LOVE FOR CHRIST
Our Lord deserves our adoration. Love must have some kind of expression. Consecration is the very beginning and ending of the expression of love. Where there is love, there must be consecration.
Today the need among believers is more love and greater consecration.
However, although love cannot be without consecration, many consecrations can be without love. You may even deliver up your body to be burned, yet there may not be love (1 Cor. 13:3). Every outward deed ought to be motivated by the deep love within a person’s heart. Otherwise, outwardly one may be full of acts of consecration, but inwardly he may have left the first love already. The Lord will not accept it. Oh, may the Lord’s love cause our hearts to burn, to labor for Him, and to offer ourselves and our goods to the Lord!
One who loves the Lord would not love Him only in words, but also in deeds and sincerity. How feeble is the love that only loves the Lord with the heart and that has no outward expression!
The way believers use their money is the thermometer of their love for the Lord.
How much of your money is used for the Lord? How much is used for yourself, your family, and your children? If you can answer this question, you will know how much you love the Lord.
Is the work of the Lord less important than the need of our living and the expenses of our children’s food and education? Who will please the Lord more, the one who gives what is needed for his living, or the one who gives the surplus?
Although most believers are poor, still a few are rich. If a person has a heart to love the Lord, even though he is poor, does he not also have his "two mites?" (Mark 12:42). If you love the Lord, how can you not have an expression of the "two mites"?
To me, the giving of the rich ones is like the crumbs that fall from their table. Do we realize that our Lord was rich, but for our sakes became poor? (2 Cor. 8:9). For this reason, we should also become poor for His sake. The food, clothing, and expenditures of the rich ones have not been reduced for the Lord’s sake, and their riches have not been used to help God’s work in every place.
If those rich children of God have a heart to love the Lord, they do not have to deny themselves in their daily life that much, and the temple of the Lord will still be filled up. If they have a fervent heart to love the Lord, not only will their dormant, idle, unused money in the bank flow out everywhere for the use of the Lord, but there will be much self-denial also in their daily rightful blessings in order to please God’s heart. However, how many know the joy of giving?
This should be true not only among the ordinary believers but also among those who work for the Lord. Although they do not have much income, they should not neglect their expression of love for the Lord. The Levites in the Old Testament still needed to offer the tithe. Although what we do is God’s work and what we use is God’s money, the Lord still cares much for what we offer in tears.
(But you should be careful that what you offer is for the Lord’s use. Today many churches and congregations have left the truth of the Lord! What they preach is not the gospel, and what they do is not according to the will of the Lord. You should be careful not to offer carelessly lest what you offer is not accepted by God, but rather goes to the promotion of heresies.)
Finally, brothers and sisters, if you bury your money, time, or talent, one day in eternity you will regret that you have not used them for the Lord.
(Collected Works of Watchman Nee, The (Set 1) Vol. 07: The Christian (5), Chapter 25, by Watchman Nee)
