THE SUFFICIENT GRACE FOR FULFILLING GOD’S PURPOSE
By the Lord’s mercy, we have no confidence in ourselves or in anyone else. We do not have confidence in people because we have learned that no one is qualified to fulfill God’s purpose. Whatever we can produce is just an Ishmael. The proper church life is not concerned with anything human or natural. The proper church life is that which carries out God’s eternal purpose through being supplied with the riches of God Himself. Whatever we are able to do means nothing in the fulfilling of God’s eternal purpose. All that is needed for the fulfillment of God’s purpose is the supply of the divine udder. So we must drop ourselves, depreciate our natural strength and ability, and walk before God, drinking of the riches of His udder. If we do this, spontaneously some element of His divine being will be wrought into us to produce the seed for the fulfillment of His purpose. This is the proper church life.
We have seen that both the seed and the land are Christ. Now we need to see that the seed and the land are not only Christ but also we. After drinking of God’s rich supply, we all shall become the seed and the land. Eventually, the seed becomes the land. For the fulfilling of His purpose, God needs a people to possess the land. In that land, God will have a kingdom to be built up with His habitation for His name. This is God’s purpose. Since we are the seed, the people to fulfill God’s purpose, we, the seed, shall also become the land. Among and within us God has His dominion, and in this dominion God has a kingdom in which He may build up His habitation.
We become the seed and the land by enjoying the riches of God and by having God wrought into us. God and we, we and God, are one in producing the seed and possessing the land. This is something heavenly on earth. It is Bethel, the gate of heaven, with the heavenly ladder joining earth to heaven and bringing heaven down to earth. Here we have God and man, man and God, joined together to be a mutual habitation. How is this fulfilled? By the unveiling of the divine Being and the changing of the human person. Once we have been changed, then we are qualified to enjoy the unveiled God as our grace. God has been unveiled, but this unveiled God needs the changed person. Regardless of who or what we are, we all need to be changed from having natural character to having spiritual character, changed from our source to the divine udder for the supply we need to fulfill the divine purpose. We need to forget ourselves, cease from our natural source of supply, walk before God, and drink of His udder all day long. Then the riches of the unveiled divine Being will be wrought into our human being as the all-sufficient grace for us to fulfill the divine purpose. The Apostle Paul labored more abundantly than all the apostles; yet it was not he but the grace of God that was with him. By the grace of God he was what he was (1 Cor. 15:10). He fulfilled God’s purpose in his ministry by enjoying the Lord’s sufficient grace (2 Cor. 12:9). Paul surely was drinking of the divine udder to receive the sufficient supply of grace. He did not exercise his natural strength to produce Ishmaels but enjoyed the rich supply of the sufficient grace to bring forth many Isaacs. He lived and worked in the way of “no longer I who live, but Christ” (Gal. 2:20). The real changing of a name is the change from I to Christ—El-Shaddai, the all-sufficient grace Supplier. Only Christ, not I, can fulfill God’s purpose.
(Abraham—Called by God, Chapter 12, by Witness Lee)
