The exercise of the spirit of a minister of the word depends on two things. First, there is the training of the spirit; second, there is the willingness on the part of the minister. Whether or not a minister can exercise his spirit to minister to the church and the extent to which and the areas in which he is able to exercise his spirit depend entirely on the amount of experience he has related to these two things.
First, let us speak of the training of the spirit. A minister of the word cannot release his spirit more than what he has learned to release. The extent to which his spirit is released is determined by the amount of training he has received from God in his spirit. If a brother has not received much training, we cannot expect him to exercise his spirit to any great extent. But if he has received strict and repeated trainings in his spirit, it will be easy and spontaneous for him to exercise his spirit in the ministry of the word. His exercise will go as far as his training carries him. A man cannot release a spirit that he does not possess. His limits before the Lord are the limit of his spirit. This is a very basic lesson.
God spends a great deal of time during our lifetime to train our spirit so that it can become useful. He has to train us to such an extent that we can use our spirit freely and copiously. The Lord arranges our circumstances with a view to breaking us; He puts us in unbearable environments. Just like Paul, when he went through his experiences described in 2 Corinthians, we may find these environments to be severe and harsh. He said that he was excessively burdened beyond his power and despaired even of living (1:8). The environments the Lord prepares for us are always greater than what we can bear and what our strength can handle. Every thorn that we suffer is an unbearable, unendurable, and insurmountable thorn to us. When the Lord puts us in these environments, two things are produced. On the one hand, the Lord breaks our outer man through these environments. Our mind is torn down at times; our emotions are torn down at other times. Even more, our will is totally broken. We are left with no choice but to yield totally to the Lord and to confess our failures and inability. This is the negative part of the result. On the other hand, under the discipline of the Holy Spirit, something positive is produced by God. Do we remain flat on the ground as we are being torn down, or do we eventually rise up? Are we defeated by the thorn, or do we eventually overcome the thorn? Do we say that we are excessively burdened beyond our power and despair even of living and then do nothing more about it, or do we look to the One who raises the dead and rise above the fall? We must remember that the Lord always puts us in environments which are beyond our power, environments which drive us to despair even of living and which strip us of all hope. In such hopeless environments, we gradually learn to trust in Him, to look to Him, and to rely on Him.
It is very easy for us to talk about trusting in the Lord at ordinary times! How common is our speaking concerning looking to Him at such times, and we thoughtlessly speak of relying on Him! Yet only when the Lord puts us in a hopeless situation do we begin to learn to trust in Him and to rely on Him a little. As we begin to touch a little of God’s grace and power, we unconsciously find ourselves overcoming. We realize that even our trusting is a believing that is exercised in the midst of weaknesses, that our looking to Him is done in fear and trembling, and that our trust operates in the absence of any assurance whatsoever. We may think that this faith, trust, and reliance on Him are feeble and not of much use. Yet it is in the midst of such weaknesses that we acquire a little faith, a little trust, and a little reliance on Him. Unconsciously we touch a little grace and a little power. Under such circumstances we find mercy to overcome, and our spirit is trained. This is a matter not only of the breaking of the outer man but also of the training of the spirit. It is not merely a definite and negative breaking but a definite and positive building up. It is here that we find circumstances that we can overcome and circumstances that the Lord has called us to overcome, and it is here that we find the Lord raising us up above our problems. Unconsciously we overcome them. Satan can try his best in these circumstances to attack us, yet our feeble trust, our feeble waiting, and our feeble faith bring us to God’s power. Here we are able to say to Satan, “You have done all you can. Humanly speaking this is beyond my power, but thank the Lord, I have overcome. He has given me hope. He is the One who raises the dead, and He is the One who strengthens the weak.” Through such an experience, our spirit is strengthened a little. It receives a certain amount of training, and it is enriched a little. Through this, our spirit acquires some useful deposits and accumulates some strength.
