What is the goal of ministering to others with the word? The purpose of ministering to others is not merely to deliver them out of their dire situations or to bring them through their trials. We must have a specific goal in ministering to others: The goal is that they would know the Lord. All revelations are revelations of Christ. Unless a revelation is a revelation of Christ, it is not a worthwhile revelation. All revelations are given for the purpose of revealing Christ. We should realize that the ultimate goal of the ministry of the word is to lead men to know Christ. When God puts us in a certain environment or allows us to face certain difficulties, we are faced with a great sense of need; we find that we are forced to seek the Lord. We should remember that every discipline of the Holy Spirit unveils a need to us. The Holy Spirit puts us in an environment in order to show us a need and to show us that we can never meet the need or overcome the situation by ourselves. At such times, our only solution is to know the Lord. Without such a need, a man will not seek to know the Lord. Without his thorn, Paul would not have known the grace of the Lord. The experience of a trial is not just for the sake of passing through the trial; it is for knowing the Lord through the trial. Paul did not say, “All right, I will simply suffer.” Instead, he said that he knew grace. This means he knew the Lord. God has to use the Spirit’s discipline to create a need in us which can only be satisfied by the Lord; only the Lord can bring us through. Such a need induces us to know certain aspects and attributes of the Lord. Second Corinthians 12 shows us that Paul’s knowledge of the Lord’s power was acquired through his weaknesses. When he encountered pain, he found grace. The thorn weakened him, but the thorn also led him to the knowledge of grace. The Lord put him in weaknesses in order for him to have the knowledge of power. He put him in sufferings in order for him to have the knowledge of grace. Where there is the need, there is the knowledge. A certain kind of need produces a certain kind of knowledge. If we want to have a full knowledge of the Lord, we have to have a wide range of experience. If our experience is limited, our knowledge of the Lord will be incomplete. Perhaps we have known the Lord in many ways, yet our knowledge of Him concerning a certain matter is not complete. In order to know the Lord, we have to know Him in a complete way. If the discipline of the Spirit is not complete, our knowledge of the Lord will not be complete. If the discipline we receive is short, we will not have the right word to minister to others.
We have to pray that God would train us, that is, put us in all kinds of environments and trials. At the same time we have to give God the opportunity to bring us through such trials. As we yield ourselves to the trials, we afford the Lord the opportunity to give us more knowledge of Himself. When we face a dealing today, we will have a new realization of Christ. When we receive another dealing tomorrow, we will have another fresh realization of Christ. In this way, our knowledge of Christ will increase day by day, and we can minister the Christ we know to the church.
What then is the word? The word is Christ. The word which we receive in our trials and discipline comes from our knowledge of Christ. Today there are thousands and millions of God’s children in the church, but their knowledge of Christ is too limited. Some only know one or two things about Christ. There is the need for ministers to be raised up who will give God’s children more knowledge of Christ. A minister of the word, through the variety of trials that he experiences, acquires a wide range of knowledge of Christ and is equipped with an abundance of words. These words are given so that he can minister Christ to others. This is the reason that we say that God’s word is His Son. God’s word is Christ. What we know through the word is what we know through Christ. Today we may find a brother here or there in the church who is short of the knowledge of Christ in one or more aspects. By the mercy of God, we may have passed through a certain experience, and our knowledge of the Lord gained through this experience will enable us to supply him with our supply. Whatever he lacks, we will be able to supply him and fill up his lack. We will be able to serve God’s children because we have first learned the right lessons. If our ministry is built upon this foundation, our word will be God’s word.
At times, we make use of others’ experiences. But it is not a simple matter to use others’ experiences, because this results in too much activity in the mind if we are not careful. Many clever people make use of others’ experiences all the time; they have no experience of their own. They are blank before God. This does not work. Before one can draw from others’ experiences, he himself must have gone through many dealings before the Lord. Whenever we borrow an experience from someone, we have to preserve it and cultivate it in our own spirit. Our own experiences must be preserved in our spirit as well. Anything that is preserved in the spirit is living. Suppose we acquire knowledge about the Body of Christ from God. This knowledge has to be cultivated in our spirit before it can be used to lead others to a knowledge of the Body of Christ. It is all right for us to borrow others’ experiences as long as we have something in our spirit first. But if we are individualistic and do not know anything about the Body of Christ and if there is nothing in our spirit, we cannot make use of others’ experience. We must be those who are living in the Body of Christ and our experience must be nurtured in our spirit before we can serve others with such a word. If we do not have these things, everything is an exercise of the mind, and it is powerless. We may think that we have delivered a logical message, but we have not touched the real thing. When others listen to us, they do not touch the real thing.
