Many people say that consecration is for the purpose of being used by God to do a work for God. To some extent this is a wrong understanding. If we come back to the Scriptures, we will find that consecration is actually for life, not for work. We consecrate ourselves to the Lord not to work for Him but for Him to work in us. To do something for the Lord is a matter of work, but to be wrought on by the Lord is a matter of life. What we mainly need is to be worked on by the Lord. We are not the workers but the workmanship in the hand of the Lord (Eph. 2:10). For the Lord to work on us requires our cooperation. If we do not cooperate with Him, He cannot work on us. In order to put something in a bottle, there is no need to ask the bottle to cooperate, because the bottle has no life, no mind, no will, no emotion, and no desire. To put something in the bottle is an easy, one-sided matter. To give medicine to a child, however, is to put something into a living “bottle.” This is hard to do because it requires the child’s cooperation. If a child is not willing to cooperate, the parent may need to open his mouth and force the medicine into him. God has many things to put into us and many things to remove, but this requires our cooperation, which is our consecration. We need to consecrate ourselves to the Lord, saying, “Lord, I am here. I accept what You accept and refuse what You refuse.”
The human concept is that the Lord is waiting to use us. However, if we are not wrought on by the Lord, we cannot be used by Him. Work comes out of life; it is the outflow of the inner life. How much we can be used by the Lord in His hands depends on how much we have been wrought upon by Him. His work through us and on us depends on our cooperation, that is, our consecration. We always have to consecrate ourselves to the Lord for His work upon us. We should not have the concept that we consecrate ourselves because the Lord needs us to work for Him. We are not tools in the Lord’s hand. Rather, we are vessels to contain Him (Rom. 9:21-23).
On the negative side, many things need to be taken out of us. We have been filled up with many things other than the Lord. On the positive side, however, many things of the Lord-all the riches of Christ-must be wrought into us. On the one hand we are dirty, while on the other hand we are empty. Therefore, we need the Lord’s work to clean us out and remove the many things other than Christ, and we need Him to put Christ into us more and more. This is the work of the Lord upon us, which always requires our consecration.
As we said in the last chapter, after we consecrate ourselves to the Lord, we must try never to defeat Him. Always be willing to be defeated by Him. If we are persons consecrating ourselves to the Lord, there will often be a struggle between us and Him. This is because the Lord wants to take some things out of us. If we say, “Lord, don’t take it,” there will be a struggle, but in this struggle we must learn never to defeat the Lord but rather to be defeated by Him. Then the Lord will have the opportunity to work something into us. This requires our genuine consecration, which is for life, not for our work.
After I have spoken here about consecration, I will not continue by speaking about how to work for the Lord and be used by Him. Rather, my intention is to speak about life. Consecration is for life. Consider the type of the tabernacle. After passing the altar, we come to the laver, and after the laver we come into the Holy Place. If we understand the correct meaning of the types, we can see that there is not much work here. Instead, there is much enjoyment. This indicates that after our consecration, our main need is not to work for the Lord but to grow in life. We need to be worked on by the Lord. To work for the Lord is not even secondary; it may be the eleventh item of importance, because there may be ten other things the Lord needs to do in us before He uses us to do something for Him. We need to leave the thought of working for the Lord and pay our full attention to life.
In the Gospel of John, the Lord told us to do almost nothing but believe in Him, love Him, and abide in Him. Then we will bear fruit. Our work is to bear fruit. This is a not a work apart from life. Fruit-bearing is the out-working of life.
Home | First | Prev | Next