The Ministry Of The Word Vol 26 No 05 God S Economy In Faith

This issue of The Ministry of the Word contains the eight messages of the international training for elders and responsible ones hosted by Living Stream Ministry on April 1-3, 2022. The messages were provided via webcast from Anaheim, California, and the mutual fellowship, prophesying, and studying by groups were practiced locally by the various churches that participated. The general subject of this series of messages is "God's Economy in Faith." God's economy is God's household administration, which is to dispense Himself in Christ into His chosen and redeemed people that He may have a house to express Himself, which house is the church, the Body of Christ. God's economy is initiated and developed in the sphere of faith (1 Tim. 1:4). Faith is the substantiation of the divine facts concerning God revealed in His Word. Faith is the unique requirement for us to contact God in His economy and the unique way for us to carry out His economy. Faith is a proclamation that we are unable to fulfill God's requirements but that God has done everything for us and that we receive all God has planned for us, all God has done for us, and all God has given to us. For this reason, as believers, we need to be persons of prayer who pray with God as our faith. The real significance of prayer is to contact God in our spirit and to absorb God Himself. A praying person will cooperate with God, work together with God, and allow God to express Himself and His desire from within him and through him, thereby enabling God to accomplish His purpose. All the saints need faith and are the household of faith. The leading ones are particularly charged to be men full of faith in order that they can infuse the saints under their care with faith so that all can experience God's economy daily and even moment by moment. The leading ones' manner of life, the way they live and conduct themselves, should be worthy of consideration and an example of faith that is worthy of imitation (Heb. 13:7). When those who take the lead have such imitable faith, they are participating in the apostolic ministry, which cooperates with Christ's heavenly ministry to shepherd the saints according to God (Acts 20:28). We live the Christian life and run the Christian race by looking away unto Jesus--the Author, the Originator, of our faith and the Perfecter, the Completer, of our faith--and by turning away from every other object to Him who is the greatest attraction in the universe. If we look away unto Him as such a wonderful and all-inclusive One, He will minister Himself as heaven, life, and strength into us, transfusing and infusing us with all that He is, so that we may be able to run the heavenly race and live the heavenly life on earth. In this way He will carry us through all the lifelong pathway of faith and lead and bring us into glory. Furthermore, our faith in Christ brings us into the life union with Christ. This faith links us to the Triune God and enables us to run the race that every saved Christian must run with endurance to win the prize. We can live the Christian life, live Christ, by this linking organ of faith. By this faith we are joined to God in Christ to participate in all that the all-inclusive Christ is, has, and has attained to, for the producing of the organic members of Christ to constitute and build up His organic Body, which will consummate in the New Jerusalem as the enlargement and expression of the eternal Triune God. The Announcements section at the end of this issue contains a list of upcoming conferences and trainings hosted by Living Stream Ministry and a website link for information related to similar events in Europe.

This issue of The Ministry of the Word contains the eight messages of the international training for elders and responsible ones hosted by Living Stream Ministry in Anaheim, California, on October 7-9, 2022. The general subject of this series of messages is “Loving the Lord and Loving One Another for the Organic Building Up of the Church as the Body of Christ.”

This issue of The Ministry of the Word contains the first eight of the sixteen messages given during the fall 2021 term of the full-time training in Anaheim, California. The general subject of this series of messages is "Chapters Five through Eight of Romans--the Kernel of the Bible." These first eight messages and the subsequent eight messages (published in an upcoming issue) will focus on Romans 5 and 6. This general subject will then be continued in the messages of the spring 2022 term and will focus on Romans 7 and 8. The life and death form two contrasting lines in chapters 5 through 8, showing that man is at the center of a triangular situation between God and Satan, that is, between life and death. The tree of life and the tree of knowledge (the tree of death) issue in two lines--the line of life and the line of death--that run through the entire Bible and consummate in the book of Revelation. The line of life begins with the tree of life in Genesis 2 and issues in the New Jerusalem in Revelation 22 as the city of the water of life with the tree of life, the light of life, and the glory of life. Similarly, the line of death begins with the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in Genesis 2 and ends with the lake of fire in Revelation 20. The kernel of the Bible is that Christ has been revealed into us as life and that we live, have our being, and exist by Christ as the divine life. God put us into Christ with the desire that we would be transformed and conformed to the image of His Son so that we might be thoroughly one with Christ. In this way we are built up together as the living Body of Christ to contain and express Christ for the Father's glory and for our glorification in Christ. Romans 5 reveals that the result of our justification is the full enjoyment of God in Christ as our life.

