Learning to Have the Equipping of the Ministry (5)


	Learning to Have the Equipping of the Ministry (5) But they who are of Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and its lusts - Galatians 5:24. But far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom the world has been crucified to me and I to the world - Galatians 6:14. The Constitution of a Personality That is Useful to the Lord Through the Coordination of a Good Character and the Divine Nature We received the divine nature when we were saved. According to Brother Lee, the divine nature makes us God-men with two natures. We are God-men possessing both the human nature and the divine nature so that we may be full of the divine attributes. If we wish to live out the human virtues, the divine nature must go through our character and eventually become our personality. The Equipping of the Personality For the equipping of the personality, we must know these three things - the nature or disposition, the character, and the personality. When we believed in God, we received the divine nature, which transformed our created human nature. When we became a partaker of the divine nature, the divine nature entered into our human nature and produced a mingling of the two. Praise the Lord for this! Through the cooperation of a good character, this nature will produce a good personality. For example, being exact is a good character trait. We need to ask ourselves, "Am I punctual? Am I precise in handling things?" Strictness is a good character trait as well. A strict person doesn't easily let go of the affairs placed in his hands. Diligence, magnanimity, and fineness are also excellent character traits. If we want to follow the Lord, we must know that it is through our character that the divine nature may be constituted into our personality. Without a good character, regardless of how good our nature is, we will be very limited before the Lord. We must allow the divine nature to go through our character so that it may develop our personality. Following the Lord is not merely a matter of desire or life. Whether the Lord can use you or not depends upon your personality. Your personality determines your effectiveness before the Lord. It is precious to have a personality that is useful to the Lord. Take care to develop your personality so that you can be a proper vessel for the Lord. The Necessity of the Constitution of the Divine Nature A number of kings such as Alexander the Great have changed the history of the world. They were the elite of the world. Not many can accomplish what these accomplished. However, no matter how good their personality, character, or nature was, they could not serve the Lord in the church. The Lord cannot use anything natural. If you desire to follow the Lord, you must have a personality that is produced from the divine nature. For example, you may have the trait of magnanimity, being broad-hearted. This is a useful characteristic. But such "greatness" cannot be used for the Lord until the divine personality has been formed within you. Genuineness is a matter of a good nature as well as a good character. It is beneficial to possess a genuine nature. Learn to be genuine. A person who is not genuine is duplicitous. Why are the churches and the recovery getting complicated? It is because brothers are not genuine and are playing politics. They might say one thing to this brother and another thing to that one. Such persons might well survive, but the Lord will not be able to use them. If you desire to be useful to the Lord, you must have a personality that is useful. You should allow the Lord to touch you, make you alive, and bring you the divine attributes that come with the divine nature. Through your character, the divine attributes can produce a personality that is useful to the Lord. Exercising for the Character to Become Useful to the Lord When you touch the Lord in a deep way, your nature and disposition will become different, your person will become different, and your views and feelings will become different. When your nature and disposition are transformed, they also must go through your character in order to produce a good personality. Therefore, you need to exercise your character: exercise to be broad, fine, and diligent so that your character can become useful to the Lord. When your nature is transformed by the divine attributes and you are exercised in your character according to the growth of the divine nature, then you will begin to have a personality that is useful to the Lord, and you will begin to live out a humanity that is full of the virtues of Christ. I would like to give you an illustration. How should a husband walk into the room when his wife is sleeping? This is not a small thing. If my wife is sleeping, and I go into the room to get something and wake her up, it is a problem of my character, not my nature. However, if I purposely rouse her up, that would indicate a problem in my nature. Some have a nature that cannot tolerate other people's happiness. Our nature should experience transformation after we are saved. The transformed nature produces, through our character, a useful personality. The Good Character Developed from the Divine Nature As you learn to serve in the church, you need to be observant. You need the ability to discriminate and differentiate things spiritually, and you need the ability to observe people and practical things. Observation is related to your being and personality. You must learn to observe who has grown a lot lately and who has stopped growing, who is joyful and who is under pressure, which couple has been praying together and which couple just had a fight. If you don't develop this skill when you