Living and Serving according to God’s Economy
concerning the Church
Message Six
A Good Minister 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 Tim. 4:6 If you lay these things before the brothers, you will be a good minister of Christ Jesus, being nourished with the words of the faith and of the good teaching which you have closely followed.
S. S. 4:11 Your lips drip fresh honey, my bride; honey and milk are under your tongue…
Zech. 12:1 The burden of the word of Jehovah concerning Israel…
Word of Appetizer
What is a good minister of Christ?
A good minister of Christ is one who serves people with Christ, ministering Christ as Savior, life, life supply, and every positive thing to people. If we would minister Christ to others, we ourselves must be nourished; a good minister of Christ does not merely teach others about Christ but ministers Christ into others as food.
A good minister of Christ sacrifices himself and puts himself aside in order to keep the absoluteness of the truth; the truth cannot be entrusted to a person who walks according to his feelings; a man must stand on the side of the truth to oppose himself.
Spiritual Burden
A good minister of Christ sacrifices himself and puts himself aside in order to keep the absoluteness of the truth; the truth cannot be entrusted to a person who walks according to his feelings; a man must stand on the side of the truth to oppose himself.
A good minister of Christ, as a good steward of the varied grace of God, speaks oracles of God for the glorification of God, the expression of God; he does not seek his own glory to express himself but continually exercises his spirit to reject the self, not preaching himself but exalting Christ as Lord and considering himself as a slave to serve the believers.
A good minister of Christ is like the Lord’s loving seeker described in Song of Songs 4:11—”Your lips drip fresh honey, my bride; / Honey and milk are under your tongue”.
Concluding Word of the Prophesying Meeting
The Revelation of the Truth
A good minister of Christ sacrifices himself and puts himself aside in order to keep the absoluteness of the truth; the truth cannot be entrusted to a person who walks according to his feelings; a man must stand on the side of the truth to oppose himself.
A good minister of Christ, as a good steward of the varied grace of God, speaks oracles of God for the glorification of God, the expression of God.
A good minister of Christ ministers life and serves the saints according to the principle of the tree of life, not the principle of the tree of right and wrong.
A good minister of Christ helps the saints to think the “one thing”.
A good minister of Christ is like the Lord’s loving seeker described in Song of Songs 4:11—”Your lips drip fresh honey, my bride; / Honey and milk are under your tongue”.
The Experience of Life
“Your lips drip fresh honey, my bride; honey and milk are under your tongue…”; Her indwelling treasure of the Lord’s sweet and nourishing words is not produced overnight; it comes from a long period of gathering, inward activity, and careful storage; this is the unique possession of one who is taught by God with the healthy words of the healthy teaching of God’s.
The greatest problem in the ministry of the word is not having a burden from the Lord; without a burden, all our activity will be dead and ineffective; with a burden, we will be living and flourishing. Having a burden deals with us the most; if there is a burden, the self decreases and is dealt with, because there are things that our burden will not allow us to do, and there are areas that will require our being dealt with before we can release our burden.
Practice and Application
We must love the Lord to the uttermost to be filled with Him and overflow Him into others with the resurrected Christ as our authority. We must maintain our victory in Christ by having a revived living and a labor in shepherding.
We must abide in the fellowship with the Lord daily and hourly. We must enjoy the Lord in the Word early in the morning to have a new start of each day.
We must walk by and according to our spirit, which is mingled with the divine Spirit. We must accumulate the experiences of Christ and keep a rich storage of the Lord’s word.
PROPHESYING TOPICS—TWELVE TOPICS PER WEEK
Day 1
T1 A minister of Christ is one who serves others with Christ, ministering Christ to others (1 Tim. 4:6; 2:2)
(Please illustrate with experiences that if we would minister Christ to others, we ourselves must first be nourished.)
T2 The saints will be abundantly nourished (1 Cor. 3:6)
(Please illustrate that being nourished is for the growth in life; this is a matter of life, and it differs from merely being taught, which is a matter of knowledge.)
Day 2
T1 Being nourished ourselves with the words of the faith and of the good teaching (1 Tim. 4:6)
(What are the words of the faith and of the good teaching?)
T2 We have to learn the high peaks of God’s present revelation and learn to speak these things (Heb. 5:12-14)
(Please illustrate that just as people have different tastes in food, so the Lord’s recovery also has a taste for the ministry that has built up the recovery over the years.)
Day 3
T1 To take care of God’s work, one basic lesson is to be absolute for the truth (John 17:17)
(Please illustrate that the condition of an individual has nothing to do with God’s truth.)
T2 The absoluteness of the truth (1 Tim. 3:15)
(Why does First Timothy speaks of the pillar of the truth?)
Day 4
T1 A person who ministers as a prophet enjoys the tree of life (Ezek. 37:10; Rev. 22:14)
(Please illustrate that a person who desires to genuinely minister as a prophet must be delivered from the tree of knowledge and live in the tree of life.)
T2 Your lips drip fresh honey, my bride; / Honey and milk are under your tongue (S. S. 4:11)
(Please illustrate the spiritual significance of “lips drip fresh honey” and “honey and milk are under your tongue”.)
Day 5
T1 Burden is light plus thoughts plus the inner words (Isa. 13:1)
(What is a burden?)
T2 The greatest problem in the ministry of the word is not having a burden (Zech. 12:1)
(What is the ministry of the word with a burden?)
Day 6
T1 To preach the gospel to all the creation (Mark 16:15)
(Please illustrate with experiences that we should practice speaking Christ all the time even though no person may be present.)
T2 We need to fan our spirit into flame (2 Tim. 1:6-7)
(Please illustrate with experiences that how we can build up a habit of exercising our spirit.)