This issue of The Ministry of the Word contains Messages 9 through 16 given during the fall 2021 term of the full-time training in Anaheim, California, as the continuation of the general subject "Chapters Five through Eight of Romans--the Kernel of the Bible." The sixteen messages in this term focus on Romans 5 and 6, while future messages will focus on Romans 7 and 8. The eight messages of the April 2022 issue draw from Witness Lee's understanding of Romans 5 and 6 in his earlier ministry. The eight messages of this issue present a further understanding of Romans 5 and 6 based on the latter part of his ministry, in which Brother Lee emphasized the matters of being saved in life and reigning in life (5:10, 17). In life indicates that both being saved and reigning are related to the organic aspect of God's complete salvation, which is the fulfillment of God's salvation through the life of Christ for the believers to be transformed and to grow and mature in the life of God. Brother Lee thus began to speak about God's salvation in life in a brand new way, especially in view of the great diamond of God's eternal economy. In his earlier ministry Brother Lee spoke about our being saved in life from particular items, such as worldliness, Satan, sin, and death. In the latter part of his ministry, he saw that organic salvation is our deification, a process that includes regeneration, feeding, sanctification, renewing, transformation, building, conformation, and glorification and that results in our becoming God in life and nature but not in the Godhead. The goal of organic salvation is the building--the corporate expression of the Triune God in Christ through the church, the mingling of God with man, and the enlargement and expansion of God. The secret of all the experiences of God's organic salvation and the building of God is the Spirit with our spirit, that is, the consummated Spirit being and working together with the believers' created and regenerated spirit. Romans further reveals that the believers need to reign in life over all things for the Body life (cf. 8:17, 29; 12:5). By experiencing grace upon grace, the believers reign in life not only over sin, death, and Satan but even over all things. To reign in life is to conquer, subdue, and rule over Satan, the world, sin, the flesh, ourselves, and all the environmental circumstances and to subdue all kinds of insubordination. The issue of our reigning in life, living under the ruling of the divine life, is the real and practical Body life expressed in the church life (16:1, 4-5, 16). The Announcements section at the end of this issue contains a list of upcoming conferences and trainings hosted by Living Stream Ministry and a website link for information related to similar events in Europe.

This issue of The Ministry of the Word contains Messages 17 through 24 given during the spring 2022 term of the full-time training in Anaheim, California, as the continuation of the general subject "Chapters Five through Eight of Romans--the Kernel of the Bible." The sixteen messages in this term emphasize Romans 7 and especially chapter 8. The general subject of this series of messages is derived from footnote 1 on Romans 5:14, which says that chapters 5 through 8 of Romans "can be called the kernel of the Bible." The footnote also points out that life and death form two contrasting lines through these chapters and that man is in the middle between the line of life, which represents God, and the line of death, which represents Satan. Life and death are the intrinsic essence of the kernel of the Bible. In Romans 7 and 8 we see that Paul discovered four laws--four spontaneous, automatic, effortless, and unconscious universal principles, or functions. In particular, there are three lives and four laws revealed in these chapters. The first law, the law of God, is the moral and objective law. The second law is the law of good in man's soul, especially the mind, which corresponds to the created human life and which desires to carry out the law of God. The third law is the law of sin and of death, which derives from the evil satanic life in our flesh; this law is stronger than the law of good within and thus seizes man's desire to do good and turns it into an opportunity to sin. The fourth law is the law of the Spirit of life, which is higher than and overcomes the law of sin and of death; this law derives from the uncreated divine life that is now in our regenerated human spirit. We need to see these three lives and four laws in order to experience the indwelling Christ as the law of the Spirit of life. We also need to see what the flesh is. The flesh denotes the totality of the fallen old man, our entire fallen being; man is totally flesh because the fallen being today is under the dominion of the fallen flesh. The flesh is enmity against God, the flesh is not subject to God's law, the flesh is not able to subject itself to the law of God, and the flesh can never please God. Every aspect of our flesh, whether good or evil, is an enemy of God's authority. Whatever is of the flesh is against God's throne; it will be used by Satan, the subtle one, the enemy of God, to hinder God's purpose. The flesh is the "meeting hall" and the compound of sin, death, and Satan; the flesh is a hopeless case and can never be improved. However, in His wisdom and sovereignty God uses our flesh as a compelling force that causes us to turn to our spirit. We are either in the spirit or in the flesh; there is no third place for us to be. The believer is a miniature garden of Eden--with God as the tree of life in his spirit, Satan as the tree of knowledge in his flesh, and his mind in between. In Romans 8 the mind is neutral, being between the regenerated, mingled spirit and the fallen body, the flesh. Setting the mind on the spirit is the key to death or life. Because both Satan and God are in us, our mind has become a battlefield between God and Satan. Whether we are one with Satan or one with God depends upon where we set our mind. In order to fight the battle against the enemy, we must know that the mind is the battlefield and that the way to protect and cover our mind is to turn it to the Lord all the time. The Bible requires only one thing of us--that we walk according to the mingled spirit, which is to live, move, act, behave, have our being, and do everything in the mingled spirit. While we remain in the touch with the Lord, staying in contact with Him in our spirit, the law of the Spirit of life works automatically, spontaneously, and effortlessly within us. By the working, the spreading, of the law of the Spirit of life within us, God makes us the same as He is in life, nature, and expression. We are conformed to the image of the firstborn Son of God by the working of the law of the Spirit of life. The Announcements section at the end of this issue contains a list of upcoming conferences and trainings hosted by Living Stream Ministry and a website link for information related to similar events in Europe.

This issue of The Ministry of the Word contains the nine messages of the international training for elders and responsible ones hosted by Living Stream Ministry in Manila, Philippines, on October 5-7, 2023. The general subject of this series of messages is “Living and Serving according to God’s Economy concerning the Church”

This issue of The Ministry of the Word contains a complete record of the twelve messages given as the crystallization-study of 1 and 2 Samuel in the December 2021 semiannual training, which was streamed via webcast from Anaheim, California. The Key Statements on the following page embody and summarize the crucial truths and main burdens covered in these twelve messages.The Reports and Announcements section contains an announcement concerning Living Stream Ministry's digital newsletter, "Having This Ministry…," "An Update concerning Europe," and important information concerning upcoming conferences and trainings hosted by Living Stream Ministry with a website link to information on similar events in Europe.