are young, you cannot serve the Lord. A serving one should be fine. He must be fine in his serving and administrating in the church life. However, if a fine person does not continually experience transformation in his nature, eventually he will become very picky. If there is no divine nature in your fineness, and if you don't have a good character developed from the divine nature, you will become a problem in the church life, for you will bring the saints under a lot of pressure. To be detailed is a good character trait. However, if it is not developed from the divine nature, the person will be hard to please. In the meeting he will see that this sister doesn't have a head covering, and that sister has one but doesn't wear it properly; this sister's head covering is too big, and that sister's is too small. He will discover a lot of problems just by looking at the sisters' head coverings. This kind of person has developed a fine character, but only his character has developed; he has not allowed the Lord to transform his nature. Eventually he will have a peculiar personality. The people whom he serves will find it hard to experience life. Good Personality Needing Good Character Some have a nature that is constantly being transformed. They pray and weep every day, but don't care about their character at all. They touch the Lord and have the Lord's presence every day. They know the Lord's supply, but have no idea about human life. Although the divine nature transforms them day by day, their personality cannot be used for the Lord. Those whom such a person serves will suffer a lot because he is so "spiritual." When you fellowship with him, he will say, "The Lord will take care of everything. What does the Lord say?" But this is the reason you go to him - you don't know what the Lord is saying. If you tell him this, he will say, "You don't know? You have to learn to know the teaching of the anointing." You are in the most urgent situation and are trying to find a way out, yet he still tells you to learn the teaching of the anointing. He indeed has the divine nature. However, since he doesn't have a good character, his personality becomes peculiar. He cannot enter into the situation of others, and he doesn't understand where people are. A person with this kind of personality cannot serve others. There are two kinds of people who will cause problems as they get older. The first is the person who can do everything and see everything. The second is the person who considers "living in a castle in the air" as being spiritual. Especially the sisters tend to have this problem. Some sisters like to tell others, "You have to touch the feeling within. What is your feeling? What does the anointing say?" This answer only confuses others; it doesn't solve their problems. Such saints often enjoy the divine nature, but they don't have a proper understanding of the matter of character. As a result, the divine nature has no way to produce a good personality in them, and without a good personality, we cannot serve the Lord. Take Brother Lee for an example. He has a broad heart. I haven't seen another person in the recovery as broad-hearted as he is. His heart is so big that whether you talk about Africa, Europe, or Asia, he can take it in. The leading brothers can sense his concern for their locality, no matter where they come from. Brother Lee is a "great" person, but at the same time he is also fine. When you are with him, you feel that this person has the Lord. The Lord in him is not theoretical, but very real. This brother has the constitution of the Lord so that he is very genuine. When he says, "Brother, I love you," you can tell he really loves you. But his love doesn't allow you to be wild. He doesn't allow you to go your way apart from life. On the one hand, he is full of love. On the other hand, he knows how to discipline. He loves you and disciplines you; he disciplines you and loves you. Was Brother Lee born this way? No, absolutely not. He developed through the consistent constitution of the divine life and the divine nature along with the exercise of his character that formed this personality. We praise the Lord for our brother's personality. But we must also remember that no spiritual person is perfect. He still has whatever limitations the Lord has measured to him. The Exercise of the Character according to the Constitution of the Divine Nature A person might be born with a good character, but the natural character is not solid. For example, I was born a genuine person. However, to obtain the real genuineness I must exercise. How do I exercise? Every time I am not sincere, say an inexact word, or play a little politics, I immediately have a feeling, "From now on I shouldn't behave like this." If my behavior hurts others, I have to go to them and apologize. I must deal with myself and not allow any untruthfulness to remain in me. Eventually, you will find that your natural genuineness is not sufficient. No matter how genuine you are, it is not good enough. The truly valuable genuineness that is useful to the Lord is developed through the divine nature. More than this, you must exercise the characteristic of genuineness. The exercise of the character according to the constitution of the divine nature will produce a good personality. This will become a great blessing to the Lord's recovery. Some brothers have a strict character but lack the divine life to back it up. Such a person is like Moses; when you see him, you see the law. He is very strict concerning how you should walk, how you should laugh, and how you should shake hands with others. Such a person's personality is tough and strong. Since there is insufficient constitution of the