caring MORE for the Father's house than for our own

I have been a bit quiet on this blog, but quite regular on agodman.com :) and on facebook. Encouraged by some of the saints and family friends I decided to try something new: compile and put together the statuses on facebook and post them here on the blog! :) Since not many of the readers of the blog are my friends on facebook, why not present the riches in the Word of God to everyone!

This past week we were getting into the Building up of God's House, the Father's House, the House of Jehovah. You can read extensively on this subject via agodman.com, but I will also post below some of the statuses from Facebook on this topic. Praise the Lord for the depths of the Word of God and the ministry of the age which opens up the Word and brings us into the intrinsic meaning of what the Bible really says!

Lord, save us from seeking our own things! Save us from RUNNING after our own things while Your house lies waste! O Lord, IT IS TIME! We will come to build! We bring the wood and build the house! Gain what You are after, Lord, the building! We give ourselves to You for this, for the building up of Your dwelling place!

We need to have the sense that the church is the Father’s house – here the Father lives, rests, propagates His life, dwells with His children, and the desire of His heart is fulfilled. Today the Son is building a house for His Father, which the Father would call it home, and this house will match His characteristics and taste.

The Bible is a book of building. The central divine thought in the Scriptures is that God desires a building. Whatever God is doing today is part of His building work. The Lord's coming back depends on the building up of God's house, His dwelling place. Lord, gain the building! We come to build!

Saints, may the Lord have mercy on us that we may be unveiled to see, unloaded that we may receive, unoccupied to have the capacity to apprehend, and emptied that we may be filled with God’s heart’s desire to obtain His house, the Father’s house.

How blinded we have been, shut in with what concerns us, while God's house lieth waste - Lord, break through, overturn us! We'll go up to the mountain - bring wood and build the house. We will never say, Another Day! We will come, o Lord, to build!

Lord Jesus, mingle Yourself more with us today! Build Yourself into us. Make Your home in our heart. Lord, make us mingled persons who have their being fully mingled with the Triune God. Lord, more mingling today!

The extent to which we are the church in reality depends upon how much we are mingled with God. When we by the Lord's mercy allow the mingling of God with man and man with God to work and build in us, we will have the reality of the church as the Father's house, the house of Jehovah.

But holding to truth in love, we may grow up into Him in all things, who is the Head, Christ, out from whom all the Body, being joined together and being knit together through every joint of the rich supply and through the operation in the measure of each one part, causes the growth of the Body unto the building up of itself in love (Eph. 4:15-16).

We need to let Christ possess, occupy, and saturate our entire inner being, so that He may build His house, the church. The genuine church life is actually an issue of Christ personally making His home in our heart to occupy every corner of our inner being.

Lord Jesus, soften us; / You know the source from which we came. / By calling on Your name, / Lord, let no earth unturned nor rocks remain — / Lord Jesus, grow in us. Amen, Lord Jesus, have a way to grow in us!

Read more on this topic by consulting the following articles:

• seeing a vision of God’s building and caring FIRST for the Father’s House
• seeing the significance of the Father’s house and being mingled more with God
• building up the church by growing in life and letting Christ make His home in us

Picture source: a dear sister on Facebook framed this verse.

Facebook Question: How do we prepare for the Lord's return? Can we hasten His return?

Recently I have started asking some questions on facebook, partly because I want to know how my friends on Facebook think / feel about some things, and partly to see how much of the Word of God and the ministry gets into us and becomes part of our constitution. We read the Bible, we live a daily life under the divine dispensing, and we do our best to enjoy the Lord both personally and corporately. And from time to time, whether through people around us or in the church life, there are some of these questions being asked - how do we answer them? Here are some of the previous questions which were posted online:

1. What would be your prayer to the Lord for the new year 2012?
2. What do you love the most in the home meetings of the church?

And now, here's another question I asked my friends on Facebook: 

HOW do we prepare for the Lord's return? He wants to return, but He's waiting for us to be prepared - how do we / you prepare for the Lord's return? How do we hasten His return? 

