GOD HAPPY TO WORK IN US
“For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure” (Phil. 2:13). Our life, the Christian life and the church life, is according to God’s good pleasure. The Christian life is a happy life. Many times the New Testament exhorts us to be happy. “Rejoice in the Lord always: and again I say, Rejoice” (4:4). We should be rejoicing day after day, not in ourselves but in the Lord. We are a people “singing and psalming with your heart to the Lord, giving thanks at all times for all things in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to God and the Father” (Eph. 5:19-20). Rather than having Thanksgiving Day once a year, we daily give thanks to God for everything, singing hymns to Him and even stirring up others by our sense of excitement.
We as Christians should be an emotional people. When we are with others, they should sense something exciting about us. In those years at Elden Hall in Los Angeles our neighbors called us the “hallelujah people.” We were excited enough to be singing and praising the Lord even while we walked on the streets.
What makes us so happy? It is because we have the very God working within us both to will and to do of His good pleasure. How do we know that we are living a life according to God’s good pleasure? It is because of our sense of happiness. When we are happy, we are registering God’s happiness within us. Our inward joy is an indication that we are living and walking according to His good pleasure.
GOD HAPPY WITH OUR GLORIFICATION
The day will come when we shall all be glorified. We shall be with Christ on the mount of transfiguration. In that day God will be beside Himself with excitement and will call us to Satan’s attention: “Satan, look at My children! My children are glorified!” Surely this thought is hinted at in Romans 8: “The sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the coming glory to be revealed to us. For the anxious watching of the creation eagerly expects the revelation of the sons of God.…The creation itself will also be freed from the slavery of corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans together and travails in pain together until now. And not only so, but we ourselves also, having the firstfruit of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan in ourselves, eagerly expecting sonship, the redemption of our body” (Rom. 8:18-19, 21-23).
A PEOPLE TODAY FOR GOD’S GOOD PLEASURE
The recovery is that God may regain His good pleasure. Surely today’s Christianity is no source of joy to Him. We must be a people among whom God may have His good pleasure. It was for this that the earth was created. It was for this that man was created. It was for this that God became incarnated. It was for this that Jesus was crucified and resurrected. This was also the very purpose of our new birth.
We are now living and walking according to the pleasure of God. That pleasure will reach its climax on the day that we are glorified.
(Life Messages, Vol. 1 (#1-41), Chapter 33, by Witness Lee)
