We should not merely know how to apply our feelings. We also should know how to take the right way to acquire feelings that are proper and usable. This leads to a consideration of our basic experience, which is the breaking of our outer man. In the previous discussion of the minister as a person, we paid special attention to the breaking of the outer man. Unless the outer man is broken, the Lord’s word cannot be released. Unless the outer man is broken, a great part of it can never be used by the Lord. We have to repeat this point. We need to see how the Lord breaks our outer man and how He prepares our feelings for the ministry of the word.
God deals with a man by arranging all kinds of circumstances to buffet him. This buffeting naturally produces wounds and pain. When a man receives wounds and pain, his feelings are hurt, and they become more tender than before. Man’s feelings are the tenderest part of his outer man; this part is more tender than the will or the mind. Yet even this tenderness is not enough for God. It is not tender enough to satisfy the demand of God’s word. In order for God’s word to be released through us, we must be full of feelings for His word. In order for God to use us to be ministers of the word, our feeling has to match the word’s feeling. The feeling of every minister of the word must match the word he ministers. Every minister of the word has to be equipped with such feelings—feelings the word demands. The feelings for the word must be rich enough. A speaker must have the sense that when God’s word is released, his person is released as well. Otherwise, the word will not be powerful in others, and it will not be powerful in him.
After one goes through God’s dealings, he realizes how crude his feelings are in the eyes of God. Although the feelings are the most tender part of a person, these feelings are still crude and are useless in the eyes of God. If our feelings are not tender enough when God’s word is released through our mouth, we will find that some of it is padded with feelings, while some of it is void of feelings. In painting, a painter has to mix the paint powder well. If the powder is not well blended, some areas will be left untouched. If the paint is well mixed, the whole surface will be evenly covered. This is true of the feelings of the minister of the word. Those whose feelings are crude will miss the mark in eight out of ten sentences. Those whose feelings are fine will match every word with their feelings. In the Bible the Lord’s life is typified by fine flour. This means that our Lord was very fine in His feelings. It is a horrible thing when brothers say things without having any feeling about them at all. Their feelings are unusable. Their feelings cannot match their words; they are not fine enough. Their feelings hardly are expressed in one or two out of ten sentences. We have to remember that unrefined feelings cripple the release of God’s word.
We need the Lord to work on us until our feelings are fine and tender. We must be broken before our feelings can be tender before the Lord. In the Bible we find the writers of the Scripture not only full of experience of life and thoughts of the Holy Spirit but full of spiritual feelings as well. The ministers of the word in the Bible released their word with much feeling for the word. Today in serving as ministers of the word, we have to release the word with feelings. If our feelings cannot match our word, our audience will not take our word seriously. If God’s hand has never touched us and broken our outer man, naturally our feelings are not tender in the eyes of God; we do not have any wound or hurt. If we are sensitive in a certain matter, it means that we have a wound and a hurt in that matter. The grains of wheat must be ground into powder before they can be fine. We must have wounds and hurts before our feelings can be tender. The more wounds and hurts we have, the tenderer we become. As the pressure is applied, the one grain is enlarged to three, five, seven, or one hundred grains. The feelings become finer. We should not expect to be fine in our feelings if we have not suffered any wound or bleeding from God. There is not such a thing. We must have wounds, and we must go through dealings.
As soon as we touch some brothers, we know that the Lord’s work is not deep enough in them. If a brother is disciplined and has learned to walk somewhat properly, has advanced somewhat in his conduct, and has made progress in the study of the Scripture as well as in other areas, yet has failed to become tender in his feelings, he is missing something before the Lord; there are still some parts in him that God cannot use. No matter how much a person’s outward behavior changes and no matter how much light he sees within, his training is still too superficial and shallow if he is lacking in feelings. When a man touches the work of the Lord’s cross, his entire person is broken. His strong will is no longer stubborn, his arrogant mentality is no longer arrogant. His will is broken, and his arrogant mind is also subdued. At the same time, his feelings become more and more refined. The Lord can deal with a person’s will with one great shining of His light. A man may think that he is clever and resourceful, and the Lord can bring down his exalted mind in one great shining. However, the feelings cannot be dealt with through one shining. Tenderness in one’s feelings is the result of an accumulation of countless numbers of dealings. One’s feelings do not become tender until he has passed through certain circumstances. If we are sloppy in certain matters, the Lord will arrange circumstance after circumstance to deal with us. After one circumstance goes away, another one comes. Time after time, we are ground and pressed like grains in a mill. Eventually, we will be pulverized into fine flour.