divine life, however, his characteristic of strictness becomes his limitation instead of his blessing. His strict character becomes a hindrance to the church's advancing. People under his perfecting cannot love the Lord, because their focus is off. Instead of focusing on Christ, they focus on how to become a perfect person - how to speak perfectly, how to carry things out perfectly, how to walk perfectly, and how to live a perfect life. Actually, the more you pursue, the more imperfect you should find yourself to be. Before you loved the Lord, you felt you were a nice person. After you began loving the Lord, you felt as if nothing was right. You didn't even grow well. This would push you to be with the Lord more and to focus on the leading of the Lord, being under the Lord's control, and being one with the Lord. This is the healthy process of cultivating your personality. Your good character is useless if you do not have the divine life. If you have plenty of divine life but do not exercise your good character, you will also be useless. It is only when you have both the divine life and a good character that you will be able to produce a personality that is useful to the Lord. Inwardly this personality will be full of the divine element, and outwardly it will be related to God's desire. This is an absolute personality. It seems that no one is as absolute as Paul was. He was absolute towards what he thought was right. When he was a Jew, he was a real Jew. When he became a Christian, he totally left Judaism, yet for his kinsmen he was willing to pay any price. Hardly any of us have Paul's absoluteness. Absoluteness was part of his character. Praise the Lord for this. Since the divine nature was constituted in him and became the inner essence of his character, his absoluteness was useful to the church. The Preservation and Growth of the Personality Our problem is that we like to use a brother when he begins to love the Lord and to have some desire. Our tradition is to use anyone who is desirous. Once I strongly told some brothers, "No. You cannot use those who are desirous, for when you use them, you damage them." Why did I say this? We employ human methods when we use others, and those we use will unwittingly be ruined, for the work will become to them a religious work. When people touch the Lord, their personality is transformed and their reaction to things changes. They begin to fear God and to respect the leading brothers, the church, and the Word of God. They also begin to form a good personality that can be of use to God. This is the first step of God's work in their personality as a result of transformation. However, if we use them before their personality has formed, their personality will be damaged. Therefore we must be careful. This is a serious matter. If we are not careful, we might damage ourselves as well as others. Preserving a Good Personality from Erosion You shouldn't have an incorrect concept about transformation. You shouldn't think that one day you will not know sin anymore and will be just like Christ. No. No matter how experienced you become, the world won't be crucified to you. This is the reason Paul said, "But far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom the world has been crucified to me and I to the world" (Gal. 6:14). It is a fact that the world has been crucified. But it is only when you yourself are crucified that the world is crucified to you. Not only so, our flesh won't be crucified either. Paul said, "But they who are of Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and its lusts" (Gal. 5:24). In other words, when you are not of Christ, your flesh is still here. Only when you are of Christ can the flesh be crucified. Sometimes when we read these verses, we say, "Praise the Lord! I have been crucified, and sin has also been crucified." It is true that you have died to sin and that the old man has been crucified. However, the body of sin has not yet been crucified. As long as you are living on the earth, you will still have the body of sin, and the flesh, the passions, the lusts, and the world will be able to tempt you and cause you to fall. If you are not cautious, the world will seduce you through your lusts and erode the personality that God has constituted in you through His divine life. We all have our own personalities. But our personalities can be changed. One may lose his integrity in his old age, even though he has been faithful all his life. It can happen to one who serves the Lord just as it can to anyone else in the world. One may serve the Lord for his entire life, but eventually he may reach a point where he can no longer walk this way, for his personality has changed and even deteriorated. We need the Lord's mercy to preserve us. We are all the same. No one can ignore this danger. The world is always here. The flesh and its passions are always here. Before the Lord returns and our bodies are transfigured, the flesh, the world, and the lusts are always here. How we need the Lord's mercy! We have to pray, "Lord, please preserve me with a good personality and help it grow in Your mercy. I would like to be kept away from the world and the flesh." Growing a Good Personality in Fear and Godliness When the Lord first touched you, He brought you a good nature. That good nature brought in a good personality. You should grow this good personality in fear and godliness. "In fear" is to fear God; "in godliness" is to live out God. You fear God in your heart and live out God in your living. If you fear and live out God, it will discipline your character, preserve the good personality that God has constituted into you, and enable its continued growth. During the process of growing, you