ALLOWING THE LORD TO TAKE OVER
OUR MIND, EMOTION, AND WILL
Previously, we were made clear about the dispensing of the Triune God. God the Father is the source. Whatever He is, is in the Son. The Son has accomplished all that the Father planned and purposed. He has attained the throne, the lordship, the kingship, the headship, the kingdom, and the highest name. All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Him. Now all that the Son has accomplished, obtained, and attained with all that the Father is and has, is in the life-giving Spirit who has been dispensed into our spirit. We are one spirit with Him. The Triune God has been dispensed into our spirit. This is marvelously wonderful!
Our spirit is the central part of our being. Surrounding our spirit are the inward parts of the soul—the mind, emotion, and will. You have God in your spirit, but you do not have God in your mind, emotion, and will. You need to allow Him to dispense Himself into all the parts of your soul. Let us again use the illustration of electricity installed in a building. The only way to appropriate and apply this electricity is to turn on the switch. Our spirit is the switch that turns on and applies the heavenly electricity. We have to exercise our spirit so that God may saturate and take over our mind, our will, and our emotion. This is the growth in life. We have to turn to our spirit to meet God there.
In particular, we need to allow the Lord to subdue our will from within our spirit. We should pray, "Lord, I am willing to give You the ground. Take full possession of my will and saturate my will with Yourself." Then God will be increased within us, and we will have the growth of God in us. Many times we will not give the Lord the ground in our will in certain things. We may say that we have consecrated ourselves to the Lord and to the church. But even today we still would not be willing to surrender all the ground in our being to the Lord. Instead, we should say, "Lord, this is Your ground. Take it. I surrender in my will. I am willing to be subdued by You. Take over my will." Right away we will have the increase of God.
Our mind must also be possessed by the Lord. It is wrong that we are in the mind daily. As those who are seeking the Lord, we must exercise to be in the spirit all the time. Two brothers coordinating together in the church service may realize that they have to be in the spirit, but they are used to being in their mind. One brother may consider in his mind about the other brother, thinking that this brother’s attitude toward him has not been good. When we are in the mind, we are soulish and dusty. The more we think about the brothers apart from the spirit, the more dusty we become, to be the food of the serpent, who was assigned by the Lord to eat dust all the days of his life (Gen. 3:14).
When we are in the spirit, we will forget about everything but Christ. We must ask the Lord to be merciful to us so that we may surrender our mind to Him. We should say, "Lord, take over my mind. I give all the ground in my mind to You." Then God will increase in us more. We also need to give Him the ground to take over our emotion so that our emotion can be filled with His desires and feelings.
It is in this way that God is increasing within us all the time to cause us to grow with the increase of God. We do not grow by being outwardly adjusted, improved, or corrected. We grow by giving the Lord the ground within us so that He can increase within us. This issues in the transformation in life. By the growth in life we are transformed into precious stones for God’s building. We become the living stones built up as a spiritual house (1 Pet. 2:5). The growth in life is a matter of God increasing in our whole being, beginning from our spirit and spreading into all of the inward parts of our soul. The more ground He gains within us, the more He increases Himself within us. Then we grow by His increase within us for the building up of the Body of Christ. This is the way to have the local church life.
(The Experience of Christ as Life for the Building Up of the Church, Chapter 4, by Witness Lee)
