Knowing, Experiecing, and Living the All-inclusive Christ for the Genuine Church Life - 1

Message Title: Being Brought back to Christ Himself for the Genuine Church Life

I. We, believers in Christ and children of God, need to be freed from all distractions and brought back to Christ Himself.

we all need to be brought back to the Lord again and again, moment by moment, day by day!!! are we willing to be brought back?  

the distractions here are people or things, that preoccupies, distracts, and makes it impossible for us to concentrate on Christ. 

when we read Revelation chapter 2, when the Lord was speaking to the messenger of Ephesus, He described a lot of good things in the first 5 verses. for us, we may think Ephesus is really a good church, doing a lot of good works. but in the eyes of the Lord, who knows the situation of all the churches, they need to remember from where they have fallen, and repent. if they do not repent, the Lord would come and remove the lampstand from Ephesus. 

God wants Christ to be the center of all things and to have the first place in all things. Christ is all and in all. God's will, which is His eternal purpose and desire in the universe, is that Christ be everything to us and be wrought into us as our life and everything. if we really want Christ to be everything to us, we need to realise that we are actually nothing, and we have nothing, then like J.N.Darby, we will have the experience that "the joy of having nothing, being nothing, but a living Christ in glory, and caring for nothing but His interest down in here". after we see this contrast of our being nothing and Chris being everything, there will be things happening in our situation, causing us to enter into this experience and reality. may the Lord grant us the experience we need to cause us really to be nothing, so that Christ can be everything to us. the enemy is very clever in distracting us, by such good things as ethics, morals, or culture, even our working for the Lord, to distract and turn us away from the Lord. we need the Lord to expose the strategies and subtleties of the enemy so we will be clear and not deceived. when we turn away from all distractions and turn to Christ, we will be brought back to Christ Himself so that we may know Christ, experience Christ, enjoy Christ, express Christ, and be constituted with Christ. 

we need to see the heavenly vision of God's intention to make Christ everything to us. if we receive new mercy and grace from the Lord, we will be able to drop all the good things, and stretch forward to lay hold of Christ Himself. we need to pray that Christ will be everything to us in our daily life. everyday, we need to pray for new experiences of Christ. this is our urgent need today. Christ is now the Spirit, so available for us to contact Him anytime, anywhere in our daily life. 

II. the issue of our being brought back to Christ Himself is the genuine church life. 

the genuine church life is Christ reslized, experienced, and expressed by all the saints in a corporate way. God planned the church for the purpose of expressing Christ; thus, the church is the expression of Christ. the church life is nothing other than the all-inclusive Christ with His unsearchable riches experienced and enjoyed by us and expressed through us. if we would have such a church life, we need to be constituted with Christ until all that we are and have is simply Christ Himself, who is all and in all; this is the essence and the substance of the church life. the genuine church life is not a matter of doctrine or teaching, but a life in which Christ Himself is realized, experienced, enjoyed, expressed, and exhibited by us. 

the genuine church life is a corporate life of seeking believers who are filled with the riches of Christ unto all the fullness of God, that is, unto the expression of the Triune God. It is through the inner experience of the indwelling Christ that we apprehend with all the saints the unlimited measure of Christ and have the genuine church life for the building up of the Body of Christ. 

All the saints need to experience something of Christ in their daily life and come together with the Christ whom they have experienced to exhibit this Christ, to share Him with one another, and to enjoy Him with God the Father for His pleasure; this is the genuine church life.