told the sister, “It has nothing to do with being good kids. If we take that point of view and try to teach the children to be good kids, we will lose every single one of them, because that is not the point. There is no life there.”
Our identity in Christ is a real, living relationship. We want our children to see it in our lives. We want to allow the Lord to give us headship in leading them and communicating with them.
We should pray for them every day. We should communicate and talk with them. We should allow them to ask us questions. With all the things happening in the world today, if they cannot ask us about these matters, they will ask somebody else.
If the Lord has charged me, as my son’s father, to be the Lord’s mouthpiece in the house, I have to submit to that and take it very seriously.
We need to engage with them. We need to put the world, our work, and the ambition of work in the closet and seal it off, because the enemy is trying to tear our families apart and tear the church apart through the world and the warfare of the world.
My last thought is not a biblical answer, so you may take it or leave it. I think this question was written by a parent, because we all feel this burden nowadays. But there are others who need to hear this: those in their twenties and thirties.
My son told me last night, “How come we do not have any teachers who are not our parents?” What I know for sure is that no child wants to listen to his father all the time. It must drive them crazy.
There is a great need for those who have been saved by the Lord in their twenties and thirties, who have a heart for children, to engage with them. The children listen to you. They do not always listen to us anymore; they listen to you.
If you have a heart for it, many parents will be thankful if you engage with the children, help them, take them alongside, and lead them down the way.
Every generation has been given a ministry by the Lord. I believe this is a very important ministry. The world has targeted those in their twenties and thirties. The enemy has created a world that is so caught up in self.
If any of you in your twenties and thirties would reach out to preteens and teens—and I know that many do—I can tell you that many parents are grateful. There may be an eternal weight of glory in these children being raised up to understand how precious it is to be a member of the body of Christ, to know Christ, and to have a purpose for their lives as they go forward.
The other brothers had a couple of questions. I had seven. Obviously, I did not get the point across, because almost all of them had to do with this corporate matter of the beautiful Christ—the Christ—as I tried to present it last night. Since we are out of time, I just want to make a few statements.
I like the title of a recent biography of T. Austin-Sparks: Shaped by Vision. I would to God that we, as brothers and sisters in the body of Christ, would pray that God would give us that overarching vision which has a way of setting everything in perspective.
There is an overarching vision: the Christ, both personally and corporately. It actually happens at the same time.
If somebody sees such a vision, he sees devastation. When you see what the Lord desires and then see what exists, there is devastation.
Pick any one of the seven churches in Revelation. There is devastation. There is coming short of the mark. There is a lack of vision. There is a loss of love. There is so much failure.
When you see the overarching vision, after being devastated in your own life—I did not share part B of what happened after I saw that beautiful vision—I was done in. May we all be done in.
If we really see the Lord in His glory, in a shaping vision, we immediately sense how important these times are.
Paul spoke of the vision under the Messiah for Israel: “Behold then the goodness and severity of God.” Do you realize that we are in that context now? His coming is so near. The Holy Spirit is speaking prophetically to the church, but most of these questions have to do with a church that is not listening—brothers fighting and all kinds of things that would not happen if we realized both the kindness and the severity of God.
God has allowed us to live in great blessing, but we must not miss His severity—how strongly He feels about the preeminence of Christ, that Christ would be all and in all in the church.
It is pressing. The Holy Spirit presses anyone who has an ear to hear what the Spirit is saying.
The Lord has been so merciful to us. He has blessed us wonderfully. But let us not mistake what time it is.
If you look beyond the surface of that kindness, there is an all-out warfare of Satan trying to get you defeated. Your flesh is an enemy against the Spirit’s progress in your life. Your bearing witness will bring persecution from the world.
Some ask, “How is it possible to have a vision of the Christ and still have a comfortable church, where we are used to all kinds of things, get along sweetly, and it is all nice?”
If you have any understanding of what is happening in the last days, things will not be all sweet and nice. There is warfare going on.
The Lord is kind to us. He has blessed us wonderfully. But the Jews mistook the blessing of God and did not realize how severely He was disciplining Israel, as Paul revealed in Romans 9 through 11.
We are greatly blessed, but Paul’s analogy in Romans 9 through 11 is also an analogy for the church. We are blessed, but He is dealing with us.
When you see what Christ wants, you see devastation. But what else do you see? You see that He is perfecting a remnant of people whose hearts are after Him.
If we fellowship, love the Lord with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength, and love our brethren according to this new commandment, John seemed to feel that this was sufficient for us to overcome.
It is a desperate time. The church is in ruins when you consider the whole scheme of things. But there are precious overcomers.
When that day comes and the Lord returns, there will be overcomers out of the Thyatira church and the Sardis church—can you believe it?—as well as Philadelphia and even Laodicea.
If you are in a nice, sleepy, comfortable church right now, you are in Laodicea. You join ranks with the whole spirit of the world in the church today. But if you really see what is going on, you lay hold of the Lord and say, “Lord, I do not care about anybody else, but I am going to press on until I come to that goal.”
“I see that goal. I see that we are one. I see that You are all in all and You are all in us. I see it. I am going to press on. Nobody is going to stop me.”
You fight against yourself, your discouragement, and your sense of devastation. Do not be passive in this hour. Be one who says, “I will press on toward the mark.”
When the Lord comes and receives you, He will say, “Well done, My faithful sister. You pressed on.”
No matter where you are, no matter what kind of fellowship you are in, press on. Some are suffering because they are in a fellowship with no vision and no life—only routine, with brothers doing less than they should. Let us pray for our brothers.
Let us pray that they may be shaped by vision. Let us pray for our assemblies and our worship to be shaped by the vision of something large, something real, something living—a new creation.
Behold, I tell you a mystery: the Lord may come at any moment. Yet when the Lord comes, there will be a child who has just been born. There will be somebody who has just been saved. There will be a brand-new testimony brought to birth as a new creation somewhere in the world.
And the Lord will come.
So we live by faith, not by sight. We do not always live under the full dome of an overarching vision, but once we see it, it recalibrates us and causes us to desire to see that which we have seen and to press on.
Through the power of His resurrection, through the fellowship of His sufferings, being made conformable to His death—that is our goal. We are going to Jesus.
So I think that answers—well, that means the Lord has to answer all those other six questions.