Loving the Lord and Loving One Another
for the Organic Building Up of the Church
as the Body of Christ
Message One
Loving the Lord and Loving One Another—
the Most Excellent Way for Us to Be Anything
and Do Anything for the Organic Building Up
of the Church as the Body of Christ
OPENING WORD OF THE PROPHESYING MEETING
Reading the verses in each day.
Reading the main points in the outlines.
Pray-reading the verses:
1 Cor. 12:31 But earnestly desire the greater gifts. And moreover I show to you a most excellent way.
13:13 Now there abide faith, hope, love, these three; and the greatest of these is love.
John 21:16 …Simon, son of John, do you love Me? He said to Him, Yes, Lord, …He said to him, Shepherd My sheep.
Word of Appetizer
For the building up of the church as the organic Body of Christ, what is the most excellent way for us to be anything or do anything?
The end of 1 Corinthians 12 reveals that love is the most excellent way. How do we shepherd people? Love is the most excellent way. Love is the most excellent way for us to prophesy and to teach others. Love is the most excellent way for us to be anything or do anything. Our God-given, regenerated spirit is a spirit of love; we need a burning spirit of love to conquer the degradation of today’s church; as the branches of Christ, the true vine, we need to love one another in order to express the divine life in fruit-bearing.
Spiritual Burden
The Lord’s recovery is a recovery of loving the Lord Jesus with the first love, the best love, and of loving one another for the building up of the organic Body of Christ, which is the building up of the New Jerusalem as the goal of God’s eternal economy.
Love is the most excellent way for us to be anything or do anything for the building up of the church as the organic Body of Christ; the church life is a life of brotherly love, and the Body builds itself up in love.
Concluding Word of the Prophesying Meeting
The Revelation of the Truth
Paul commended the Thessalonians by telling them that “your faith grows exceedingly and the love of each one of you all to one another is increasing”.
The Lord’s recovery is a recovery of loving the Lord Jesus with the first love, the best love, and of loving one another for the building up of the organic Body of Christ, which is the building up of the New Jerusalem as the goal of God’s eternal economy.
Love is the most excellent way for us to be anything or do anything for the building up of the church as the organic Body of Christ.
Psalms 22—24 are a group of psalms revealing Christ from His crucifixion to His kingship in the coming age; in Psalm 22 we see Christ’s death, His resurrection, and His many brothers produced in His resurrection to form His church; in Psalm 23 we see Christ as the Shepherd in His resurrection; and in Psalm 24 we see Christ as the coming King in His kingdom.
The Experience of Life
Love is the most excellent way for us to be anything or do anything for the building up of the church as the organic Body of Christ; when the law of love is activated within us, we automatically and spontaneously will be shepherds who have the loving and forgiving heart of our Father God and the shepherding and seeking spirit of our Savior Christ; when the law of love is activated within us, our labor in the Lord is a labor of love in which we “support the weak” and “sustain the weak”.
Practice and Application
The very life that we received when we believed in the Lord Jesus is a person, and the only way to apply and enjoy this person is by loving Him with the first love; since the Lord Jesus as our life is a person, we need a new contact with Him to enjoy His present presence at this very moment and day by day.
We must keep ourselves in the love of God and be constrained by the love of Christ to lay down our lives on behalf of the brothers.
We need to beware of ambition and pride; Pride means destruction, and to be proud is to be a top fool; humility saves us from all kinds of destruction and invites God’s grace. We should pray for one another, have an intimate concern for one another, cherish and nourish one another, and always cover one another, speak well of one another, and never expose one another’s failures and defects.
PROPHESYING TOPICS—TWELVE TOPICS PER WEEK
Day 1
T1 Through faith we receive the Lord, and through love we enjoy the Lord whom we have received (2 Thes. 1:3; 1 Tim. 1:14)
(Please illustrate that faith and love are two inseparable, excellent virtues of the believers in Christ.)
T2 In the current of the church’s degradation, in order to be the overcomers, this wonderful faith and this super-excellent love are indispensable (Titus 3:15)
(Please illustrate this wonderful faith and this super-excellent love are out of the Triune God, who earnestly desires to be joined to us to be our everything)
Day 2
T1 To enjoy Christ and to experience Him as the church-loving Christ (Gal. 2:20; Eph. 5:25)
(Please illustrate that Christ loves me and Christ also love the church. )
T2 To have the first love is to give the preeminence to the Lord Jesus in everything, even in all the small things (Rev. 2:4)
(Please illustrate what was the first thing the Lord charged us to overcome in the book of Revelation.)
Day 3
T1 God is love; we love because He first loved us (1 John 4:8, 19)
(Please illustrate that God does not want us to love with our natural love but with Him as our love.)
T2 God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble (James 4:6)
(Please illustrate that in the Lord’s work, however, we must try our best to guard against pride and ambition.)
Day 4
T1 Love prevails (1 Cor. 13:13)
(Please illustrate the spiritual significance of the first one saved by Christ through His crucifixion was not a gentleman but a criminal, a robber, sentenced to death.)
T2 The spirit that God has given us is a spirit of love (2 Tim. 1:7)
(Please illustrate that we have to stir up our spirit so that our spirit will be burning.)
Day 5
T1 Shepherding implies feeding, but it includes much more than feeding (John 21:15-17)
(Why is John 21 is the completion and consummation of the Gospel of John.)
T2 The heavenly ministry of Christ is mainly to shepherd the church of God as His flock (Acts 20:28; 1 Pet. 5:2-4)
(Please illustrate that Christ’s shepherding of His flock includes His caring for their outward things and also their inner being, their souls.)
Day 6
T1 Psalms 22—24 are a group of psalms revealing Christ from His crucifixion to His kingship in the coming age (Psa. 23:1)
(Briefly explain the main points of Psalms 22-24.)
T2 What we have in 2 Corinthians 7:2-16 is the intimate concern of the ministering life (2 Cor. 7:3-4)
(Please illustrate how the ministering life we see in 2 Corinthians is a fruitful life.)
