Hymns, 539, 389, 535

Scripture Reading: Matt. 1:21-23; 18:20; 28:20; 2 Tim. 4:22; John 14:17

DAY 1 Outline　MorningRevival

DAY 2 Outline　MorningRevival

DAY 3 Outline　MorningRevival

DAY 4 Outline　MorningRevival

DAY 5 Outline　MorningRevival

DAY 6 Outline　MorningRevival

«　WEEK 4　DAY 1　»

　　John 15:4 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.

　　1 John 4:13 In this we know that we abide in Him and He in us, that He has given to us of His Spirit.

　　Matt. 1:23 “Behold, the virgin shall be with child and shall bear a son, and they shall call His name Emmanuel” (which is translated, God with us).

　　To live in the Divine Trinity is to dwell in Him as our home. To live in Him is to abide in Him, to remain in Him….Whether or not He would abide in us depends upon our abiding in Him. To live in Christ, to abide in Christ, is the first part of our enjoyment of the Triune God….The second part of our enjoyment… is conveyed by the Lord’s word concerning His abiding in us. His abiding in us brings His presence to us, so we live with Him. To live in Him puts us into the position of the enjoyment of the Lord. To live with Him is the enjoyment itself. To live with the Divine Trinity is to enjoy the Divine Trinity.

　　We need to have a bird’s-eye view of the entire revelation of the New Testament…that one-fourth of the New Testament is concerning our living in the Triune God, whereas three-fourths is concerning our living with the Triune God. (CWWL, 1988, vol. 1, “Living in and with the Divine Trinity,” pp. 355-356)

　　The Spirit, whom God has given to dwell in us (James 4:5; Rom. 8:9,11), is the witness in our spirit (Rom. 8:16), witnessing that we dwell in God and God in us. The abiding Spirit, that is, the indwelling Spirit, is the element and sphere of the mutual abiding, the mutual indwelling, of us and God. By Him we are assured that we and God are one, that we abide in each other, indwelling each other mutually. This is evidenced by our living, a living in which we love one another habitually with His love (1 John 4:12). (1 John 4:13, footnote 1)

　　Jesus is nothing less than God with us. This is our experience. God told us that His name is Jesus. But as we receive Him and experience Him, we say that Jesus is God with us. When we experience Jesus, He is Emmanuel, God with us…. If we would experience [Jesus], we would immediately say, “This is God! This is not God far away from me, or God in the heavens, but God with me.”…Jesus is our salvation. After we experience this salvation, we say, “This is God with us to be our salvation.” Jesus is our patience. But when we experience Him as our patience, we say, “This patience is God with me.” Jesus is the way and the truth, but when we experience Him as the way and the truth, we say, “This way and this truth are just God with me.”

　　Whenever we are gathered together into the name of Jesus, He is with us (Matt. 18:20)….This is Emmanuel, God with us. The presence of Jesus in our meetings is actually God with us. Jesus is with us all the days, even “until the consummation of the age” (28:20). “All the days” includes today. Do not forget about today. Many Christians think that Jesus is present all the days, except today. But Jesus is with us now, today! Jesus is not only among us; He is in our spirit. Second Timothy 4:22 says, “The Lord be with your spirit.” This Jesus who is with our spirit is Emmanuel, God with us.

　　According to Isaiah 8:7-8, the enemy may try to take over the land of Immanuel. Do not think this word is only for the children of Israel. Today our spirit is the land of Immanuel. Thus, we ourselves are the land of Immanuel. The enemy, Satan, with all his army will do everything he can to take over this land of Immanuel, that is, to take over our spirit and our being. Isaiah 8:10 tells us that because God is with us, the enemy can never take over the land of Immanuel…. Perhaps during the past week Satan tried twenty-one times to take you over, but he failed every time. You are still here because of Emmanuel, because of God with us. (Life-study of Matthew, pp. 75-77)

　　Further Reading: CWWL, 1988, vol. 1, “Living in and with the Divine Trinity,” chs. 8, 10; Life-study of Matthew, msg. 6

«　WEEK 4　DAY 2　»

　　John 14:17 Even the Spirit of reality, whom the world cannot receive, because it does not behold Him or know Him; but you know Him, because He abides with you and shall be in you.