This is analogous to the principle of quoting Scripture. Suppose we have to quote the Scripture today. First we have to touch something in our experience, and then five, ten, or more verses will come to us. However, we must cultivate these verses in our spirit; we cannot cultivate them in our mind. The same is true in our conversation with the brothers. Words which are relevant to the subject should be cultivated in our spirit. We can only minister to others what we have cultivated in our spirit. If we have something but do not cultivate it to keep it alive, it does not do us any good. Even our own experiences from five years ago have to be kept and cultivated in the spirit. If they are kept in the spirit, our spirit can use them when we talk with others about them. The same can be said of the Scripture. If our spirit cannot use it, it cannot become part of our ministry.
Our word must be formed by God within us. The words we speak must be God’s word. These words must not be a product of our thoughts or something we have picked up from others. They must be something that God has created and formed within us. God has to try a man with fire for years before a few words can be wrought into him. They are produced through prolonged years of carving and molding. We must realize that such words are the words of the constitution of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit has to work on us for a long time before these words can be produced. These words are a kind of trust or earnest from the Lord. When we experience something from the Lord and we are led through such an experience, some words are formed in us. These words are truly our own, yet at the same time, they are truly God’s. It is by this process that our words become God’s word. One can only speak such words if he has walked through the depths of the valley. Such words have been washed and tried by God; as such, they are God’s word. We must be clear that the source of our speaking is the discipline we have received from God. Our speaking is based on the light we have in ourselves, and the light of the word we have received is based on the discipline of the Holy Spirit. Even our reference to others’ experience is based on the discipline of the Holy Spirit. We have to learn our lesson in the depths of the valley before we can announce it on the heights. We must see something in our spirit before it can become light to others. Every word that we speak has to be pressed out, squeezed out, and harnessed from the depths of our being. Whatever kind of person we are, whatever kind of trials we suffer, and whatever lessons we have learned will be reflected in the kind of words we speak.
The word is produced through trials, pain, defeat, and darkness. No minister of God’s word should be afraid when God leads him into such circumstances. Once we know this way, we will praise Him, saying, “Lord, You are about to give me some more words.” The first few times we may act foolishly. We may wonder what is happening to us. But after a while we should no longer be foolish. We should realize that some words are produced the first time we go through a trial. More words are produced the second time a trial comes. After we go through such experiences again and again, the words become more abundant and rich. Then, whenever we face a trial, a suffering, a failure, or a weakness, we will have a clear voice within, saying, “Lord, You are giving me more words again.” We will become wise in the acquisition of words. In the church of God, a minister of the word should take the lead in suffering, not merely in speaking. If we cannot walk ahead of the church in the discipline of the Holy Spirit, we have no word to minister to the church. This is a very serious thing. We must be ahead of the church in the matter of trials before we can have something to minister to it. Otherwise, we can do nothing, and all of our ministry of the word is in vain. We cheat ourselves as well as the church. The hymn “Let Us Contemplate the Grape Vine” (Hymns, #635) climbs higher and higher with each stanza. At the end it shows us that the more we sacrifice, the more we can give to others. If we are not a sacrificing one, we have nothing to give to others, and we cannot be a minister of the word. The ministry of the word is a speaking that issues from one’s depth. This is the source of our speaking. Without this, there is no speaking.
Finally, we have to remember the basic principle which Paul put forth in 2 Corinthians 1. He said, “For we do not want you to be ignorant, brothers, of our affliction which befell us in Asia, that we were excessively burdened, beyond our power, so that we despaired even of living. Indeed we ourselves had the response of death in ourselves” (vv. 8-9). The phrase response of death can also be translated as the judgment of death. What is this judgment of death? Paul goes on to say that God had a purpose in all these things. It was to teach him not to have confidence in himself but to have his confidence in God who raises the dead. This was his comfort. When other brothers and sisters went through the same trial, he was able to comfort them. “For even as the sufferings of the Christ abound unto us, so through the Christ our comfort also abounds. But whether we are afflicted, it is for your comforting and salvation; or whether we are comforted, it is for your comforting, which operates in the endurance of the same sufferings which we also suffer. And our hope for you is firm, knowing that as you are partakers of the sufferings, so also you are of the comfort” (vv. 5-7). This is the basic principle underlying the ministry of the word: taking the lead to suffer in all kinds of trials and then ministering to others what has been learned. We are first comforted, and then we comfort others with the comfort with which we ourselves have been comforted. This is a very basic principle. For this reason, we should never use shallow words in our speaking. Rather, we should speak what we have learned through our repeated trials. Many expressions, words, and illustrations cannot be used, because our speaking becomes shallow as soon as we use them. During ordinary times we have to learn to speak accurately. The Lord has to discipline us until our words echo the words of the Bible more and more. We should learn to use the terms and the expressions found in God’s Word more and more. The words of the ministry are words that issue from within through discipline.
The source of the word is the discipline we have received; the word is acquired through discipline. For this reason, we must never despise the discipline of the Holy Spirit. If a word does not have its origin in the discipline of the Holy Spirit, it is a vain word, and the church does not receive any benefit from it. Brothers, do not regard the discipline of the Lord lightly. We must learn our lessons by passing through the fire.