Suppose a particular brother is not happy with the church in his locality. He moves to another city, supposing that he will like the church there. However, after a short period of time, he becomes unhappy with this local church, so he moves to another place. But soon he is offended by something or someone in this church and he moves to yet another locality. Such a person cannot participate in the building up of the church. On the contrary, because there is no killing of the enemy within him, he causes the church to suffer damage.
According to Paul’s word toward the end of Ephesians, a book concerning the church, we need to receive the word of God in a living way, that is, receive the word as the Spirit. The Spirit will then become the killing sword. This sword first kills us directly and then kills the power of darkness in the air indirectly. We may compare this kind of killing to the effect of an antibiotic on the germs that cause illness in our body. In order for our body to be saved, the germs need to be killed by an antibiotic. The word that we receive in a living way as the Spirit is a spiritual antibiotic that kills the “germs” within us. When the germs are killed, the evil forces in the air have no way to take advantage of us. Then we can live a healthy Body life, a healthy church life.
This is the way I have been preserved in the church life and in my ministry for so many years. Apart from the killing through the word as the Spirit, my ministry would have been terminated. Once again I would emphasize that we need to receive the word of God in a living way, so that in our experience the Spirit becomes the killing sword. When the word becomes the Spirit, the Spirit becomes the sword-the sword of the Spirit that kills the germs in us and the evil spirits in the air. In this way the Body, the church life, and our ministry are saved. This will enable our ministry to have a long life. However, the ministry of certain brothers has not lasted long. In their situation it was their ministry and not the enemy that was killed.
Let us all receive the word of God in a living way! As long as in our experience the word becomes the Spirit, the word will not only heal us but also kill the enemy.
All those who teach in the Summer School of Truth should help the young ones not merely to receive the word for the learning of certain biblical truths but to receive the word as the living Spirit. When they receive the word as the living Spirit, in their experience the Spirit will become the sword. Receiving the word in this way requires much prayer. This is why we need to have the proper pray-reading. Through pray-reading the Bible, we receive the word in a living way as the Spirit.
In 1 Timothy 2:4 Paul tells us that God “desires all men to be saved and to come to the full knowledge of the truth.” Today it seems that most Christians bring others only into God’s salvation; they do not go further to bring them into the full knowledge of the truth. The purpose of the Summer School of Truth is to bring our young people not only into God’s salvation but also into the full knowledge of the truth. In this verse truth does not mean doctrine; it means reality and denotes all the real things revealed in God’s Word, which are mainly Christ as the embodiment of God and the church as the Body of Christ. Every saved person should have a full knowledge, a complete realization, of these things. In our summer school, we should endeavor to bring the young people into the experiential knowledge of the reality of the Triune God. In order to do this, we ourselves need to be persons who are in this reality.
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