And here are some of their answers :) 

• Brother, I would do my best to share the Gospel of Jesus... As much we do this, His return would be closer. Amen!
• I've just read something like this, "All of our hope rests in the coming of our Lord. When He comes, all problems will be solved. Instead of focusing on problems, we can turn our eyes upon Jesus (Hebrews 12:2). He has already taken care of the problem of sin and today we can receive Him as our Saviour and as our new life. To do so, simply open your heart to the Lord and pray: “Lord Jesus Christ, I need you to solve all my problems. Thank You for dying to save me. I open to receive You as my new life. Lord Jesus, come quickly!”
• The Lord is waiting for His Bride to be prepared. The Bride is a matter of love. We must love the Lord, our dear, lovely Bridegroom with all our heart, and all our mind, and all our soul and all our strength. We must tell Him a thousand times a day: Lord Jesus, I LOVE YOU! I still love You. I love You more today than yesterday and not as much as tomorrow. Lord keep me in this bridal love for You all the days of my life. When we love the Lord, His heart is duplicated in us, and we long and yearn for His coming, and our entire life becomes geared toward this. Eventually, we become the Shulamite and then the Bridegroom will return! (Also, check out hymn 1159.) 
• A very good question, brother. Our sister answered for us already: the preparing is our living. We are preparing for His return through many experiences, just as the bride prepares for her wedding day. The garment must be readied, stitch by stitch beautified. But likewise, we need to ourselves be matured, for the Lord will come back to a bride who is "ready." If we are immature, the Lord cannot come back. The practical way, as our sister wrote well, is to have a loving and turning heart toward Him, to seek after His heart continually and to even live unto His appearing. This means a continual kind of living, allowing His heart to be our heart, and allowing Him to work in the inward and outward ways to make us more ready. This also would involve our personal prayer for this regard: "Lord, make me ready."
• preaching the Gospel to all the nations....
• We prepare and hasten the Lord's return by lovingly being in the enjoyment of the Lord continually.
• We need to love Him and do things not for Him but with Him and through Him by telling to others about the One we love (Rev. 22:17 note 2) preaching the gospel requires also shepherding for His corporate expresion because He desires marry not a little girl but a Bride which will match Him.
• The 2 greatest prophecy in the Bible are in Matthew 16:18 which says "...I will build My Church, and Rev. 22:7...."behold I come quickly.." Untill the Church is built, the Lord will still tarry. The church is built directly by the Head Christ and indirectly thru the members of His Body. We are the members of His Body, and for us to build the Church as the Kingdom of God, the gates of hades must be shut. Three main gates of hades frustrating the building are: the self, the soul life and the mind. And if we shut these three gates by taking up the keys of denying the self, taking up the cross, and losing the soul life through exercising to always turn to the spirit, the church will be built and the coming of the Lord will be hastened
• Amen dear saints! Matthew 28:19-20
• That's right, we really don't know yet, because we need to depend on Him for He is the One who will make the way and make the preparation on His returned. We don't have the power to make our own plan for His coming back but He has! Praise Him...

It is so wonderful to have such friends on Facebook! We can pursue the Lord, remind one another about His Word and His life, speak His word and open up to Him, share songs and hymns, and even ask questions that remind us to turn to Him - even on Facebook! How Wonderful!

The Lord's desire is to return soon. When? We don't know - but He says, I am coming soon! Therefore, we need to be those faithful slaves who are giving food to others at the appointed time and manage things in God's house in faithfulness (while preparing for His return in the long-run) and at the same time we need to be the virgins who gain oil in their lamps, eagerly awaiting the return of their Bridegroom to enter with Him at the feast (see Matt. 25). ... 

This is NOT a comprehensive and all-inclusive answer, but the answers given by the above listing is quite good. What do YOU think? How can we prepare ourselves for the Lord's return? How can we hasten His coming? Leave a comment below...

