HOW TO RECEIVE THE BREAKING
Concerning our receiving of the breaking, there are three points or stages to our experience. First the Lord’s enlightenment, second our receiving or our executing, and third the coordination of the circumstances. What does breaking mean? Suppose there is a glass that was whole originally but now has been smashed into pieces. This is to be broken. This should be clear to all of us. Consider yourself. Your natural life, your temperament, your disposition, and your flesh all are whole. However, now that you have been saved, Christ’s life has entered into you. That life needs to be released from your spirit, yet it has been surrounded. By what is it surrounded? It is surrounded by your natural life, your flesh, your temperament, and your disposition. All that you have surrounds the life of Christ, preventing it from being released. Therefore, all that you have in you that is whole needs to be broken. Only when all these things are broken can Christ’s life be released.
First, God will shine His light in you to show you that all that you have, including your natural life, your flesh, your temper, and your disposition, are enemies of the life of Christ and are frustrations and limitations to the life of Christ. God will also show you that all these things have already been crucified because they are things rejected by God, they are enemies of God, and they are frustrations to the life of Christ. After you have seen such a light, immediately the Holy Spirit in you will come and execute this light in all matters big and small in your daily life. Before you saw this light, you had no feeling or sense of condemnation when you lost your temper and acted in a fleshly way, but now after seeing the light, the Holy Spirit in you executes this light with you. When you act in your natural life and lose your temper, the Holy Spirit gives you the sense that this is your flesh, your natural life, your self, and your temper, all of which should be condemned because they were already put to death on the cross. Then by the power of the Holy Spirit you condemn these things, executing the crucifixion over them. At this time, crucifixion is not merely an objective truth on the cross but a subjective experience in you. This is the putting to death of the practices of the body mentioned in Romans 8:13. This is also the death that causes the putting to death of Jesus to operate in us, as referred to in 2 Corinthians 4:11-12.
We know that the life of Christ has the element of death, and when this element passes through us, it does a killing work in us. This is similar to our blood cells, which have at least two functions. The first function is to kill the enemies of our body—the bacteria, and the second function is to simultaneously supply our body with the necessary nutrients. We saw this light a few years ago but did not speak about it because we did not have the boldness to say that in the life of Christ there is the effect of death. However, in our experience we gradually have become more and more clear about this. Recently we saw that Brother Andrew Murray also said the same thing. He said that in the life of Christ there is a killing power, an element of death, an effect of death.
Once the Holy Spirit has gained a place in us, He will lead us daily to put to death our natural life and our flesh. This putting to death, this killing, is the breaking. Furthermore, in order to help us, God also gives us the discipline of the Holy Spirit on the outside by arranging our circumstances so that He can work in us in a joint effort within and without. The life of Christ works on the inside while the circumstances work on the outside. When we have the desire to receive the breaking, immediately there is the coordination of the things on the inside and the outside, and the Holy Spirit begins to carry out the breaking work in us. However, if our heart’s desire and our spirit do not go along with the Holy Spirit to execute the killing, then all the circumstances, regardless of how many there are, are of little use. The outward circumstances work in coordination with the Holy Spirit within us, and in between these two factors there is a third necessary factor—our receiving.
The Spirit is on the inside, the circumstances are on the outside, and in between these two we have to be the receiving ones, the executing ones. In this way, day by day and time after time, our natural life, our flesh, and our self will be broken. Eventually, when we are about to lose our temper, we will no longer be able to do it because we have been broken and have many wounds in us.
(How to Be Useful to the Lord, Chapter 6, by Witness Lee)
