The Will of God – One Person(the all-inclusive, extensive Christ), One Way(the cross), and One Goal(the Body of Christ)

This weekend I was so impressed with the will of God, as expounded in the conference I recently attended. Here is some enjoyment from this conference. The will of God is God’s will – it is about God, His heart’s desire from eternity – to have Christ expressed through many people as His Body. God’s desire is just Christ – Him worked into us, enlarged in us, expanded in us, and expressed through us the Body of Christ. So God’s will is not directly concerning us, it does not revolve around us, and is not “God’s will for our life”. Rather, we need to have our life according to God’s will, seeking to be in His perfect will. In His wisdom and mercy, God has a permissive will – He allows things to happen, He even gives us things as we beg Him / ask from Him… but this is not what He actually and really wants. What He really wants is His perfect will, pre-determined from eternity past, what is hidden in God and revealed to us in time in His Word – He wants Christ to be our everything for the building up of the organic Body of Christ that consummates in the New Jerusalem, His corporate universal ultimate expression! In His will there is only One Person, there is only One Way, and there is only One Goal!

• The will of God – One Person, Christ – God’s will is just Christ. He is His beloved, and Christ is the embodiment of all that God is and has. He expresses God. And this Christ is in us as the hope of glory, as our peace, as our joy, as our everything. He is all-inclusive and all-extensive in God’s economy – but what about in our personal experience? As we enjoy Him daily, He is becoming more and more everything to us! He replaces more and more things that take His place, and He’s making His home in our hearts.
• The will of God – One Way, the cross. God’s way of dealing with everything is not by negotiating or bargaining – God’s way of doing business is the cross. He terminates everything that rises up against Christ or replaces Christ. Everything that is natural, of the self, or of the flesh needs to be not “improved” but terminated. This is God’s only way. And the cross was “the cup of suffering” to Christ, but to us it is something: it is the sweetness of His death as the myrrh included in the compound Spirit. It’s in the Spirit – that we daily enjoy. We just need to turn to our mingled spirit by calling on the name of the Lord, and His death is being applied to our being.
• The will of God – One Goal, the Body of Christ. The goal of God’s work and the goal of our Christian life is the Body of Christ. We are not spiritual by ourselves and for ourselves: spirituality is a Body matter. We are saved believers to be living members of the Body of Christ. What God desires is the Body of Christ: He wants Christ duplicated and multiplied in many human beings that are filled with Christ to express Christ to the fullest extent. So every aspect of our living and even our being is in the Body of Christ and for the Body of Christ. Our reading the Bible, enjoyment of the Lord, and experience of Christ is in the Body and for the Body. Even more, we are learning to enjoy Christ in His tender inward parts, so that we may have the feeling and the consciousness of the Body. Not just being conscious of ourselves and our needs, but being more and more conscious of Christ and His Body, the saints. Practically, to be in the Body of Christ means that we are in the local church, the church in the locality where the Lord has placed us. Here, in the local church as the procedure of attaining to the New Jerusalem, we enjoy Christ with the saints and we’re being built together as His corporate expression.

Lord, may we see Your will – what You had in Your heart from eternity past, and what You are determined to do at any cost! Lord, may Your will be done on the earth and in our life! Work Your Christ into us more. Make us open vessels to Your dispensing. Make Your home in our heat more every day.