The First Major Crisis - A Deformed Daily Life


	Confronting Crisis in the Full-time Serving Life Message 2: The First Major Crisis - A Deformed Daily Life Review: Three Controlling Visions, Two Exercises To be able to exercise healthily, in spite of the dangers that are always present in the serving life, we need to have three controlling visions. We need to be controlled by Christ, which practically means to be controlled by the peace of Christ that arbitrates in our hearts (Col. 3:15). We need to be controlled by the church, which means we are free in our exercise, in whatever capacity or wherever the church has set us. And we need to be controlled by a sober awareness of the operation of our soul-life. Some saints may speak of how they feel very anointed, or very encouraged, but it is much more precious to be able to say, "I surely have the divine peace. I have peace with the Lord and peace with the brothers. I am also at peace with myself." When you are experiencing this kind of peace, you are somewhat out of the danger of being in a crisis. But you should also realize that it is possible to think you are at peace because you are spiritually very dull. Sometimes you can claim to be very restful because you are spiritually "sleepy." Being truly peaceful is due to the operation of Christ within you. Besides having peace, you also need to be able to operate so positively regardless of where the brothers assign you to be in the church life. This indicates to what degree you are controlled by the church. When you have your own way in the church life, you are often very active and your operation is very positive. But many times the brothers ask you to do something which doesn't seem to fit your burden. What they ask seems unimportant or low. You are tempted to tell the brothers that you are not burdened for what they desire. You don't feel that it is fitting. You feel you have been committed with something else. You feel that the brothers are just frustrating you. This reveals that you are already in a critical situation, a crisis. You should always feel free to fellowship with others regarding your burden, but if you can only be burdened for what you feel is your burden, that means you are in trouble. You have to be able to serve however the church would lead, and in that service you should be able to operate very positively. If you are giving a conference, you should be able to operate very positively, or if you are just with two or three saints, you should be able to operate just as positively. You have to realize that no matter how spiritual or mature you are, you have to be able to function at all levels. Actually, there is no reason you cannot fulfill your burden, even if the brothers ask you to do something else in the church life. If the Lord puts you with just one brother, you can still exercise to carry out something with that one brother. Perhaps many would get saved, or even a church raised up. But you have to know how to work with one brother. There is no need to wait for a church to invite you to carry out a work. Some brothers cannot operate unless a church provides them with a large platform to operate from. Learn to give yourself in whatever situation the Lord provides for you. This will guard you from the crisis of being unable to operate healthily in a situation which does not fit your inclination. Many of us who serve the Lord full-time have proclaimed we are for Christ and the church; now we need to judge ourselves in this light. Are we able to put ourselves fully into whatever situation we are assigned to, regardless of the number involved or its seeming importance in the church life? This is to be controlled by the church. All who serve the Lord should be specifically burdened and charged in a particular way, but to overly stress what the Lord has charged you with is dangerous. Regardless of what the brothers ask you to do, there is no reason why you should not be able to exercise what you feel the Lord has charged you with. The most the brothers can do to frustrate you is not allow you to minister in a meeting or take the lead. You can still visit others, read the Word, preach the gospel, get into the riches of the Lord's recovery, and pray. No one can rob you of these. To claim or consider that you are being frustrated from carrying out your burden indicates that you are experiencing a crisis. There is something present that is unhealthy. The third thing that should control you is a sober awareness of the operation of your soul-life. When the soul-life is lived out, it is the old man, and the old man can utilize spiritual things as well as natural things. You have to be so careful about anything fitting or attractive to your soul-life. You must be aware and afraid of your soul-life. Along with these three controlling visions there are two exercises: live a private life that is able to bear public scrutiny, and build a habit of being in the Word. I feel we are particularly short in this second matter. We come to the Word every day, but we are coming in the way of getting something done. We should learn to come to the Word not just for the sake of study, but even more for the sake of life. I encourage you to always carry a Bible or some spiritual book with you and whenever you have a few minutes, just take it out and read it. Build up the habit of coming to the Word for enjoyment. Guarding Our Daily Life, Our Heart, and Our Person against Becoming Deformed In this message we come to what could be considered the most crucial crisis confronting any servant of the Lord. It concerns how your daily life is being formed. Your daily life determines your entire operation. You may consider such things as fornication or divisiveness to be more serious than a deformed daily life. The Lord, however, has a way to recover brothers from these matters. He doesn't have much of a way to restore you if your daily life has become deformed. What becomes a part of your daily life becomes a part of your person, and you usually are unaware of what is causing the change. You have no feeling about it because it is not obviously evil or worldly. It just creeps in, until it is too late and your spiritual life is ruined. What sorts of things can cause a person to become deformed in this way? One brother may be given to jokes. Another may become accustomed to naps. Still another may require five minutes of distraction before he is able to carry out what it is he needs to do. You don't feel these things are so crucial, but they cause there to be a change in the form of your very person, for out of your heart flows the issues of life (not divine life, but the kind of life you live - Prov. 4:23). That is why this verse tells us to guard ourselves, which is to guard our heart from incorporating all these things into it. Once your heart adopts something, the fruit spontaneously