As our Shepherd, Christ is in His heavenly ministry, cherishing the churches in His humanity and nourishing the churches in His divinity to produce the overcomers through His organic shepherding, for He is doing the organic maintenance of the golden lampstand.
Lord Jesus, thank You for being the One who takes care of the churches! We trust in You! We come to You! We want to be one with You. Thank You for making us part of the church as the golden lampstand to shine You forth in this universe. May there be an organic maintenance of the golden lampstand today. May all the churches be open to Your cherishing and nourishing so that You may have a way to trim away anything that is negative and add more of Yourself to the churches to intensify their shining! Amen, Lord, produce Your overcomers today through Your organic shepherding! Amen!
The Lord is truly our Shepherd, and wherever we are, no matter what happens to us, we need to open to His wonderful shepherding, His organic shepherding. For example, it has been a few years now since the war is going on in Ukraine due to the invasion.
There are some brothers on the front line, and many of them experience the Lord’s shepherding even there, on the front line.
We hear stories of how the Lord has a way to flow through the brothers. They realised that they will be there for a while, so there was some fellowship, and a short gospel tract was produced called, The Shortest Prayer. What is the shortest prayer? It is, Oh Lord!
When we simply call Him, we breathe Him in. One story in particular is touching, for there was one of the brothers, a soldier in the Ukrainian army, with his comrade, and they came across a Russian soldier and took him prisoner.
They received the order from their commanding officer to shoot the Russian and kill him; however, the brother said no. His companion was approached by the officer, and he also said no, they can’t just shoot an unarmed prisoner.
So they had to take him in an armoured vehicle to where he was to be detained, and right there, on the way in an armoured vehicle, the brother preached the gospel to the prisoner, and together they called on the Lord’s name.
The Ukrainian brother in the army saved his life physically, but the Lord came to truly save him, for he was saved by calling on the name of the Lord!
This is our Jesus, and He is shepherding us where we are, no matter what happens, and no matter the circumstances. May we be open to His shepherding and may we cooperate with His heavenly ministry to also shepherd others today!
The Organic Maintenance of the Golden Lampstand is Christ’s Heavenly Ministry to Cherish and Nourish the Churches to Produce the Overcomers through His Organic Shepherding
In His heavenly ministry, the Lord Jesus is very busy; He is the great Shepherd, taking care of each and every one of us, His believers, and He is also shepherding the churches. The local churches are under the Lord’s organic shepherding.
We see this in Revelation 1:13 and 2:7, where we see the organic maintenance of the golden lampstands by Christ as the Son of Man. Amazing!
The organic maintenance of the golden lampstands is the heavenly ministry of Christ to cherish the churches in His humanity and nourish the churches in His divinity to produce the overcomers through His organic shepherding (Rev. 1:13; 2:7; John 10:11, 14; 1 Pet. 2:25; 5:4; Heb. 13:20).
He has already produced the churches, and the local churches are the golden lampstands as the testimony of Jesus. Now Christ in His heavenly ministry cherishes the churches in His humanity and nourishes them in His divinity to shepherd them and thus maintain the golden lampstands.
The Lord’s heavenly ministry is of shepherding. On the one hand, Christ is exercising His rulership for the spreading of the gospel so that many people may be brought into the kingdom of God, and more specifically, into the church life.
Christ is exercising His headship to cause us to grow and function so that His Body might be built up.
In His heavenly ministry, Christ is exercising His priesthood to intercede for us. He is also the Minister of the heavenly places, for He is executing the New Testament for us, ministering the life supply to us.
We can testify that, as believers in Christ, as members of the Body of Christ, and as the Lord’s sheep, we are well taken care of.
As far as we are concerned, there is no shortage, for the Lord is our shepherd, and we lack nothing under His organic shepherding.
But what about the universe? What about God’s eternal purpose? For this, there’s one more aspect of the Lord’s ministry in the heavens: Christ’s universal administration in the heavens, for He is the highest and most supreme authority in the universe. He is the universal Administrator.
He is so much to us and for the fulfillment of God’s economy in His heavenly ministry! Christ is the anointed One caring for His church; His caring for the church is in an administrative way.
The churches are God’s lampstands shining forth His testimony. They need Christ’s administration, His shepherding.