should learn to escape from the ungodly things. Take card games for example. Playing cards is not a sin, but it will cause you to lose your fear of God and your life of godliness. Card games are not sinful things, but playing them takes away your godliness. In principle, you shouldn't touch anything related to winning or losing, and you shouldn't touch anything related to probability. If two brothers play chess, one wins and the other loses, and there will not be a smooth feeling between them. Another example is the lottery. Buying lottery tickets is in fact gambling. It takes away your fear and godliness. In order to cultivate a good personality, you must fear God. You brothers like to argue and compete with one another. You even compete in your prophesying. This shows that you are neither God-fearing nor godly. In other words, you don't have God in your prophesying. You only care about how well you speak. If you have God, you don't need to compete. You can gain Christ no matter how you speak. You can supply Christ no matter whether people like your speaking or not. If you are in fear and godliness, you won't focus on the speaking itself. You will instead focus on how to live out God so that people can sense God and touch God Himself. If you keep on exercising in this way, the good personality constituted in you will be preserved. The Stripping Off and Destruction of the Good Personality I am afraid that the good personality might also be destroyed in the church life. For example, one brother just begins to love the Lord, and another older brother invites him to enjoy some worldly entertainment. This older brother hasn't sanctified himself for the sake of the younger brother. On the contrary, he is destroying the young one with his knowledge that the worldly entertainment is nothing. There are worse cases, such as when a young brother gives up everything for the Lord, and an older one tells him that he should follow So-and-so in order to have a way, or he should do a certain thing that will please Brother Lee. This kind of advice destroys and ruins the young ones and causes them to leave the way of the Lord. Paul touched this when he wrote about the things sacrificed to idols. He said that according to knowledge, an idol is nothing, and food will not commend us to God; we lack nothing if we do not eat it, nor do we abound if we eat it (1 Cor. 8:4-8). But he also said, "If anyone sees you who have knowledge reclining at table in an idol temple, will not his conscience, if he is weak, be emboldened to eat the things sacrificed to the idols?" (v. 10). Therefore he testified, "If food stumbles my brother, I shall by no means eat meat forever, that I may not stumble my brother" (v. 13). We shouldn't touch the things that will destroy our fear of God, our godly living, or the testimony of the church. We say that we are the local church, that we have the local ground, and that many saints with us love the Lord. However, the real testimony of the church is manifested in our godly fear and godliness. It is also manifested through those who together fear God and magnify God. Some people are familiar with the Bible, but they lack the fear of God and godliness. They read the Bible and make light of it. The fear of the Lord and godliness are not related to the knowledge of the Bible, but to the person who reads it. It is not a matter of knowledge, but a matter of attitude. We usually think that those who follow the Lord are people who live in Christ, have God, and magnify God. This concept is normal and healthy. But if someone tells us that the leading brothers made some mistakes and that the elders quarreled in the meeting, immediately our fear and godliness depart. And if we lose our fear and godliness, it is hard for us to grow properly in the divine life. I really have sympathy for brothers in such a situation. They love the Lord, they are faithful, and they serve in the church, but the Lord can never use them. They have the divine nature, but their growing environment is too limited. The conversations of these saints are low, and their relationships are low. Their fear and godliness have been stripped away in such an atmosphere. In their church life the reality of spirituality cannot be manifested, not to mention the growth of a good personality. No matter how prudent or capable they are, the Lord can never use them. You must learn to be in fear and godliness. Do not allow anything to destroy the good personality the Lord has constituted in you. You need the mercy of the Lord so that He doesn't put you beside the garbage dump while you are growing. The most dreadful thing is when the brother beside you is desirous, zealous, and experienced, and yet he speaks garbage, talks about garbage, and cares for nothing but garbage. It takes away all fear of the Lord and godliness. In such an environment it will be impossible for you to grow. Allowing the Lord to Live in, Conform, and Transform You A personality that is useful to the Lord is the result of the Lord's living in us, conforming us, and transforming us. Life and Exercise I would like to repeat that a good personality is the result of growth in life as well as exercise. Life is wonderful, especially the divine life. If God's life grows in you properly, it will produce many virtues in the process. The divine virtues will naturally be constituted in you and become your personality. We need the Lord's mercy, and we need to ask Him to grow in us. He not only lives in us but also conforms and transforms our life. The transformation of life will result in a personality that is useful to the Lord. We also need others' help and assistance in this process. In other words, one aspect of exercising