comes forth in the form of your daily life. Your daily life comes out of your heart. Your person has changed, and the danger is that you are not conscious of it. The things which cause the deformation of our daily life are small things, not great matters. Suppose someone introduces me to a certain type of beverage. I like it, and the next time I'm with that person I agree to have it again. The third time I find myself ordering it on my own behalf. Eventually I feel that I must have that beverage all the time. This means that something small has come in to my daily life. Our life is filled with many such occurrences which can accumulate to deform our daily life and our person. Eventually our life will bear a fragrance or a flavor which others will sense. That fragrance or flavor will become a major problem in our service to the Lord. The Lord is able to save us out of any situation, but the most difficult thing for Him to work upon is our person once it has become deformed. You have to allow the Lord to look into all the matters of your daily life. If you are still in your thirties, you are still in the process of being formed. After a period of time, how you are formed is how you will remain, whether you are properly formed or whether you are deformed. The Lord is able to do something, but the younger you are when you deal with this matter, the more the Lord will be able to have a way in you. Once you come to a certain age, it seems nearly impossible to change the form of your daily life. Not only is it difficult to reform your daily life once you pass a certain stage, it also remains easy to become further deformed. A person may be petrified with all the deformed matters, but what is formed properly can still become deformed. From this point in his life he can only fight against further deterioration. It will be nearly impossible for him to change his daily life in a positive direction. I know this word is discouraging, but you need to be very concerned about this matter, particularly while you are young. Our Usefulness in Serving is Determined by How Our Person is Formed Our spiritual operation, function, and exercise are governed by what kind of daily life we live. Your daily life is a proof of what kind of person you are. If you cannot handle your daily life properly, your person will become deformed, and this will affect your spiritual operation. Why has the Lord been able to use Brother Lee to such a degree? Look at his person and his daily life. The formation of his person and daily life is so healthy, and out of that formation has issued a certain kind of living. You see a person who has been so careful regarding every matter of his experience. And you clearly see the fruit of this kind of exercise. How about us? How we serve the Lord will be determined by who we are - it is just that simple. How we get up, how we eat our dinner, how we keep our things, how we manage our time, how we handle the Word, all these things determine the formation of our person. We may love the Lord, love the church, and be very sincere, but if we are deformed in our daily life, it will affect our ability to serve. If we are overly deformed, how will the Lord be able to use us? We may not even notice our deformity. A person who has a physical deformity, like a missing finger, simply becomes accustomed to it. This can happen to us in our daily life. Eventually we can become so deformed that the Lord has no way to use us. Being Aware of Whatever Invades Our Living The first step to guarding against deformity is to be aware that something is always coming in to change your daily life. If you are not aware of such things, then they will accumulate as habits that you are not even conscious of. These things will eventually decide the operation of your life. If you are not aware of the effect of these things, then you will one day find yourself unable to go on further with the Lord. You will have been shaped by so many things for so long that you will find it nearly impossible to do anything about it. It is very difficult to deal with something negatively formed in us. But if you are aware that something is happening to your daily life because of a particular matter, you can deal with it. I subscribed to a news magazine when I first came to this country and read it from cover to cover. Pretty soon I found myself waiting for it to come. Then I realized this was gaining ground in me and I put an end to it. You think this is a small matter, but our life is filled with such small things. You may feel that you have some free time to go to the mall. You go again next week. Eventually you become a window shopper. You used to laugh at the people who did this, now you find yourself doing it! Are you aware of what has happened? Can you deal with it now that you are aware? Some brothers are caught with taking their children to school, or to lessons after school. Some yield to requests from the saints to drive them to the airport, for the saints think that is why these brothers are full-time. Others get groceries during the day for their wives. We don't realize that all these things can deform our daily life. After a few years of these kinds of things, you are different. Your form has changed. You are not transformed into the Lord's image, you are just formed into something peculiar because over the course of time your daily life has changed. Being full-time is a pressured life. You are asked to make a profit without having any capital investment. This kind of pressure will tempt you to do things that compromise your genuineness towards Christ and the church. You will feel compelled to tell others you love them because of your motive to gain them. Doesn't this kind of lying ruin one's conscience? Doesn't it deform one's person? This is to become focused on doing things for the sake of accomplishment. You lose your simplicity. Learn to warn yourself. Learn to keep yourself for the Lord and for His testimony. If you are after accomplishment, get a job. You can accomplish something in that kind of setting. Don't allow the pressure for accomplishment to deform your serving life. Eventually, to allow all these things to come in is to allow your spiritual life to be corrupted. You will experience a decaying spiritual life, and you may not realize why. You don't understand the reason why you no longer feel burdened or charged. You wonder where the freshness in your serving life has gone. You can locate no obvious evil or sin in your life, but something has changed. Therefore we need this kind of warning. If our spiritual life is declining, it is a sign that something has come in to invade our daily life, and hence our person. The first thing needed to keep ourselves healthy is an awareness of how things are continually invading our living to deform our person and eventually our ability to serve the Lord.