«　WEEK 4　DAY 1　»

　　1 Pet. 5:2 Shepherd the flock of God among you, overseeing not under compulsion but willingly, according to God; not by seeking gain through base means but eagerly.

　　Jer. 2:13 For My people have committed two evils: they have forsaken Me, the fountain of living waters, to hew out for themselves cisterns, broken cisterns, which hold no water.

　　In his first Epistle, Peter speaks of Christ being the Shepherd and Overseer of our soul, our inner being and real person (2:25). Then in 5:1-2 he tells the elders that their obligation is to shepherd God's flock according to God. According to God means that we must live God. We must have God on hand. We have God in our understanding, in our theology, and in our teaching, but we may not live God when we are shepherding people. When we are one with God, we become God. Then we have God and are God in our shepherding of others. To shepherd according to God is to shepherd according to what God is in His attributes. God is love, light, holiness, and righteousness. "According to God" is at least according to these four attributes of God. We must shepherd the young ones, the weak ones, and the backsliding ones according to these four attributes. Then we will be good shepherds. (CWWL, 1994-1997, vol. 5, "The Vital Groups," p. 114)

　　[Jeremiah] reveals that God's intention in His economy is to be the fountain, the source, of living waters to dispense Himself into His chosen people for their satisfaction and enjoyment. The goal of this enjoyment is to produce the church, God's counterpart, as God's increase, God's enlargement, to be God's fullness for His expression (John 3:29-30; Eph. 3:16-19, 21). This is the heart's desire, the good pleasure, of God in His economy (Eph. 1:5, 9; 3:9-11). The full development of this thought, sown as a seed in Jeremiah 2:13, is in the New Testament (John 4:10, 14; 7:37-39;...Rev. 22:1, 17).

　　Israel should have drunk of God as the fountain of living waters that they might become His increase as His expression, but instead they committed two evils: they forsook God as their fountain, their source, and they turned to a source other than God....The hewing out of cisterns portrays Israel's toil in their human labor to make something (idols) to replace God. That the cisterns were broken and could hold no water indicates that apart from God Himself dispensed into us as living water, nothing can quench our thirst and make us God's increase for His expression (John 4:13-14). (Jer. 2:13, footnote 1)

　　God intended to dispense Himself into man as man's satisfaction that God might be enlarged, but man became unfaithful and unchaste and forsook God for idols....Whatever we possess, and even whatever we are, can be an idol....In the matter of such unfaithfulness to God, we are the same as Israel.

　　When we believed in the Lord Jesus, we might have expected to have peace and blessing. But instead we might have had many troubles and might have lost our security, our health, or our possessions. When some Christians experience such things, they may question God's faithfulness and ask why He did not prevent hardships from happening to them.

　　We need to realize that in allowing us to have troubles, God is faithful in His purpose to turn us from idols and bring us back to Himself. Our peace, safety, health, and possessions may become idols to us, and God is faithful to take these things away so that we may drink of Him as the fountain of living waters. If our house or our possessions become idols to us, we drink of them and not of God. God's faithfulness is a matter of dealing with these idols and causing us to drink of Him.

　　God is faithful in leading us into His economy, and His economy is for us to drink Christ, to eat Christ, to enjoy Christ, to absorb Christ, and to assimilate Christ that God may have His increase with us to fulfill His economy. This is God's faithfulness. (Life-study of Jeremiah, pp. 27-29)

　　Further Reading: CWWL, 1994-1997, vol. 5, "The Vital Groups," ch. 7; Life-study of Jeremiah, msg. 4