All of the full-time trainees are being killed every day. To eat food and stay in dormitories against their choice is a killing. Under God's divine and sovereign arrangement, our entire environment is a killing. All the things in our environment are like knives to kill us. The wives, the husbands, the children, the brothers, and everything in our environment are used by the Lord as knives to kill us.

It is difficult to say whether we are enjoying the Lord or suffering in the Christian life. Sometimes we are in the "day" enjoying the Lord. At other times, our spiritual day is unclear with very little shining. Then there are times when it seems that we are suffering in the night. But we need to realize that the earth cannot exist without night. The earth can only exist with days and nights. According to the Bible, there is first the evening and then the morning (Gen. 1:5). The Bible starts from the night, but we start from the day.

We may think that the Christian life is always a pleasant, happy life. But this happy life does not exist by itself. If the Christian life were merely a happy life, the apostle Paul would not have needed to charge us to rejoice (Phil. 4:4). While we are suffering and wiping away our tears, we should rejoice. In order to weep, we do not need any kind of encouragement. Paul does not charge us to weep in the Lord, but he does charge us to rejoice in the Lord. If we do not exercise our spirit to rejoice in the midst of our killing environment, we cannot have any joy.

God in His sovereignty is putting us all the time under the killing of the cross. The apostle Paul was under the killing of the cross, and so are we. We do not experience as much suffering and persecution as he did, but we are still under this killing. This is God's divine arrangement.

In marriage life, both the husband and the wife experience being killed. I encourage all the young people to get married. To frustrate people from being married is a teaching of demons (1 Tim. 4:1-3). Marriage life, however, is a suffering. A sister can be a very good wife, yet she is also a killing factor to her husband. The husbands are also the killing factors to the wives. When a person is single, he is still somewhat free, but when a person gets married, he enters into a cage. In marriage life, our freedom is taken away, and we suffer.

The killing of the cross, the killing of Christ's death, ushers in resurrection. When we are willing to suffer and be killed, we live Christ, we magnify Christ, and Christ is manifested in us. Then we are transformed. We enjoy Christ under the killing of His death. I see many of the saints smiling, and their smiling is the manifestation of Christ. They are smiling while they are under the killing of the cross. On the other hand, we Christians, at least to a certain extent, are hypocrites. A hypocrite is an actor with a false appearance, and this false appearance is a mask. We may wear a mask before others, but that mask is not the real person. Many times we are not so genuine. Instead, we are pretending. As we are under the killing of Christ's death, Christ as the genuine One needs to be manifested in us.