Lord, prepare us! Lord, grow in us! Lord, gain us! Make us the overcomers You need that will bring You back! O, Lord, how we long to see You again and even hasten Your return! We give ourselves to You, dear Lord, that we may be prepared!

the need for spiritual understanding and divine revelation (LS 1 Thes msg 3)

Message three from the life-study of 1 Thessalonians is so rich and so exposing! In the first few verses of 1 Thessalonians Paul speaks of the church in God the Father and in the Lord Jesus Christ, the work of faith, the labor of love, the endurance of hope, the manner of life, turning to God from idols, serving a living and true God, awaiting the coming of the Lord Jesus, etc. If you speak English, you understand what these words mean, but we don't really get the deeper meaning of these matters.

I was so exposed to see that I read the Word of God and I think I understand it, but I don't have an exercised heart, spirit, and mind to see the divine revelation in the Word. I take the Word of the Lord for granted. I can even declare, Praise the Lord, I have turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God! - but what does it really mean that God is living and true? Is God living to me? Is my God living to others through me? Am I in God and is God living in me? Is He real, living, and true to me and through me?


O, Lord... how much we need a spiritual understanding of the divine facts - we need to be enlightened by the Lord every time we read the Bible, so that in the organic union with the Lord the divine facts in the Word would be transmitted into us!  We need to have a spiritual understanding of the Word of God (in contrast with the natural understanding of what the Bible says) and the divine revelation in the Word (in contrast with our self-made light according to our natural mind when we read the Bible).

Lord, save us from thinking we know! We don't want to take Your word for granted! Keep us so open to You whenever we come to the Word! May the objective faith be transmitted into us to become our living and subjective faith, by which we are organically united with You! Lord, we want to have a view of what You are, what You have, what You have accomplished and obtained! Save us from our natural ways... we want Spiritual understanding and Divine Revelation!

[NB. There may be a few days ahead in which I may not post here from my enjoyment in the life-study of 1 Thessalonians - but I still do my best to read it, enjoy it, and maybe even share a bit about it. Tomorrow we start the video-training on the Crystallization-Study of the Psalms(part 2), and I will focus on getting these messages in... Lord, re-constitution!]

the Characteristics of the Christian life (Life-Study of 1 Thessalonians msg 2)

I read the life-study for today, message 2 of the Life-Study of 1 Thessalonians, and I was simply blown away! Wow, I never ever thought even in my highest appreciation for the Christian life that these three  characteristics of the Christian life - turning to God from idols, serving a living and true God, and awaiting the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ - are SO RICH in meaning, sense, application, and experience! I am still amazed at what the ministry of the age has dug out in the Bible, pointing to us the obvious - it's there, in black and white letters, we just need to put some effort into "digging it out"!

O, Lord Jesus.... I need You, Lord, in the reading of the life-study of 1 Thessalonians! Especially as the video training on the Crystallization-Study of the Psalms(part two) is coming up this week, Lord, I need You so much! I give You my time, Lord! How to redeem the time in such a way that I don't get into TOO MUCH and get too little, neither do I get into only some portions and not be serious on the schedule? O, Lord...

Three Characteristics of the Christian life

1. Turning to God from idols - not just turning to God from sins, but from idols! Everyone worships something / someone, even if they are self-proclaimed atheists (who mostly worship themselves). God created us with a spiritual stomach to contain the Triune God - and when we hear the word of the gospel, we are filled with appreciation for Him and drop any other idols to be joined to Him in an organic union! This is the "work of faith", which joins us to God and strengthens us to drop our idols (who can be anything or anyone that replaces God in our life).

2. Serving a living and true God - our God is living, and He can be seen as the living God by our living today! He is living now in us, and we love Him - in love, we allow Him to live and be expressed in us. He corrects us, guides us, instructs us, speaks to us, fellowships with us, and lets us know how He feels about every aspect of our living. I was touched by this paragraph, "What about your God? Is He a living God to you? The proper Christian life should bear a testimony that God is living. The reason we do not do or say certain things should be that God is living in us".