The Lord’s work in us does not happen just once. He works in us repeatedly and in many ways. As He operates in us repeatedly, our spirit becomes stronger and stronger. God not only breaks our outer man through the environment; He also builds up our inner man. He not only tears down our outward man; He also builds up our spirit. We rise above our trials through the rising up of our spirit. We never come out of a trial without our spirit first coming out of it. As our spirit learns something, receives some dealing, and passes through some training, our entire person also rises up out of the trial. Daily the Lord is building us up. When we are put into trials, we are pressed on all sides. But when we come out of the trials, the environments are beneath us, and we transcend above our surroundings. When we are in the trials, we feel weak. But when we emerge from them, we are strong. What goes in is death; what comes out is the resurrection life. No trial can lock us in, and we are different when we emerge from a trial. We cannot remain the same through a trial. Either the trial ruins us and makes us useless vessels, or we emerge from the trial on a more glorious plane. A trial either makes us better or worse. All those who cannot pass through the trials are unfit for any use. All those who withstand the trials and overcome them have a mark of victory with them the rest of their life. They have been delivered out of their circumstances, and the Lord will grant them similar victories when they encounter similar situations. When a new environment comes along and new difficulties arise, they will experience new victories. In other words, their spirits have learned something new; they have undergone some new training.
Whenever we go through a trial, we go through it with the view of eventually transcending it. The more trials we have, the more strength we find to meet the trials. Through this process our spirits are strengthened. Whenever we go through an experience, our spirits are strengthened. The more experiences we go through, the stronger our spirits become. Through the discipline of the Holy Spirit, the Lord breaks our outer man again and again. When the outer man is broken, the inner man is empowered to overcome all obstacles. When the hammer falls on us, it breaks and shatters our outer man. But the same hammer becomes something which our spirit overcomes. When the Lord puts us in an environment, our outer man is broken. Our outer man cannot withstand any trial. Whenever a trial comes, our outer man is broken. The more trials we have, the more our outer man is broken. At the same time, the spirit prevails over these environments. The environment prevails over our outer man, but our inner man prevails over the environment at the same time. Through this process we are delivered from the environment and eventually overcome it. This is what happens when we go through trials. The same thing is repeated whenever we face a trial: The Lord first gives us a trial and puts us under it. We experience the breaking of the outer man, but the experience does not stop there. Our inner man rises up to overcome the environment, and we emerge on the other side. The trial which overcomes our outer man is eventually overcome by our inner man. Whenever we go through an experience, our spirit receives some training. It becomes more aggressive; it learns a little more of the Lord’s grace and His Spirit. In other words, it becomes stronger than before. When our spirit is trained and becomes strong, we will have a usable spirit in our ministry of the word.
On the one hand, a minister of the word must experience the breaking down of the outer man. On the other hand, his spirit has to be trained to be strong and useful. This work can only be accomplished by the discipline of the Holy Spirit. When we go through a trial, we have to remember that such a trial makes us different in the end. Either we will become stronger or become worse. Either we will murmur against God in our trial and remain defeated or we will come out of it in full victory. We should refuse to come out of it in defeat. Second Corinthians 12 shows us that when a thorn comes, God gives us the grace to overcome the thorn. In the past we knew a little about grace, but we did not know the kind of grace that comes with the thorn. Every trial comes with its thorn-laced blow so that we can experience the thorn-laced grace. What we knew before was a thornless grace; what we know now is a thorn-laced grace. We are like a boat that floats in two feet of water. As long as the water remains two feet deep, we can sail through it quite easily. But if there is a rock that is two feet high in the middle of the stream, the boat cannot go through. At such times we need to ask the Lord to raise the water level by two feet. When we know more grace, our spirit becomes stronger. Paul said that he would “rather boast in...weaknesses” (2 Cor. 12:9). Whenever a weakness comes, we are empowered, and we can serve as a minister of the word by this power. Different ministers of the word have different degrees of spiritual power because they experience different kinds of building work. The words of the ministers may be the same, but their spirits are different. If we want to use our spirit, it must first become strong. We may be trained, but the extent to which we have been trained determines the extent to which our spirit can be used. This extent varies in different people. The degree to which our spirit is trained determines the extent to which we can be used as a minister of the word. Whenever a minister of the word encounters a trial or an affliction, he should realize that God is using it to prepare him to be His minister. We should not be so foolish as to think that it is best to escape. The more we run away, the less things will work out for us. We should always remember that without the thorn, there will never be the grace or the power, and the sphere of our service will be very much confined. We may still speak, but we will not have the spirit to release the word. We may have the word, but we must still have a properly functioning spirit to accompany the word.