Before the Lord we need a stricken spirit. What is a stricken spirit? Since the spirit is expressed through the feelings, a stricken spirit has the feeling of being stricken. The Lord desires that we live in a stricken spirit; He desires that our feelings be fine and tender. Such tender feelings are not in us; we acquire them through being stricken. The Lord wants us to live in a stricken spirit, which means that He wants us to have the feeling of being stricken. We should be so broken by the Lord that the feeling of His chastisement is fresh with us, and His discipline should still be fresh in our memory. The Lord has to work on us so much that we fear and tremble in our feeling, that we no longer dare to be cavalier or lazy. Every time God works on us, chastises us, and deals with us, our feelings become finer and more sensitive. This is the deepest lesson in the breaking of the outward man. The breaking of the feelings may not be as drastic as the breaking of the will and the mind, but it is much deeper.
If we live in a stricken spirit and if there is a wound in us, we feel the pain. This pain spontaneously makes us fearful; our feelings are refined by the pain. As we are dealt with repeatedly, we become genuinely happy when our hearts are happy and genuinely sad when our hearts are sad. When God’s word comes to us again, we will sense the feelings of the word, and our feelings will match the word. This is a glorious thing. The purpose of chastisement is to make us compatible with God’s word. When He speaks or expresses a desire again, our feelings will match His feelings. The Lord is disciplining us. He repeatedly tries us until we have a wound and a scar in our body. We were once coarse and insensitive, but after discipline, we begin to have feelings. As soon as God’s word comes, we feel something. As soon as He moves, we are sensitive to it. At least during the period immediately after our discipline we can match God’s word. As the Lord increases His discipline in us, we are broken, and all our feelings come up to His standard. A minister of the word must come up to the standard of the Lord’s word in all his feelings. After we have gone through such discipline in our feelings, we discover one interesting thing: We not only speak God’s word, but we feel His word as well.
What we feel inwardly is expressed outwardly. Peter “lifted up his voice” when he spoke at Pentecost (Acts 2:14). He lifted his voice because his feelings were strong. I am afraid some of us have never lifted up our voice in our speaking. The only explanation is that our feelings are not strong enough. Peter was full of feelings as he spoke, and because his feelings were so strong, he was able to lift up his voice when he spoke. God’s word has feelings, and it does not come out like words from a dictating machine. It is pressed out by strong feelings. Paul exhorted the church in Corinth “through many tears” (2 Cor. 2:4). I am afraid many people have never shed tears in their messages because their feelings are too short. Lifting up one’s voice or shedding one’s tears are not big things in themselves. But if a person has never lifted up his voice or shed his tears, something is wrong. There is no special merit to lifting up the voice or shedding tears. But there is definitely something wrong with those who have never lifted up their voice or shed tears; the feelings of such ones have never been broken by the Lord. If a man’s feelings have been finely ground, he will rejoice when God’s word calls for rejoicing and weep when God’s word calls for weeping. This is not a performance. Do not try to perform. If it is a performance, an experienced person immediately will see through the farce and artificiality. We must never be artificial. Artificiality only corrupts God’s word. What we are saying here is that we must have proper feelings. We have to have the same feeling as God’s word. Joy and sadness are opposite examples. When the Bible speaks of joy, the proper reaction is to rejoice, and when it speaks of sadness, the proper reaction is to grieve. Some people are so bound up in themselves all their lives that they are always cold. They do not rejoice when others play the flute, and they do not mourn when others weep. Their feelings cannot meet the need, and God’s word is frustrated through them.