The churches need the Lord’s organic shepherding. Many troubles and difficulties arise in the local churches, and degradation creeps in many times; the Lord as our Shepherd is cherishing the churches in His humanity and nourishing them in His divinity to produce the overcomers through His organic shepherding.
The leading ones in the churches are likened to the stars shining in the heaven during the darkness of the night; they are in the Lord’s hands, for He is caring for them, hiding them, and holding them.
Christ is the One qualified to take the scroll of the New Testament, open it, execute all that is written therein with every bequest, and carry out every item contained in God’s economy. He can bring everything in the universe into order.
He is now in His heavenly ministry to carry out everything that God has designed. He is here cherishing us in His humanity and He is nourishing us in His divinity so that we may enjoy His organic shepherding and be produced as His overcomers to bring in a new revival that will end this age. Hallelujah!
Lord Jesus, we open to You. You are the One who shepherds us and cares for us, for You are in Your heavenly ministry caring for the churches! Hallelujah for the organic maintenance of the golden lampstand in Christ’s heavenly ministry! Thank You, Lord, for coming to us both personally and corporately to cherish us in Your humanity and nourish us in Your divinity! We open to Your cherishing and nourishing. Produce us as Your overcomers through Your organic shepherding. We look to You as the Administrator of the whole universe, the Minister of the heavenly places, the Intercessor praying for us, the High Priest ministering to us, and the Shepherd of the sheep. We simply open to Your heavenly ministry so that we may enjoy Your cherishing and nourishing and be produced as Your overcomers. Amen, Lord, You are worthy and qualified to shepherd the churches so that the overcomers may be produced and a new revival would be brought in to end this age and bring You back! Praise the Lord!
In His Heavenly Priesthood, Christ is the Son of Man Caring for the Churches in Love and Cherishing them in His Humanity
In Revelation 1:13 we see that Christ is the Son of Man walking in the midst of the golden lampstands, signifying the local churches, and He is clothed with a garment reaching to the feet, being girded about at the breast with a golden girdle.
This is very significant. In His heavenly ministry, Christ as the Son of Man is in His humanity, and the golden girdle signifies His divinity, while the breasts are a sign of love.
Right now, in the midst of the local churches, Christ is the Son of Man walking and observing. he is in His heavenly priesthood, loving us and caring for us in love.
He is our High Priest, ministering God to us and bringing us before God. On the one hand, He is interceding for the churches in the heavens (Heb. 9:24; 7:25-26; Rom. 8:34); on the other hand, He is walking in the midst of the churches to care for them.
We need to remain in the local churches, for it is here that the Son of Man moves, speaks, cares for us, and has a way to shepherd us to produce us as His overcomers.
Christ is the Son of Man not only to accomplish redemption but also for the church life, because we the believers in Christ are human beings; the components of the church are human beings!
Christ didn’t put off or deny His human nature after His resurrection; rather, He was altogether victorious and successful in His death and resurrection, and now He is the Son of Man in His heavenly ministry.
We also as the churches, being in humanity, can correspond to Him to be victorious and successful in bearing the testimony of God.
Christ was girded at the loins, strengthened for the divine work (Exo. 28:4; Dan. 10:5) to produce the churches, but now He is girded about at the breasts, caring for the churches that He has produced by His love (Rev. 1:13). This is very interesting.
The golden girdle signifies Christ’s divinity as His divine energy, and the breasts signify that this golden energy is exercised and motivated by and with His love to nourish the churches.
He is the best model of cherishing and nourishing, as seen in Revelation 1:12-13.
He wears a long priestly robe to be our High Priest, and He cares for us in love, being strengthened by His divinity. He is girded not at the loins for work but at the breasts for love, for He cares for us in love.
Thank the Lord that Christ takes care of the churches in His humanity as the Son of Man to cherish them. He makes us happy.
When we contact Him, we are filled with joy, we open to Him, and we simply allow Him to cherish us and nourish us.
He dresses the lamps of the lampstands to make them proper, cherishing us so that we may be happy and pleasant, even comfortable in His presence (see Exo. 30:7; cf. Psa. 42:5, 11).
Don’t you love the Lord Jesus as the Son of Man with His organic shepherding, cherishing us and nourishing us to cause the lampstands to shine brightly? We love His presence.
