God’s goal is not merely to supply us; God’s goal is to transform us. My burden in this message is on transformation. We need to pray, “Lord, transform us!” The religious concept is that if a person has a quick temper, he needs to be taught so that he can make a change. Religion tells him, “You are a quick-tempered person. You do everything hurriedly. Thus, you must understand that you need to make a change.” However, the Lord is not like this. The Lord wants you to eat a little bit of Him every day and receive a little bit of Him into you every day. He is Spirit, and as the Spirit He can be received into you. He has no intention to change your quick disposition, but when He enters into you—a little bit today, a little bit tomorrow, and a little bit the following day—His essence, which is the Spirit, enters into every part of your being, including your natural disposition. As a result, your being is spontaneously changed. He does not deliberately change you from being a quick person to being a slow person, or change you from being a slow person to being a quick person. This is not the way He works. Instead, He transforms your being, your essence. Romans 12:2 says that we are being transformed by the renewing of the mind, and 2 Corinthians 3:18 says that we are being transformed into the Lord’s image. The Lord’s way is to transform us into His image by supplying us with Himself.
Romans 11 says that we, the Gentiles, are a wild olive tree. By believing in the Lord we are grafted into the true olive tree and are able to partake of the fatness of the root of the olive tree. Within the root of the true olive tree is the sap, the life-juice, which is the fatness. When the wild olive branch is grafted into the true olive tree, the life-sap enters the branch, and the branch receives the supply. I believe that as a Christian, you have this kind of experience—the experience of being a wild olive branch who has been grafted into the true olive tree and who receives the life-sap of the true olive tree to supply your whole being. If you do have this experience, then I exhort you to forget outward teachings and to pay attention to the inward supply of the sap.
The supply of the life-sap is not only to give you power but also to transform you. How does transformation take place? The nature and essence of a branch from a wild olive tree are that of a wild olive tree. However, once this branch is grafted into a true olive tree, the sap from the true olive tree supplies this wild olive branch and transforms it. Eventually, olives come forth. In the past the olives from the wild olive branch tasted bitter and sour, but now that the sap of the true olive has passed through the wild olive branch, the essence of the wild olive branch has been transformed, and the olives are now sweet and fragrant. Even the shape of the olives from this wild olive branch will now be just like that of the true olive tree.
The process of bearing olives is a process from glory to glory and from day to day. Last week the olive was still tiny. After two weeks it is bigger. And after yet another two weeks it is even bigger. In the initial stage there was not that much glory, but in the end after it has matured, you will see an olive that is full of glory. In the process it went from glory to glory. The expression from glory to glory in 2 Corinthians 3:18 means “from one degree of glory to another degree of glory.”
Our desire is that in this age we would see churches being raised up from locality to locality and that these churches would not put their emphasis on teaching but on opening up the believers’ eyes to give them a vision. In these churches light would shine, enabling the believers to see that what they need is not outward teaching but the inward life supply. They would also see that when they believed and were saved, the source of life—the all-inclusive Christ, the all-inclusive Spirit—came into them. They would learn to live in this all-inclusive Spirit, enjoy this Spirit, and receive His bountiful supply daily. In this way day by day the supply would change the essence of their being. Month by month and year by year in every local church, we would see brothers and sisters who regularly come to the meetings and are being transformed day by day. They are just like the wild olive branches that were grafted into the true olive tree. When a branch is first grafted in, you cannot see much happening. The branch is just there absorbing the fatness from the true olive tree and inwardly receiving the supply. Gradually you will see a new sprout, then a few flower blossoms, and finally a little fruit will come out. When you look again after two weeks, the fruit will have grown a little bigger. After yet another two weeks there will be more growth, and in the end the fruit will be matured, and there will be sweet and fragrant olives. I hope that all the local churches will be like this, so that year after year the brothers and sisters will receive Christ, enjoy His riches, obtain His bountiful supply, and be transformed in essence. Transformation is not a sudden change in outward appearance; it is a slow change in inward essence. By being transformed in this way, the brothers and sisters will eventually be altogether different from what they were before they were saved. Transformation is not sudden; it is a continuous metabolic process in life which eventually produces manifest results.