Why do so many people have feelings that cannot be used at all? Why does the Lord bring them through so many experiences? It is because the root of man’s feelings lies in the person himself. The problem with feelings is different from the problems with the will and the mind. The problems with the will and the mind are more complicated. The problem with feelings is simply that they are centered around the person himself. Many people expend all of their feelings on themselves. They have little difficulty feeling for themselves. If a man expends all of his feelings on himself, he does not have any feelings for others. Some brothers are dull and insensitive to everything; they seem to be indifferent to everything. Yet they are not insensitive or indifferent to themselves. A brother can be rude to every other brother, but if someone is rude to him, he is offended. This brother has expended all of his feelings on himself. He loves himself and cares for himself. When he suffers, he feels it. When he has problems, he weeps, but he has no feelings whatsoever for others’ affairs. Brothers, if the Lord does not conquer our feelings completely, we will be useless in the ministry of the word. The Lord often lays His hand on us through the discipline of the Holy Spirit with the purpose of turning our feelings toward others. We need to direct all of our feelings into the service of the ministry of the word. We have no time to spend our feelings on ourselves. Our feelings have to be tender all the time. Once they are exhausted, they become useless. Many people are obsessed with themselves; they think that they are the center of the universe. All their feelings revolve around themselves. God has to deliver them out of their shells. We do not have an unlimited supply of feelings. If we exhaust our feelings, we will not be able to be a minister of God’s word. God must discipline us and deal with us until we do not have feelings for ourselves and until our feelings become tender. The foundation of tender feelings is a freedom from self-centeredness. The Lord has to break down our feelings so that we will no longer be self-centered. The more we are ground and the finer we become, the more our feelings will become useful.
A minister of the word has to have feelings that are fine and rich before God can make use of them. We must remember that our words are only as rich as our feelings. The amount of riches in our word is determined by our feelings. Our inward feelings dictate the number of words we speak. Sometimes we have many words, yet our feelings are not strong enough to match them. At such times, our words are bound by our feelings. All ministers of the word have to remember that their words can only go as far as the breaking they have received from God. The words cannot go beyond the person’s condition. Some people have trouble with their mind. Others are short in their feelings. They are still short in God’s breaking work. A spiritual man is rich in all kinds of feelings. The more spiritual a person is, the more feelings he has. Never think that the more spiritual a man becomes, the more insensitive he becomes. The more lessons a man learns from God, the richer his feelings will be. If the feelings of a sinner were compared to the feelings of Paul, it would be easy to see that Paul was superior both in his spirituality as well as in his feelings. The more dealings a person receives, the more feelings he has. When our feelings are enriched, we find the right sentiment to match the words we speak. When the feelings match the words, God’s word finds the free outlet He desires. If words are spoken yet feelings lag behind, the two are out of step, and the utterance will not be satisfactory. We feel that something is wrong. We may try to say more, and we may try to raise our voice, but something still is wrong because our feelings do not match our speaking.
If a man desires to be a minister of the word, he must subject himself to strong dealings. Once he turns away from a dealing, he will fall behind. We must be dismantled before the Lord. Unless we are broken, we cannot accomplish any work. Without discipline, there is no work. Even if we were the wisest men in the whole world, we still would be useless. It does not matter how clever or knowledgeable we are. Only those who have been broken are useful. This is a very serious matter. Our emotions and feelings must go through repeated dealings before they can become useful to our speaking. If the Lord has dealt with our self-love once or twice, when we speak about self-love, our feelings spontaneously will match our speaking. There will be no hindrance whatsoever. If our pride has been dealt with, when we speak about pride and about the Lord resisting the proud, our feelings will match our words. In other words, our feelings can match our words only to the extent that they have been touched. Our feelings must be totally and universally stripped before they can serve us in the release of the word. This is the only way for us to prepare ourselves for the ministry of the word. Our feelings must match the word. The extent of our feelings will determine the extent of the speaking that we can render. Every time our words touch something higher, our feelings have to be made finer. May the Lord be gracious to us, and may all of our feelings match our words.