　　Gal. 5:25 If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit.

　　The Triune God passed through the processes of incarnation and resurrection in order to dispense Himself into us. Through incarnation He could be Emmanuel outside of His believers, but this would fulfill only part of His intention in being with us. His being with us outwardly does not fulfill His purpose to dispense Himself into our being, so He had to go through another process. The second process was His death and resurrection. In resurrection His physical form became a spiritual form. Through death and resurrection, He as the last Adam became the life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45b). As the life-giving Spirit, He is Emmanuel, the presence of the Divine Trinity. This presence is always with us in our spirit (2 Tim. 4:22), not only day by day but also moment by moment. (CWWL, 1990, vol. 1, “The Triune God to Be Life to the Tripartite Man,” p. 303)

　　Matthew is a book on Emmanuel—God incarnated to be with us. The practical Emmanuel is the Spirit of reality (John 14:16-20). When Peter and the other disciples heard the Lord’s word in Matthew 18:20 and 28:20, they may have wondered how the Lord would be with them….They may have considered that the Lord would continue to be with them physically, and this may have made them quite happy. But in John 14 the Lord Jesus said, “I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Comforter, that He may be with you forever” (v. 16). Then in verses 17 and 18 the Lord indicated that He would become this Comforter.

　　In Matthew 28:20 the “I” is Emmanuel. In John 14 the “I” who will come in verse 18 is the Spirit of reality in verse 17. There is a progression in the divine revelation from the Gospel of Matthew to the Gospel of John. Today the Spirit of reality is Emmanuel. In Acts and the Epistles, the Spirit of reality is the very presence of the consummated Triune God in our spirit. He, the Triune God, is with us, the tripartite man, mainly in an inward way. The Triune God cannot complete His intention to dispense Himself into our being outside of us. Therefore, His being with us must be inward.

　　We have to realize that all day long we have another One with us. He is not only with us outwardly but also with us inwardly in our spirit every minute of the day. We do and say things one way when we are alone, but when we have someone else with us, we do and say things differently. If we had more experience of Emmanuel, we would not do many of the things we do today, such as gossip….We all must have the realization and sensation that the Lord Jesus, who is our Savior, is also Emmanuel. He is the Triune God with us, the tripartite men. We should not say or do anything in ourselves or by ourselves. We need to experience Emmanuel.

　　If you live every day and every moment by yourself, you are defeated. You must realize that you are no longer living alone, but Christ is living with you and in you. When you have this sensation, it will revolutionize your entire life.

　　To live with Christ, we still live, yet not by ourselves alone but by Christ living with us as Emmanuel. The name Emmanuel is first mentioned in Isaiah (7:14; 8:8). Many Christians address the Lord as Jesus and Christ, but few address the Lord as Emmanuel. We must learn to call our Lord “Emmanuel.” Emmanuel is our life and person, and we are His organ. As His organ, we live together with Him as one person. The Triune God lives together with the tripartite man. Our victory depends upon Emmanuel, the presence of Jesus. (CWWL, 1990, vol. 1, “The Triune God to Be Life to the Tripartite Man,” pp. 302-305)

　　Further Reading: CWWL, 1990, vol. 1, “The Triune God to Be Life to the Tripartite Man,” ch. 9; Life-study of Isaiah, msg. 8

«　WEEK 4　DAY 3　»

　　Exo. 33:14 And He said, My presence shall go with you, and I will give you rest.

　　Psa. 27:8 When You say, Seek My face, to You my heart says, Your face, O Jehovah, will I seek.

　　2 Tim. 4:22 The Lord be with your spirit. Grace be with you.

　　When Christ came, He was Emmanuel, which means God with us (Matt. 1:23). Christ is God with us. This is revealed not only in Matthew 1 but also in Matthew 28, where the Lord Jesus said, “Behold, I am with you all the days until the consummation of the age” (v. 20). Actually, the entire New Testament is an Emmanuel, and we are now a part of this great Emmanuel that will consummate in the New Jerusalem in the new heaven and new earth for eternity. (Life-study of Isaiah, pp. 53-54)

　　If we would go on to possess [the all-inclusive Christ as the reality of the good land], we must do so by the presence of the Lord….You remember how the Lord promised Moses, “My presence shall go with you, and I will give you rest” (Exo. 33:14). This means that He would bring the people into the possession of the land by His presence. So Moses said to the Lord, “If Your presence does not go with us, do not bring us up from here” (v. 15). Moses demanded that the Lord’s presence must go with them; otherwise, he would not go.

