Prayer: Lord, we worship You. We look to You as the wonderful One to open up Your mysterious word to us. Lead every one of us into Yourself. May we learn to experience You and Your dispensing, and may we experience all the riches that are in this dispensing, so that these riches can become our element within and our expression without. Lord, we look to You for the cleansing of Your blood and the anointing of Your holy ointment once again. May we have Your flow within and Your word without, so that we can have the proper expression and the utterance to speak You forth. Lord, water us. Apart from You, we are just dead people. Although we can plant, water, and speak, we cannot give others life, much less give others the growth. Lord, the One who can give people life and growth is You, the Lord of life and the all-inclusive Christ. We look to You to come down among us from heaven. We feel that the heaven above us is open, that our spirits are shining, and that Your word is clear. Lord, grant us a deep impression. May we touch You and gain You. You are the One whom we can never exhaust in our experience. You are also the One whom we will always remember in eternity. Amen.
In the previous chapter we saw that there are three layers in the divine revelation of the Bible. The first layer is God's gospel and salvation, the second is God's blessing and prosperity, and the third is God's economy and dispensing. Before a person believes in the Lord, he is dead in trespasses and sins. He lives according to the lusts of the flesh and carries out the desires of the flesh and of the thoughts (Eph. 2:1-3). After he hears the gospel and receives God's salvation, he is made alive, and he enters into the first layer of the divine revelation. Later, he may experience the Lord's blessing and prosperity and may enter into the second layer of the divine revelation. Perhaps after a long time, he will begin to realize that his experience is too low. I myself have had this kind of experience. It was a long time after I began to serve the Lord that I realized that there is a third layer, which is God's economy and dispensing. This layer is not related to salvation or to blessing and peace. Rather, it concerns God's economy and dispensing. God is the unique noble One in the universe. Can such a noble and great One be without any endeavor? Did God save us, the sinners, just to make us happy and peaceful, so that we would behave properly and would one day be brought to heaven to pass through the pearly gates, walk on the golden streets, and enjoy eternal bliss forever?
If we have not seen God's economy and dispensing, even if we were to abandon everything of the world for the Lord, He would still ask us one day, "For what purpose do you want Me?" Perhaps we would say that we want Him because we want to enjoy Him. But if we remain in the first two layers, we may enjoy the Lord, but the Lord cannot have His enjoyment. If we remain only in the first two layers, even if we love the Lord, enjoy Him, are revived every morning, and overcome every day, and even if we love the church and are for the church, when the crucial moment comes, we will be exposed and will be shown to be only for ourselves and not for the Lord or His church. If we see God's economy and dispensing, we will not care for our own achievements and gains. God's economy is not for our achievement, but for us, the chosen and regenerated ones, to be filled by the Spirit to the extent that the Lord becomes everything in us, so that we may be delivered from the old man and may be built up with all the saints to be God's habitation (Hymns, #501). This is a matter of God's habitation; it has nothing to do with our personal gain or loss. In the church we must have the discernment and the insight to see God's economy and dispensing. Never listen to or talk about right and wrong. All rights and wrongs are based on personal profit and loss. Those things that are profitable to a person will be considered by him as right, and the things that are disadvantageous to a person will be considered by him as wrong. How terrible this is!