These past few days we’re enjoying the fact that we need to daily work out our own salvation by building up Christ in our experience. Just like Noah built up the ark, we are building up a practical and present Christ today in the church life. Just like Noah entered into the ark after he built it, we also are entering into the Christ we have built up in our experience!
This is what the Lord means when He says in John 15:4-5,
Abide in Me and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me. I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit; for apart from Me you can do nothing.
We need to abide in the Lord – but what is He to us? Is He real, practical, and present? Or maybe we didn’t spend time with Him for a while now and so when we come to abide in Him, He seems so distant and not-so-real… We must have Christ built up in our experience so that we may enter into Him as our salvation!
If we work together with the Lord in our daily experience, we will surely build up something of Christ, and eventually we will get into what we have built up, and we will dwell in Christ as our enjoyment! We need to have Christ in our experience daily – we need to have Christ built up in our experience. “To have Christ built up in our experience” – sounds strange, but this next paragraph from, The Divine Dispensing of the Divine Trinity (by brother Lee), helped me understand it:
If you spend from Monday through Saturday loving the Lord, fellowshipping with Him, living by Him, and walking together with Him, surely on the Lord’s Day you would have the deep sensation that you are in Christ. You would have a practical and present Christ for you to abide in… But when you love Him and fellowship with Him and live by Him and walk with Him day after day and hour after hour, you build Him up in your experience. You build up a Christ in your experience for you to enter into as your salvation. We all need to build up Christ.
May we not “miss it” – may we not “miss the mark” by “missing Christ” in our daily life! May we turn to Him and enjoy Him all throughout the day! The Lord brings about circumstances and people to constrain us, in His love, to open to Him and enjoy Him. The solution to our problems is just this wonderful person of the Lord Jesus – He is the answer, He is the solution, and He is everything we need!
As we love Him and enjoy Him, as we spend time with Him, He is being built up in our experience day by day! Then, we can enter into this Christ as our salvation – since He has been built up in us little by little day by day! Don’t look at your failures (they will keep coming again and again) or your shortcomings (we have so many of these!) – look to the Lord Jesus and touch Him whenever something happens or whenever nothing happens!
[Read this portion also in Spanish / Puede leer esta porción también en español, edificar a Cristo en nuestra experiencia para que podamos entrar en Él y permanecer en Él]
Lord, may we spend our days and hours and minutes and seconds loving You and enjoying You! Save us from missing the mark – save us from Not Enjoying You! Lord, we want to have You built up in our experience day by day! Keep us loving You! Keep us enjoying You! May we live by You and with You! Lord, we just want to be in You as our abode, our dwelling place!
