HIS LIFE BUT YOUR LIVING
As you go through the day, you need to realize that Christ and you have only one life, not yours but His. For this to be your experience, your own life has to be put aside. Then you two will have only one living, not His but yours, because His is concealed.
This is not easy to understand. Ask the Lord to make you clear. “Lord, thank You that You and I have one life. Show me how to take this life; show me how to put aside my life. Thank You, Lord, that the two of us have only one living; this is my living, not Yours. I thank You that the life is Yours. You should thank me that the living is mine!” If you keep praying this way, you will become clear that in the Christian life the Lord and you have only one life. In yourself you have your life; in Himself, He has His. But in Him, in His life, you are both one. This one life is your living.
If we pray this way, we may sense that the Lord is pleased —pleased that He has a life for us and that we have a living for Him.
HOW TO PUT ASIDE OUR OWN LIFE
For us to experience the one life, our own life must be put aside. In specific terms, we must put aside both our will and our glory. The Lord said, “I do not seek My own will, but the will of Him Who sent Me” (John 5:30). In 7:17-18 He said, “If anyone wills to do His will, he shall know concerning the teaching, whether it is of God, or whether I speak from Myself. He who speaks from himself seeks his own glory, but He who seeks the glory of Him Who sent Him, this One is true, and unrighteousness is not in Him.” The Lord sought both the will and the glory of the One who had sent Him. To put our will and glory aside is to deny the self.
All human beings are for their own will and their own glory. Why do we prefer to live by our own life? It is because within us we have a will concerning ourselves. The direction of this will is to promote our name, our popularity, our position. Our will within seeks to advance our glory without.
Self-promotion characterizes human society. Everyone wants to be somebody. Even in the church there are these aspirations to be someone. But the church annuls every one of us. I have heard the church people criticized as being a “bunch of dummies,” lacking any self-assertiveness. Is not this a testimony that the Lord is making us different from the world?
When we put down the will and the glory of the natural life, that life is finished.
HOW TO BE HELPED BY THE WORD
To get the most help from the Word, do not seek your own will and glory. If you are after a position for yourself, when you come to the Word the help you receive will be fragmentary at best. Be content to be nobody. As long as you are somebody, you are taking yourself as life. The Lord Jesus’ baptism at the beginning of His ministry was a declaration that He was terminated, that His natural life was under the cross, and that He would live the Father. It is when you choose such a life that the Word nourishes you. The Word is not for the sustaining of your natural life. The intent of the Word is not to instruct you. Do not try to do what is taught in the Bible. Just open to Him as you open His Word and receive Him through the Word as your supply.
(Life Messages, Vol. 1 (#1-41), Chapter 25, by Witness Lee)
