We have covered the first four basic visions we have received of the Lord through these past sixty years, our vision concerning God, concerning the Father, concerning the Son, and concerning the Spirit. Now we come to our vision concerning God’s economy.
In God’s economy we have seen God’s desire, which was in God’s heart even before the foundation of the world. Second, we have also seen God’s good pleasure. God has a desire and He has a good pleasure. Based on His pleasure, He made a plan; He formed a purpose with His plan and chose a number of people and predestinated them unto sonship. These are five crucial items: God’s desire, His pleasure, His choice, His predestination, and His plan (Eph. 1:4-5, 9, 11; 3:11). For these five things God surely needs an economy, an arrangement, an administration, on a large scale. He needs a schedule to carry out His plan which is for His predestination, according to His choice, according to His pleasure, and according to His desire.
The economy of God is to dispense Himself into His chosen, predestinated, and redeemed people as their life, their life supply, and their everything. We have spent much time to study the Greek word for economy or dispensation used in Ephesians 1:10; 3:9 and 1 Timothy 1:4—oikonomia. This Greek word is a compound word made up of oikos, meaning house, and nomos, meaning law. If you trace the root of this word, it goes back to a word that refers to the parceling out of food, the distributing of food as in parcels. This root word also means to distribute food to the cattle for grazing. It is God’s economy to parcel Himself out to us as our life and as our life supply.
In God’s economy He dispenses Himself into His people as life, as life supply, and as everything to them. He dispenses Himself as their strength, their power, their wisdom, their righteousness, their holiness, their love, their kindness, and even as their attributes and virtues. This is God’s economy. Out of this economy many believers are being produced to be the components of the Body of God’s Son for a full expression of the Triune God. This is our vision concerning God’s economy.
Brothers, I surely hope you all could spend time to get into these five matters concerning our vision of God, of the Father, of Christ, of the Spirit, and of God’s economy. Every point is fully and properly grounded in particular verses of the Bible, which you can find with the help of the Life-studies.
If I can speak concerning all these things without any notes and pass on all these points to you, surely all of you who are younger than I am can get into these matters until you can speak spontaneously of our vision concerning God, the Father, the Son, the Spirit, and God’s economy. I would strongly encourage all of you to get into these matters. If you do, wherever you go, you will speak concerning these things in a way that will stir up the interest of everyone you meet. There is no need to make your topic interesting. Your speaking along these lines will stir up the interest of others, and there will be no end to their interest. These points are exhaustless, and every one of them needs a lot of definition. The more you speak along these lines, the more you increase the interest of others, and the more you increase their appetite, their thirst, and their hunger. What we need is for all of us to see God’s New Testament ministry and to see the vision in the Lord’s recovery today. Surely we would not go back to pick up all of the old things that cannot meet today’s need. The Lord’s recovery has received a particular vision that is based upon the divine revelation concerning His New Testament ministry. I would encourage you all to spend adequate time to get into this vision in a full way.