DYING TO LIVE OUT GOD
The second point concerning the way to die is that God wants us to live out not our human life, but the divine life. In other words He does not want us to live out ourselves; He wants us to live out Him. In order to live out God, we need to die.
The only part of our being that is useful to God is our will. God wants us to exercise our will to choose Him to be our life. Again, I say, He does not want us to live out ourselves. The more we live out ourselves, the more we offend God and rebel against Him. God’s economy is to have Himself lived out by us. However, we are doing our best to live out ourselves. This is rebellion. Some say, "I shall live out myself by loving others and by helping them." But God says, "Your loving of others and your helping them are rebellion against Me. I don’t want you to love others or to help them. I want you to take Me as your life and to live Me out as your living. If you fail to do this, you are against My economy, and that is rebellion." How important it is for us all to see that God’s economy is that we must die in order to live out God!
WHAT IS MOST PLEASING TO THE LORD
The next thing we need to see about how to die is that nothing pleases God as much as our living by Him. This is the most pleasant thing to the Lord. If we take Him as our life and live Him out, His heart is touched, and He is joyful. Marriage is an illustration of this. Nothing touches a husband’s heart more than having his wife live according to him. How happy a husband is whenever his wife lives according to him! Likewise, the Lord is very pleased when we live by Him.
In 1933 I was invited to a province in southern China where we were served rice to eat three times a day. As a northerner, I was accustomed to eating wheat instead of rice. Realizing that I was exhausted by the strenuous work of ministering in several meetings a day, some sisters decided to prepare some wheat bread for me. Although, they made this bread out of love, it tasted so bad that I could not eat it. I did not say a word to them, but inwardly I thought that I would rather eat their rice. This illustrates the fact that even though we may do something for others in a loving way, what we do may be not at all pleasing to them because it is done according to ourselves. If a wife loves her husband in this way, she will kill him with her love. What is most pleasing to others is that we live according to them. In like manner, the most pleasing thing to God is that we live by Him in order to live Him out.
(The Experience of Christ, Chapter 21, by Witness Lee)
