The Lord did not seek His own will but the will of Him who sent Him (John 5:30b). First, He denied Himself; second, He rejected His idea, His intention, and His purpose. He would only seek the will of the One who sent Him. All of us should be on the alert for this one thing—when we are sent to do some work, we should not take that chance to seek our own goal. When we go to perform God’s work, do we go by seeking our purpose or God’s purpose? Brother Watchman Nee was always concerned that when he sent a brother out for the Lord’s work, that brother would take the chance to perform his own purpose.
One day I was preparing to go from Shanghai to Hangchow. Then Brother Nee asked me, “Witness, for what purpose are you going to Hangchow?” I responded that I was going to visit the brothers there. He said that this was a wrong answer. Instead, I should say that I am going to perform the Lord’s purpose. If you merely go to visit the brothers, you can do many things for yourself. You may take your visit to them as a chance for you to accomplish your purpose instead of seeking the Lord’s will. It is not easy to have a pure heart, without having our purpose, our goal, and our idea. We should just go seeking the idea, purpose, goal, and intention of the sending Lord. This requires much learning on our part.
At times certain brothers may ask me how I feel about their accepting the invitation to a certain place. My basic consideration is, “Are you going just to fulfill the Lord’s purpose, the Lord’s aim, the Lord’s goal, the Lord’s idea, the Lord’s intention, that is, the Lord’s will, or would you take the chance to accomplish your intention, your will?” To seek our intention is absolutely impure. We need to be purified by the cross. We should pray, “Lord, save me from going out to accomplish something according to my intention and idea.” The Lord Jesus never sought His own idea, His own purpose, His own concept, or His own intention. He purely sought only the Father’s will.
The first God-man did not seek His own glory but the glory of the Father who sent Him (John 7:18). I was with Brother Nee for about twenty years. What bothered him the most about the co-workers was that it was hard to see one who was not ambitious. To be ambitious is to seek your own glory. In the service we render to the Lord in the church life, there is always our ambition. A brother may have the ambition to be an elder. In order to become an elder, he feels that he must first become a deacon. To him being a deacon is a step toward being uplifted to the eldership. We should not think that we are absolutely not ambitious in this way. We are all fallen descendants of Adam and sick of the same disease, the same sin. The rebellion that occurred among us seven years ago was altogether due to ambition. Through the years I have seen a number of co-workers among us spoiled by ambition. By the Lord’s mercy, I have learned the secret of dealing with my self and my intention, and this has helped me to deal with my self-glorification.
In John 7:18 the Lord told the Pharisees, “He who speaks from himself seeks his own glory; but He who seeks the glory of Him who sent Him, this One is true, and unrighteousness is not in Him.” The Pharisees were seeking their own glory. According to the context of this verse, the Lord indicated to them that if they were not seeking their own glory, they would know that He was sent by His Father.
We need to see that our self, our purpose, and our ambition are three big destroying “worms” in our work. If we are going to be used for the Lord always in His recovery, our self has to be denied, our purpose has to be rejected, and our ambition must be given up. We should not have our own purpose; instead, we should have only the Lord’s will. We all have to learn of these three things: no self, no purpose, and no ambition. We should only know to labor, to work for Him, by denying our self, rejecting our purpose, and giving up our ambition. Self, purpose, and ambition are like three snakes or scorpions in us. We must learn to hate them.