The Lord’s presence provides an atmosphere of tenderness and warmth; when we’re in His presence, we are tenderly cared for and cherished. In His tender and warm presence, our being is cherished and we receive rest, comfort, healing, cleansing, and encouragement.
We can all testify that the Lord is faithful to shepherd us in the local churches, both cherishing us and nourishing us. On the one hand, He observes and oversees what is going on, and He trims the wicks that are charred, for they hinder the shining of the lampstand.
On the other hand, the Lord is so pleasant and tender, and He adds more of Himself to us for us to shine brighter and even be produced as His overcomers through His organic shepherding.
The high priest in the Old Testament had to dress the lamps of the lampstands every morning (Exo. 30:7) so that they would be proper and shining. Christ today shepherds us both personally and corporately by being the Son of Man caring for the lampstands.
He trims the wicks of the lamps of the lampstands, removing anything that offers smoke instead of shining. When our flesh, our natural man, our self, our old creation is expressed, there is smoke, not fire, and the Lord exposes it and trims it away.
He also adds Himself to us as the fresh oil to intensify the shining. We can all enjoy the cherishing atmosphere of the Lord’s presence in the church to receive the nourishing supply of life (Eph. 5:29; 1 Tim. 4:6; Eph. 4:11).
The local churches are living and organic lampstands, and each church has much feeling; when there are charred wicks, the church doesn’t feel comfortable, so the Lord comes to trim it away and add more of the Spirit to intensify the shining of the church as the golden lampstand.
Lord Jesus, we love You and we open to You as the Son of Man walking in the midst of the golden lampstands today. Thank You for taking care of the churches in Your humanity as the Son of Man to cherish the churches. We love to be in Your presence. Have a way to remove anything that hinders the shining. Your presence is so cherishing, for we feel happy, pleasant, and comfortable in Your dear presence. Amen, Lord, Your presence provides an atmosphere of tenderness and warmth to cherish our being! We open to You and we want to be in Your presence to receive rest, healing, comfort, cleansing, and encouragement. Amen, Lord, have a free way to shine on us and in us. Remove by shining and trimming anything of the flesh, the natural man, the flesh, the self, and the old creation. Add more of Yourself to us, more of the Spirit as the golden oil, so that we may shine brighter! Hallelujah for Christ’s organic shepherding for us and for all the living lampstands! Amen, Lord, we love You and we open to You!
References and Hymns on this Topic
- Inspiration for this article/sharing comes from the Word of God, the enjoyment in the ministry, a sharing by brother Ray Mulligan on this topic, and portions from, Collected Works of Winess Lee, 1994-1997, vol. 5, “The Vital Groups,” ch. 11, as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, The Great Need for a New Revival (2026 Memorial Day Blending Conference), week 5, “The Apostolic Ministry in Cooperation with Christ’s Heavenly Ministry to Shepherd the Church of God as His Flock for the Building Up of the Body of Christ and a New Revival” – day 4.
- Hymns on this topic:
– In spirit hear His trumpet voice; / We must be turned to see His choice— / The seven lampstands golden fair; / The Son of Man is walking there. / The great high priestly robe He wears, / For every church He fully cares: / He trims the lamp, the oil supplies; / He makes them burn, flames in His eyes. / A golden girdle on His breast— / His work is done, and from His rest / He unto all the churches pours / Himself in love, the treasure store. (Hymns #284 stanzas 2-4)
– In the midst of seven lampstands, now the Son of Man we see; / Eyes ablaze and feet a’burning, He’s for God’s recovery. / God’s intention He’s accomplishing—a corporate entity; / Yes, mingling is the way. (Hymns #1199 stanza 4)
– On the Lord’s day, John, in spirit, / Heard a voice and turned and saw / Seven lampstands brightly shining; / Of pure gold, divine, they were. / In the midst of them, appearing, / He beheld the Son of Man, / Ever for the churches caring, / Tending God’s eternal plan. / His appearance, lo, how different / From the One John knew before. / Now He’s girt in golden raiment, / Not the robe which then He wore. / Girt about the breasts and serving, / He the priesthood fully bears; / Cherishing the lampstands dearly, / He for all the churches cares. (Hymns #1183 stanzas 1-2)