3. Waiting for the Son of God - we have a hope, the endurance of hope, which is the return of the Lord Jesus that we may meet Him! We don't live an aimless Christian life, and we are not rooted or grounded in this earth. Our hope is not in the earthly things, in positions, careers, etc, but in the coming of our Lord Jesus! The Lord Jesus is our hope, our future, and our destination!

... wow, you need to read this message! This genuine Christian life is for the church life, so that God would get what He desires, the Body of Christ to express Him on the earth in a corporate way! O, Lord, gain the Body of Christ!

corporate 30-day challenge, one life-study message per day, 1 Thessalonians

It is so wonderful to set goals! Sometimes last year I did this 30-day challenge - One meaningful Thing I did Today - and it was a very good experience. Since then I've been thinking concerning "the next challenge", whether I should take one or how to go on in this... I am so glad now that there's a solid burden for all the young adults to get into the truth in a solid way, reading not only the Bible portions for the day but also getting into the life-study messages in a consistent way! Via Living To Him "the life-study reading program" has started today! So here am I with another challenge, this time a corporate one :)

Corporate 30-day Challenge - One Life-Study Message per day, LS 1 Thessalonians!

On Living To Him they are daily posting the reminder with the outline and a link to where you can read the message, so the one for today is, Msg. 1, Life Study of First Thessalonians. The way I want to kind of do this is not only read the message and enjoy it, together with the Scripture reading and the notes (if possible), but also have at least 1-2 paragraphs of sharing (either in my own words or as a quote from the book). And since they are posting daily there, maybe I can post my enjoyment both here on the blog and as a comment on the blog post at LivingToHim.

Message 1 of the Life-Study of First Thessalonians - enjoyment

I am so encouraged to do this reading together with all the saints :) As those learning to take responsibility in the church life and making the Lord's recovery "our Lord's recovery", we firstly need to be constituted with the truth! Here's my portion of enjoyment from the reading today:

Praise the Lord - we are the church IN God the Father - we are organically united with Him! God is not merely our Creator but our Father, and we are His many sons. Also, it is so precious to call on the name of the Lord - O, Lord Jesus! Not just, I love You Jesus, but I love You Lord Jesus! In our experience we have a relationship with the Lord and we love Him - we love to call on His name!
I was particularly impressed with the meaning of the work of faith (our work is our faith; the strength with which we work and the nature of our work are both faith), the labor of love (deeper and harder than work, our shepherding becomes a labor - in and out of love), and endurance of hope (hope is the source of endurance, and endurance involves suffering)! This is the structure of our Christian life. 

Lord, what about this additional reading? O, Lord, the next 30 days and, why not, the rest of the year! Fill my days with the Word and with the ministry! Lord, hunger for the Word! Lord, understanding of the Word so that there would be a solid deposit of the truth in my being! O, Lord... 

The Picture for Today :) - Wood Green, London Underground

Pretty self-explanatory, the above picture was taken at the Wood Green tube station in London. I checked outside the station, there's lots of green stuff (a bit more up the hill there are lots of parks, green grass, etc) - just in case you were wondering whether the name is linked to the place. 

no one drinks lukewarm tea! Even God hates lukewarm-ness!

There is a verse in Revelation 3:16 that is quite bothering when you really think about it - if we are lukewarm, though we may love the Lord and be in the proper church life, we may be spewed out of the Lord's mouth! I was recently pondering about it - what does it mean to be lukewarm? Am I lukewarm? If I am, how can I be HOT towards the Lord (loving Him with the best love) and COLD towards the world (not loving the many shiny and attractive things the world offers)?

If you drink tea, you drink it either HOT (especially in the UK and in Russia) or COLD (see, Iced Tea). Hot tea on a cold day is just lovely - it warms you up and revives you (though it may burn your tongue if you're not careful). In the UK the tea break is allowed several times a day - it's Britain, right? So you can drink as much tea as you want, as long as you do your job. There used to be a tea break at Tea Time, 5.00pm, but I don't think people here keep that anymore. On the other hand, COLD tea, "ice tea" is drank cold and is quite refreshing especially on hot summer days. But no one likes to drink warm or lukewarm tea! No one loves lukewarm soups, teas, porridge, cereals, or anything else to be drank / eaten...

