God’s arrangement, ordination, permission, and move in our environment are the discipline of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit rules over our environment, and He moves and arranges everything to break our person. Our spouse is God’s helper in breaking us. Sometimes our spouse’s cooperation with God is not sufficient, so He gives us children. If our spouse, as God’s chief helper, is not sufficient to deal with us, He adds more little helpers to deal with us. If these helpers are not sufficient, He can add three, four, or even five more helpers. Sometimes it is not enough to have sons, so God also gives us daughters.
Every brother and sister is created and redeemed by God, and we are all under God’s grace and care. We are all led, cultivated, and perfected by God. Since we admit that this is true, we should see that every important matter in our human life, such as our husband, wife, parents, or children, did not come to us by chance. Nothing comes to us without a purpose. Everything is arranged by God; some things were arranged by God before we were born, and some things come to us through our prayer. For example, because a sister may have only daughters, she prays for a son and receives a son. However, this son should actually be named Dealing because the more he grows up, the more he brings dealings to his mother. These things are all accomplished and arranged by God.
I hope all the brothers and sisters would have a deep impression that God uses the tools of grace, the Bible, the Holy Spirit, the church, the saints, the light of the truth, and especially the environment. Strictly speaking, the environment and our circumstances are the discipline of the Holy Spirit. The discipline of the Holy Spirit is the greatest tool in God’s ordination. Many people treasure the Bible and pay much attention to the Holy Spirit, but they do not pay attention to the environment; they do not pay attention to the people, things, and matters they encounter. A Christian who is spiritual and lives before God needs to “read” three things every day. First, he needs to read the Bible. Second, he needs to read his inward sense. Third, he needs to read his environment and circumstances, which are the people, things, and matters around him. Many people read the Bible well, and they also can read the sense in their spirit, but they are unable to read the people, things, and matters they encounter. Have we ever considered why God gave us our spouse? Why did God give us a certain kind of child? Have we ever studied them and tried to understand them? Many brothers and sisters memorize the Bible and are also keenly aware of the sense in their spirit, yet regrettably they have never studied and do not understand the environment around them. They neglect and ignore their circumstances and environment, and they miss the benefit that can be gained from them. This is a big mistake. Our circumstances and environment are a great means arranged by God for dealing with our person and subduing us.
Romans 8 speaks specifically about the Holy Spirit; the first half of chapter 8 speaks of the Holy Spirit, and the second half speaks of the environment, circumstances, and sufferings, including God causing all things to work together for good (v. 28). For our spiritual understanding, it is not enough only to know the Holy Spirit, we must also know the “all things” in our circumstances. The purpose of all things working together is to gain man’s cooperation to conform him to the image of God’s Son and to deal with man to the extent that he is exactly the same as God’s Son. For this reason, the Holy Spirit raises up a yearning prayer in us, and He intercedes for us with groanings which cannot be uttered, causing us to desire God’s grace within, to have Christ’s image, and to be filled with Christ’s life (v. 26). With this kind of desire and prayer of the Holy Spirit within us, these prayers and groanings pass through the Holy Spirit and reach God. When God hears such prayer, He prepares the environment around us to cause all things to work together to break and deal with us and, thereby, to transform us. When our desire to be filled with Christ and to bear the image of God’s Son is matched with the Holy Spirit’s intercession, God hears our prayer and raises up an environment to deal with us. This environment may be our spouse or children, but everything occurs in order to break and subdue us. This is a great discipline.
Even a person like Paul, who was greatly blessed and experienced grace in such a strong and deep way, spoke of a thorn that pierced and pricked him every day. When it reached a point where he could bear it no longer, he prayed that the Lord would remove the thorn. The Lord answered, “My grace is sufficient for you” (2 Cor. 12:9). The thorn in Paul enabled him to enjoy the grace of God and experience God’s power being perfected in weakness. Some wives may be thorns to their husbands, some husbands may be thorns to their wives, and some children may be thorns to their parents, but all of these things are allowed by the Lord in order to deal with and break us. We may pray and hope that others will change, but the more we pray in this way, the clearer we are that nothing will change. Our thorn will continue to pierce us, trouble us, and bother us. This is the environment that God has created to cause us to know the Lord’s grace and to experience the Lord’s power.
In the eyes of unbelievers, a Christian’s circumstances often seem very strange, and they lack an understanding of what they mean. God, however, knows that He is the One who arranges everything. There is not one proper Christian who does not have some troubles and pressure in his life; there is not one proper Christian whose living is smooth and carefree. Every proper Christian has some difficulty or burden and is under some kind of oppression or affliction in all kinds of circumstances. This is the discipline of the Holy Spirit. The purpose of the inward shining and calling of the Holy Spirit and of the outward pressure of the environment is simply to defeat our person. If we see this, we will bow and say, “O God, I worship You. What You arranged can never be wrong. This is what I need. Even if I make mistakes, You never make mistakes, and I still worship You.” At such a moment, we will be blessed within, and the power of the Lord’s life will bear us, support us, and enable us to endure the things that we cannot endure in ourselves. At such moments, we will have the Lord’s inward presence and joy.
If we learn these lessons well, our spouse will produce the effect of the cross in us, and our self, preference, opinion, inclination, thought, and all that we are will be put to death. God often breaks us through our spouses. If we submit ourselves to the Lord and receive this, we will meet the Lord within, and we will be blessed by having life as the power that carries us through and enables us to endure what we could not endure.
We need to see that real growth in life does not depend only on the outward shining of the Bible and our inward cooperation with the Holy Spirit; we also need our environment and circumstances, which are the discipline of the Holy Spirit. If we really live before the Lord, we will live in the Spirit and treasure the circumstances arranged by God. We will treasure the people, things, and matters around us. When truth is released, there will be a response in us, and through our prayer the Spirit will begin to work in us. At the same time, God’s hand will also arrange things in our outward environment to reinforce the light of His truth and the work of the Spirit. The purpose of this inward and outward work is to break, subdue, and deal with our person. If the Lord is merciful and gracious to us, these messages will help us see how the Lord’s life has become our life and how much His life wants to have the ground to live out of us.
God’s life, the revelation and light that we have seen, and the discipline of the Holy Spirit in our circumstances carry out the work of the cross in us. The cross brings in the life of Christ, and the death of the cross brings in resurrection. Those who have the expression of the death of the cross also have the expression of life. This is the way of life.