　　This is quite a peculiar word: “My presence shall go.” It does not mean that He will go. He will go is one thing, and My presence shall go is another. Many times the Lord will go with you, but His presence will not. Many times the Lord will truly help you, but be assured, He is not happy with you. You will receive His help, but you will lose His presence. He will bring you to your destination, and He will bless you, but throughout the whole trip you will not sense His presence. I can tell you that many times I did not have the presence of the Lord, simply because He was not happy with me. He had to go with me, but He was not happy…. He went along, but He withheld His presence that I might know His displeasure.

　　Never think that as long as the Lord helps you, it is sufficient. No, no. Far from it. We must have the Lord’s presence. We must learn to pray, “Lord, if You will not give me Your presence, I will stay here with You. If Your presence does not go with me, I will not go. I will not be governed by Your help but by Your presence.” We must go even further to pray, “O Lord, I do not want Your help, but I do want Your presence. Lord, I must have Your presence. I can do without Your help, but I cannot do without Your presence.”

　　Although it may be with tears in our eyes, we must say day by day, “Lord, nothing but Your smiling presence will satisfy me. I do not want anything but the smile of Your glorious face. As long as I have this, I care not whether the heaven comes down or the earth falls apart. The whole world may rise against me, but as long as I have Your smile upon me, I can praise You, and everything is well.” The Lord said, “My presence shall go with you.” What a treasure! The presence, the smile, of the Lord is the governing principle. We must be fearful of receiving anything from the Lord yet losing His presence….The Lord Himself may very well give you something, and yet that very thing will rob you of His presence. He will help you, He will bless you, and yet that very help and blessing can keep you away from His presence. We must learn to be kept, to be ruled, to be governed, to be guided simply by the presence of the Lord. We must tell the Lord that we do not want anything but His direct presence. We do not want His presence secondhand. Many times, be assured, you have the secondhand presence of the Lord. It is not firsthand; it is not direct. Try to be governed by the direct, firsthand presence of the Lord. (CWWL, 1961-1962, vol. 4, “The All-inclusive Christ,” pp. 294-296)

　　Further Reading: CWWL, 1961-1962, vol. 4, “The All-inclusive Christ,” ch. 11

«　WEEK 4　DAY 4　»

　　John 11:25 …I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes into Me, even if he should die, shall live.

　　Rom. 8:13 …If by the Spirit you put to death the practices of the body, you will live.

　　2 Cor. 4:11 For we who are alive are always being delivered unto death for Jesus’ sake that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh.

　　Resurrection is the Spirit, and the Spirit is the processed and consummated Triune God. God, Christ, and Christ’s death and resurrection have been compounded into this one compound Spirit, who is the very reality of Christ’s resurrection.

　　Resurrection is a person, because Christ said that He is the resurrection. Life and light are also a person. Christ said that He is the life (John 14:6) and the light (8:12)…. But no verse says that Christ is death. We can say Christ’s death, using the possessive case, because death is not the consummation. The consummation is resurrection. The processes through which the Triune God passed consummated in resurrection. Thus, resurrection is the very consummated God. (CWWL, 1991-1992, vol. 2, “The Christian Life,” pp. 442-443)

　　Human life is full of troubles, worries, and all kinds of sorrows. We can rid our being of these things only by our God who is resurrection, which is the Spirit. The Spirit kills, and the Spirit also resurrects. This is because Christ’s killing death and His uplifting resurrection are compounded in the compound Spirit, whom we are enjoying. As we enjoy the compound Spirit, we are experiencing the inner killing and the inner resurrecting. As long as we have this killing plus the resurrecting, we have God. Killing plus resurrecting is God. God moves in us, works in us, functions in us…. He gives us Himself as everything we need to live the Christian life.