It is the same with the Lord - He is OK with us being HOT for Him (or hot for the world) or COLD towards Him (or toward the world), but He is NOT OK with us being lukewarm - being in a situation of compromise, in a mix-up situation, where we try to serve both God and the world. You may see something of Christ in the Word and the Lord may shine on you about certain things you need to deal with so that He would go on in you - but you "procrastinate" by not cooperating with the Lord, and things "pile up" in the background... Maybe you want to be like Switzerland - neutral, not taking absolute side to either God and His economy or the world. Maybe you are in the Lord's recovery but you are not fully and absolutely in the Lord's recovery - you still like to shop around, look around, and you still indulge in the things that your friends and your colleagues do...

In Ezek. 47 the Lord says that He cannot heal the marsh / the swamp - the water flowing from the house of God can heal the sea and brings life wherever it flows, but it cannot heal the marsh or the swamp. The Lord is faithful to shine on us, to draw our heart, to show us how much He loves us, to unveil us to see His purpose and His heart's desire, even to bring us into His recovery that we may see His ultimate move. We see that the time is ready - the Lord is preparing the last details for His return, and all He needs is a prepared Bride, those who love Him with their first love... but we may still just stand on the side, not be fully absolute, just "being around" in the church life or in Christian meetings....

Truth be told, if you are not absolute for the Lord and His economy, there are many things lurking in the darkness of our being which are operating secretly, transforming our heart into something that is slippery, something that "swallows everything" and there's nothing of life there... We may know many things, we may even teach others - but if our heart is not on fire for the Lord and cold towards the world and Satan, then we not only do not impart life but we are like "a black hole", having no content or life but sucking the life out of others.... ewww - sorry for the graphical illustration, but I am getting to see and realize more and more that if I don't lay my hands on the wonderful Absolute Christ to take Him as my burnt offering and as the Absolute one for God, there's lots of "slippery things" and marshy situations going on...

That's why we need to Come into the Light and Dig Away! Dig away any stones, any hidden things, any sins that no one knows about, any passions and other loves we develop while not being absolute for the Lord... In the Lord's shining, with a repenting heart, we really see who we are; the light exposes us and, if we cooperate with the light, it also brings life into us. I don't want to be lukewarm, even in a world that is heading towards this! "Accepting everyone the way he is", "you were born this way", and other non-sensical sayings that show clearly that No One Stands for Anything but for Himself - such a prevailing attitude among everyone today.... WHO will stand for the Lord? Who will take His way?

When Isaiah saw the Lord, he also saw himself and realized he's a sinful man living among sinful people with unclean lips... But the Lord didn't give up on him - He sent an angel to purify his lips with a burning coal... Later, when the Lord asked, Whom shall I send - who will go for us? Isaiah replied, Lord, here I am, send me! We who are sinful and with unclean lips, living among sinful people with unclean lips, can be sent by the Lord if we allow Him to shine on us, expose us, burn us, infuse us, transfuse us, reconstitute us, remake us, remodel us, fill us, and be fully expressed through us. Oh, how we want to be in this organic process of being made whole - being made a real and genuine man, a man filled with the divine life expressing God in a corporate way!

One Picture for Today - The Golden Hinde

This is the Golden Hinde, a ship on the shore, Sir Francis Drake's Famous Galleon, as seen at dusk (location: by the Thames River, London, close to Nando's :) and to the Shakespeare Globe). Visit their website for more details. [recommending a nice walk along the Thames at dusk, it's nice to see this part of London...

the bigger the lie, the more people believe it; the truth still stands!

