We need to learn the lessons regarding the self so that we may be built up in the Body. As we are considering this matter of the self, I would urge you to receive more grace so that the self might be exposed. In being built up with others, the greatest problem is the self. Some brothers and sisters like others to praise them or to say something good about them. If you were to speak to them frankly and truthfully in love, they would be hurt and offended because they are so much in the self. This indicates that even though such brothers and sisters are meeting on the ground of the church, it is very hard for them to be built up because of the self.
You need to see the vision of the Body. This vision will break you. You will be broken under the vision of the Body. You will realize that the only way for you to be built up in the Body is for you to be broken. The only way to realize the Body is to be broken.
After you see the vision of the Body, you will be not only settled but also built. Only then will you be satisfied in your Christian life. Until you are built up in the Body, you cannot be satisfied. No matter what you say, the inner feeling will tell you that you are not satisfied. But one day you will be built up, and then you will be able to say, "Lord, praise You that I am here. I am built and now I am satisfied. Because I am built I am finished. I am not good for anything else. I have been wrecked by this building."
Many brothers are afraid to be built because they realize that once they are built, they will be finished, "wrecked." They desire to preserve themselves as "good material." They know that once they are built, they will be "wrecked," good for nothing except the building. I agree that to be built means that we are no longer good for anything else. Consider the lintel of a door. The material used in making the lintel has been "wrecked," for now it is good only for that lintel. Likewise, when we are built, we are finished. We are no longer a piece of "good material"; we are part of the building. This is what the Lord needs today.
There must come a time when you will be able to say, "Lord, I am satisfied here in the building, but I am also wrecked. I have been wrecked by You, and I am good only to be part of the building." Because you have been "wrecked," finished, you will no longer be welcomed by others or praised by others. You will no longer be useful to others, and they will forget you. But although you will be forgotten by others, you will be remembered by the Lord. He remembers you because you are in the building.
I can testify that, by the Lord's mercy, I have never changed my ground, I have never changed my position, and I have never changed my co-workers. Because I have been built, I am finished and do not expect anything better. The vision of the Body has kept me from changing my tune. This is not something of me; it is of the Lord's mercy.