　　We need to experience the Spirit’s application of Christ’s resurrection and its power all the time…. Five sisters may live in one apartment unit. In this apartment each of them has to do everything carefully. Otherwise, they can offend one another.… If we try to escape from the environment that God has arranged for us, we will not have joy and peace. When we stay in this limited environment, we can experience resurrection.

　　In order to experience resurrection, we also need to be limited in our speaking….To experience the Spirit as the reality of resurrection, we need to turn to our spirit to pray, praise, sing, or talk to God….We need to talk to God and consult with Him. After ten minutes of talking to God, we will be on fire and full of the Spirit as the reality of resurrection.

　　Under God’s divine and sovereign arrangement, our entire environment is a killing. All the things in our environment are like knives to kill us. The wives, the husbands, the children, the brothers, and everything in our environment are used by the Lord as knives to kill us. The killing of the cross, the killing of Christ’s death, ushers in resurrection. When we are willing to suffer and be killed, we live Christ, we magnify Christ, and Christ is manifested in us. Then we are transformed…. As we are under the killing of Christ’s death, Christ as the genuine One needs to be manifested in us.

　　Everything related to us is under the Lord’s sovereign arrangement. What kind of job we have and whom we marry are altogether not up to us. A brother may choose a sister to be his wife, but later this brother may think that he made a mistake. This is why the Lord charges the husbands to love their wives (Eph. 5:25). Under the Lord’s sovereign arrangement, we are like lambs brought to the slaughter every day (Rom. 8:36)…. Every day we are under the killing of Christ’s death that His life may be manifested in our body in the renewing of our inner man. (CWWL, 1991-1992, vol. 2, “The Christian Life,” pp. 443-444, 481-483)

　　Further Reading: CWWL, 1991-1992, vol. 2, “The Christian Life,” chs. 7, 10, 14

«　WEEK 4　DAY 5　»

　　John 5:19 …The Son can do nothing from Himself except what He sees the Father doing, for whatever that One does, these things the Son also does in like manner.

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

　　The One who created Adam came to be a man and lived a human life in resurrection. He denied His natural humanity. He never did anything out of Himself (John 5:19,30)….We also should not do anything in our natural life but in Christ’s resurrection life. Jesus was living and walking on this earth in His flesh, but He rejected this flesh. He rejected His natural life.

　　Some people are charming, attractive, and cherishing in their natural humanity by birth….Those who are charming in their natural humanity, however, are not real….When you get close to a charming man, you will find out that he actually is not that charming….To cherish people in our natural humanity is not genuine. This is why we must cherish people in the humanity of Jesus. The Lord’s charming and cherishing are not natural but are by His resurrection life in humanity. (CWWL, 1994-1997, vol. 5, “The Vital Groups,” pp. 142-143)

　　Jesus was in resurrection before He was resurrected. He was a person living a human life in resurrection, not by Himself but by another source, that is, His Father. Thus, He could say that when He spoke, that was the Father working within Him (John 14:10). He was one with the Father. If we live such a life today, a life in humanity by resurrection, everyone will realize that there is something different about us. We will be sweet, charming, and attractive, without deception or hypocrisy. When we visit people, we must have the Lord’s presence. His presence is the charming factor, and that presence comes from the cross plus resurrection. We must be a person on the cross and in resurrection. Then we will have the real presence of the Triune God with us, and that presence is resurrection.

　　[The Lord Jesus] was a Jew, who no doubt bore a Jewish countenance. He had Jewish blood and Jewish flesh with the human life and nature. But He lived by another life in His human life. This other life is the divine life. Because He lived the divine life in His human life, His human life became mystical, a mystery. Out from His human life came something divine.

　　Whatever the Lord did on earth in those three and a half years was a sign, signifying something (John 2:11, footnote 2). Every miracle was a sign. The Lord’s feeding of the five thousand with five loaves and two fish was a miracle. The disciples must have been excited when they saw such a great thing, but afterward the Lord directed them to pick up all the fragments that were left over. That was also a sign (Matt. 14:20, footnote). The Lord was divine and mystical.

