«　WEEK 7　DAY 2　»

　　2 Cor. 4:16 Therefore we do not lose heart; but though our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed day by day.

　　Phil. 3:10 To know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death.

　　We may be good saints in the church who have been kept and preserved by the Lord, but have we been renewed with the divine element? Is there some renewing going on with us, or are we remaining the same day by day and year after year? It would be tragic if we would pass through many sufferings and still remain the same. In order to consummate His renewing work in us and with us, God becomes our life and nature within. In addition to this, God as the sovereign Lord controls the entire universe in order to renew us. God uses the environment in order to work His life and nature into us. Without the environment, we could never be renewed. We would remain the same. (CWWL, 1989, vol. 2, “Being Renewed Day by Day,” p. 358)

　　We may be strong in our habit and strong in what we are. God's intention is not merely to chastise or correct us, but to use the outward environment to trouble us, to remind us, and to wake us up to realize that we have God as our nature, yet we do not live Him according to His nature. We may discipline [our children] according to our disposition, our being, and our habit. God, therefore, uses the environment to put us into “prison.” Then we are reminded to pray and the eventual outcome of our prayer is not merely that we get corrected but that we get renewed. Then when we are going to discipline our children, we will consider whether we are disciplining them in ourselves or with God and through God….Now God is in our disciplining of our children, and our disciplining them becomes a human-divine disciplining.

　　We are renewed by the addition of God into our being, by having more of the divine element added into our being…. The real Christian life is to have God added into us morning and evening and day by day. Sometimes God may allow the church to pass through a “storm.” God may allow this “storm” to occur because He wants us to be renewed. The tragic thing is that while we are suffering in the “storm,” we would remain the same with no renewing…. We have to pray, “Lord, I don't want to remain the same. I do not want to remain the same this year as I was last year. I want to be renewed day by day.” God's intention is for us to be renewed day by day. In order to be renewed, we need the new addition of God into us daily.

　　God's intention is altogether to make us new. This is not an overnight matter. It takes a long time in our life, and it requires us to contact God, to receive God, and to get God added into us all the day. It requires us to pray, confessing our sins and rejecting ourselves to take the cross of Christ. To take the cross of Christ is a killing, and this killing is death. This death brings in resurrection, and in this resurrection the divine life in us will carry out its renewing capacity. Then we will be changed metabolically. This process of renewing takes a period of years.

　　Moment by moment we have to receive God so that He can be added into us, and we have to reject ourselves to receive the death of Christ so that we can cooperate with the Lord within us. Then we will enjoy not only the renewing capacity but also the renewing result, which is a metabolic change in our behavior, in our character, in our disposition, and even in our habit. The most difficult thing to renew is our habit. When we experience God in Christ daily, we will see that God's intention is to renew us bit by bit, especially to renew our habit. (CWWL, 1989, vol. 2, “Being Renewed Day by Day,” pp. 359-361, 363)

　　Further Reading: CWWL, 1993, vol. 2, “The Spirit with Our Spirit,” ch. 13; CWWL, 1994-1997, vol. 2, “The Issue of the Union of the Consummated Spirit of the Triune God and the Regenerated Spirit of the Believers,” ch. 3