I have been thinking about this matter these past few months, especially when interacting and talking to the people around me. I realized one thing, looking at the history of the church until today - Satan has changed his strategy against the Lord and the church from persecuting the Christians (in the first two centuries) to welcoming Christianity (and then mixing all the pagan and idolatrous things with the things in the Bible); from covering the Bible (the Dark Ages) to allowing people to read the Bible yet add their own flavor to it (thus creating division, many distractions, and "a Christian church supermarket" where people choose the church that fits their taste); and from allowing man to read the Bible to ridiculing and making fun of what the Bible is and stands for...

Still more, because of discrediting and ridiculing the Christians and the church, people today especially in the Western Europe prefer NOT to believe in God but rather believe an outright lie instead of accepting the simple truth! All throughout the ages the truth in the Bible stood strong, and today it is shining forth with more light in the local churches everywhere on the globe. But people prefer to believe a lie, something that would fit their taste, even though the lie is great, absurd, and even colossal.

The influence of Hollywood and the movies on people is clearly seen in many believing all kinds of crazy things like: re-incarnation, no sin - no punishment for sin, ignoring God meaning there's no God, elevating the self to the extent of believing in your self and not in God, accepting all kinds of strange eastern practices and religions as being something to try, etc. I can even go so far as to say that people would rather believe in movies like Star Wars and Star Trek than believe in God - even though, starting from when these movies came out until now, everyone knows such things don't exist. The movies and TV shows today expose man's thirst for supernatural, fantastic, surreal, and as far from the reality as possible.

The truth as it is presented in the Bible and as it stands throughout the ages is so simple, so pure, so un-complicated, and when man hears the truth - there's an Amen - that's right! in his being! When people hear that God created man in His own image and likeness so that man may be God's expression in a corporate way - man is satisfied and filled with purpose! When we hear that God became a man in the person of the Lord Jesus and then as the Spirit He wants to come into our spirit to mingle Himself with our whole being and make us even the same as He is - our reaction is, Wow, amen, that's it! It is so good to know the truth and be simple - touch God in our spirit, be filled with Him daily, and express Him in a normal way!

No matter what others say about the Bible, about the Word of God, and no matter how many books people put out as being "best seller" and "best selling book of all times" - the truth in the Bible still stands! The truth in the Bible, being the Word of God, stands throughout the ages - in the beginning was the Word (John 1:1) and when the Lord Jesus will return He will be called the Word of God. Actually, it is the Word of God spoken by Christ as the Overcoming One together with His overcomers that will destroy the enemy. Today it is "man's day", it is "the day of the ruler of this world" - but in us who enjoy the Word of God and are simple to contact Him in a living way, this one has nothing!

But I have noticed that in these last days as soon as you don't touch the Lord in a living way in His Word, it is so easy to just go along with the flow in the world, become like the rest of all the people, even to believe in an outright lie, and then live a life without a purpose... It is almost as if in the age of the degradation of the church the attack and degradation has been intensified, so that you can't even stand by yourself - there needs to be an intensification of God's organic salvation to produce some who would be overcomers, some who would stand against the current of the age and just be simple enjoying the Lord!

What a mercy, how relieving, enlivening, and meaningful it is to be simple! Accepting the truth and having a living relationship with the person of the Lord Jesus Christ in a daily and habitual way - this really makes you feel you are one with the Lord, you fulfill the purpose of your life, and you are satisfied simply because God is satisfied! ... I just can't believe that the bigger the lie, the more people are prone not only to believe it but stick to it and uphold it and speak it! It is indeed the Lord's mercy that we would be simple, we would know our God, and we would allow the Lord to save us in His life much more today - so that He in us would become the overcoming One! Lord, do it in us!

One Picture in London - Tesco "You Shop, We Drop"

In London and everywhere in the big cities in the UK you see these trucks from Tesco - "you shop, we drop", meaning not that they drop your stuff on the floor but that they deliver! It's free delivery many times, and you can set what time you want it delivered! Pretty cool... :)

[What do YOU think? Does the truth in the Bible sanctify you to such an extent that the lie in the world - even the lie which is the world - is exposed? What is YOUR experience in this regard?]