　　In John 8 a sinful woman was brought to the Lord. Eventually, He said to her, “Has no one condemned you?” (v. 10). “She said, No one, Lord. And Jesus said, Neither do I condemn you; go, and from now on sin no more” (v. 11)….The Lord Jesus was God expressed, yet He would not condemn a sinner…. He was a divine and mystical person living in the divine and mystical realm, doing everything in a divine and mystical way. We should be such persons….Those around us should have the feeling that there is something extraordinary about us. This extraordinary thing is divine and mystical. We all need to be discipled by the Lord to be divine and mystical persons. The followers of Christ were discipled through Christ’s human living on the earth, as the model of a God-man—living God by denying Himself in humanity (John 5:19, 30), revolutionizing their concept concerning man (Phil. 3:10; 1:21a). (CWWL, 1994-1997, vol. 5, “The Vital Groups,” pp. 145-146, 74-76)

　　Further Reading: CWWL, 1994-1997, vol. 5, “The Vital Groups,” chs. 2, 10

«　WEEK 4　DAY 6　»

　　2 Cor. 1:8-9 …We were excessively burdened, beyond our power, so that we despaired even of living. Indeed we ourselves had the response of death in ourselves, that we should not base our confidence on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead.

　　Matt. 19:26 And looking upon them, Jesus said to them, With men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.

　　God commanded the twelve leaders to take twelve rods according to the twelve tribes of Israel, and put them in the Tent of Meeting before the Ark. Then He said, “And the rod of the man whom I choose shall bud” (Num. 17:5)…. All twelve rods were leafless, rootless, dry, and dead. Whichever one budded was the one that was chosen by God. Here we see that resurrection is the basis of God’s selection. It is also the basis of authority. (CWWN, vol. 47, “Authority and Submission,” p. 243)

　　Resurrection is everything that is not out of our natural life, not out of ourselves, and not based on our ability. Resurrection speaks of the things that are beyond us, which we cannot do in ourselves. Any rod can be engraved with flowers or painted with colors, but no one can make it bud….This is God’s work. No woman in the world has ever given birth after her womb has been closed, but Sarah bore Isaac (Rom. 4:19). This was God’s doing. Hence, Sarah typifies resurrection…. Resurrection means that one cannot do anything by himself, that he can only do it through God…. Resurrection means that one ignores what he is and trusts only in what God is.

　　God returned all the eleven rods to the leaders, but kept Aaron’s rod inside the Ark as an eternal memorial. This means that resurrection is an eternal principle in our service to God…. All services to the Lord must pass through death and resurrection before they will be acceptable to God. Resurrection means that everything is of God and not of us. It means that God alone is able and that we are not able. Resurrection means that everything is done by God, not by ourselves…. No one should be mistaken to think that he can do anything by himself. If a man continues to think that he is able, that he can do something, and that he is useful, he does not know resurrection…. All those who know resurrection have given up hope in themselves; they know that they cannot make it. As long as the natural strength remains, the power of resurrection has no ground for manifestation….What we can do belongs to the natural realm, and what is impossible for us to do belongs to the realm of resurrection. (CWWN, vol. 47, “Authority and Submission,” pp. 247-249)

　　To be a Christian is not merely difficult—it is impossible. Only the processed and consummated Triune God living in us as the all-inclusive Spirit can be a Christian. What the New Testament requires of us is too high….We praise the Lord that it is not we who need to fulfill the New Testament requirements but the Spirit in us who fulfills them. Instead of doing things in ourselves, we should simply enjoy His living and His working. Only the Spirit can be a Christian, and only the Spirit can be an overcomer. Remember, the Spirit is our God, our Father, our Lord, our Redeemer, our Savior, our Shepherd, and our life and life supply.

　　The Christian life is altogether the processed and consummated Triune God as the all-inclusive Spirit. In this Spirit we have the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. In this Spirit we are in the Father, the Son, and the Spirit (Matt. 28:19)….Our God is the processed and consummated Triune God, who is the consummated, all-inclusive Spirit as everything for our Christian life. When we have a need or a disability, we can remind Him of it. When we are facing a difficult situation, we can talk to Him about it. Then He, the One who lives in us, will come in to face the situation and to do whatever is needed. (Life-study of Job, pp. 109-110)

　　Further Reading: CWWN, vol. 47, “Authority and Submission,” ch. 15; Life-study of Job, msg. 19