occurs in our relationship toward others. This exercise is definitely not outward, but inward. If you grow well inwardly, your exercise is useful. If you don't grow, your exercise is useless. If you don't have Christ, no matter how genuine you are, you are still a person without Christ. However, if you are not genuine, exact, and strict, even though you have Christ, you still cannot manifest Him. On the one hand, we need to be exercised in our character; on the other hand, we must deeply touch the Lord. When we touch Him, He can and will shape our mind. A brother may be prudent, righteous, or persistent. However, his prudence, righteousness, or persistence has to match the growth of the divine life so that it can become a personality that is useful to the Lord. When life is growing in us, we are more sensitive to our prudence, our righteousness, or our persistence. I am not saying that prudence, righteousness, and persistence are not good. To be prudent is good, as is to be righteous. As for persistence, no one can accomplish much without it. But in order to be flexible in our persistence, we need the work of the Spirit. The Spirit has to work in us so that we have the sense of life and the awareness of life regarding our character. The transformation of life doesn't just change our view or our way of handling things. The transformation of life is when our personality matches the living, growth, and conformation of the divine life and its manifestation in our life, so that our person can be useful to the Lord. Our Inborn Nature Not Changing No matter how transformed we are, we won't lose our inborn nature. Transformation makes our personality holy, sanctified, and it unites us with God, God's economy, and God's operation. I am a man with a strong emotion. Although I am getting old, my emotion remains strong. Our nature will not be converted. I won't be transformed to the extent that I have no more tears. When the Lord transforms you, He still respects your inborn nature. He respects your emotion, your mind, and your will. However, as your personality is being sanctified, your emotion, mind, and will are getting more and more holy. For example, it is not right for a righteous brother to be legal, yet a righteous person can easily become very legal and scare other people away. It is good to be righteous, but it is not easy to be tolerant if you are righteous. When the brother is matured, he will still be righteous and not crooked. If he becomes crooked, it means he has become fallen. You have to know that maturity will not abolish your inborn nature. You may be righteous, but you should be constantly in the Lord's presence asking the Lord in His mercy to deal with your natural righteousness so that it can become divine righteousness. Otherwise, your natural righteousness will always be a limitation to you. This is not something that is easy to perceive. We need to recognize what characterizes us. A prudent person is always looking for ways. If he is a man in life, he should have the feeling and sense of life while he is trying to find a way. He should know that this is his nature and that he has to slow down and be guarded. A persistent person should do the same thing. He must learn to listen and fellowship. However, he should not become indifferent and careless due to his fellowship with others. This would not be healthy. He cannot become loose and lose his persistence. Instead, he should learn to be persistent in a divine way. Allowing the Element of Christ to Increase You must realize that what seems to be your hindrance and shortage today can be used by the Lord to build up the church in the future. Today your prudence or righteousness or persistence may be a limitation, but in the future the Lord can use these traits to build up the church. Your nature won't be stripped away, for it is from the Lord. Instead, Christ will increase in your nature through the work of God. In our nature, we vary. For example, one brother likes to hide his feelings. He is very nice. When he is angry, he will just go home. He won't react, contradict, or attack others. Another brother is just the opposite. When he is just a little mad, he appears to be very angry. It is hard to say which nature is better. But after the divine nature is constituted into us, the different natures can be used for the Lord. These two brothers have to exercise their characters to become exact, strict, diligent, and broad. But no matter how much they exercise, one brother's nature will not become the same as the other's. After 30 years, they will still have their own natures. However, if the Lord has mercy, each of them may have a personality that is useful to the Lord. A Full-Grown Personality That Is Useful to the Lord We need a personality that will build up the Body of Christ. The Lord will not abolish our inborn nature, but He will continuously infuse the divine life into us. The divine life will bring in the divine nature. This divine nature helps us exercise our character. Eventually it is possible to have a full-grown personality that can be useful to the Lord. The better your personality is, the more useful you are to the Lord. Therefore, you must pay attention to your relationship with the Lord and to your life-exercise. What I am saying is not simple. I couldn't say these things ten years ago, for I didn't have the understanding at that time. I wasn't clear about the difference between nature, character, and personality. Now I have some idea how to put them together. The Lord desires eventually to transform us and to gain our personality. With a proper personality we can be useful to the Lord. Without it, we cannot serve the Lord. May the Lord have mercy on us!