What is Christ Doing at the Right Hand of God in Colossians 3:2?

    What is Christ doing at the right hand of God?  There’s probably a lot of speculation out there about this. I know I’ve heard a few. Last week I read some amazing chapters at the end of the Life-Study of Colossians that filled me in on what the Lord’s really doing based on Colossians 3:2:  

I took this at a tulip farm last week.

If therefore you were raised together with Christ, seek the things which are above where Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God. 

   In chapter  59 of the Life-Study of Colossians Witness Lee opens up this topic by saying that Christ’s ministry has two aspects.  As most people are aware of from the Gospels, Christ carried out His earthly ministry for 33 ½ years doing things like healing the sick, casting out demons, and teaching people. And he points out in this chapter that the goal of Christ’s earthly ministry was to accomplish redemption so that He could be become the life-giving Spirit to regenerate people for the building up of His Body.

   Then he shares that after Christ’s ascension recorded in Acts, He has been carrying out His heavenly ministry.  And Romans 8:34 states clearly what Christ is doing at the right hand of God:  …It is Christ Jesus who died and, rather, who was raised, who is also at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us.  But here’s a part that I never heard before —The Lord needs us to join into His intercession! These excerpts  from chapters 59 and 65 really helped me get this:

"To seek the things which are above and to set our mind on them is to join ourselves to the Lord in His ministry in heaven…..Do you not aspire to be one with the Lord in the heavenlies and to have a heart that is one with His heart?...We all need to care for the Lord’s interests.  While He is praying in heaven, we respond on earth….Christ works in heaven, and we work on earth….Christ’s ministry in heaven is all for the goal of building up the Body and forming His Bride. However, Christ’s ministry in heaven requires our response. We need to become on earth the very reflection of that heavenly ministry. When we seek the things above, we respond to the Lord’s heavenly ministry and reflect it" (Lee, Witness. Life-Study of Colossians. Anaheim: Living Stream Ministry, 1979, Print). 

   I really like the words respond and reflect because they show that our prayers need to correspond to God's prayer.  This makes me think about a message I heard a few weeks ago from the Crystallization of Genesis messages on Living Stream Ministry’s website covering Genesis 18. In this chapter God tells Abraham He is about to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah. 

    In response Abraham began to ask God questions that appealed to His righteous nature. Back and forth God and Abraham went until the Bible says “And Jehovah went away as soon as He had finished speaking with Abraham,…" Through this example, I saw how Abraham responded to God's need for an intercessor to pray for Lot.  The prayer that Abraham prayed was a reflection of God's concern for Lot and his family.  These messages encouraged us to echo what is on the Lord's heart. 

You can listen to excerpts from the Life-Study of Colossians given in 1979 on The Life-Study of the Bible with Witness Lee. 

Other Posts on the Life-Study of Colossians:

What is God's Will in Colossians 1:9?
What is the Stewardship of God in Colossians 1:25?
What is the Hope of Glory in Colossians 1:27?
What is the Mystery of God in Colossians 2:2? (Part 1)
What is the Mystery of Christ in Ephesians 5:32?   (Part 2)
What is the Greatest Mystery?
What is God's Intention for Your Life?
From the Life-Study of Colossians - What Happens When We Pray?
How Does God Get the One New Man in Colossians 3:10?
What Does Colossians 2:7 Say About Spiritual Growth? (Part 1)
What is the Goal of Spiritual Growth in Colossians 2:19?  (Part 2)
What is Christ Doing at the Right Hand of God in Colossians 3:2?

What is the Goal of Spiritual Growth in Colossians 2:19?

     Human and spiritual development are a lot alike.  I'm sure God's responsible for that.  Just like we begin our human life as infants, we begin our Christian life as infants in Christ.  And as strange as it would be to see a 50-year-old baby, it would be just as strange for us not to grow and mature over the years of our own Christian life.  

We visited the Sonoran Desert with
 my father on our Spring Break trip in Arizona.

  But what causes this spiritual growth?  I really appreciate how much Witness Lee speaks about this matter in his Life-Study messages!

     I really liked reading chapter 51 of the Life-Study of Colossians  because he clarifies that true Christian growth is not about us acquiring more doctrinal knowledge. Colossians 2:19 gives us a window into what it's really about: 

And not holding the Head, out from whom all the Body, being richly supplied and knit together by means of the joints and sinews, grows with the growth of God.  

     And then in chapter 52 he talks about how we need personal spiritual growth for the sake of the building up of the Body of Christ.  I've heard it said many times that the age of spiritual giants is over because God's ultimate goal is to obtain a corporate Body that expresses  and represents Him.   And our brother always brought us back in his messages to God's desire in Genesis 1:26. 

   For this growth to take place, the most important thing we need to do is eat!   That shouldn't surprise you because it's the same way with your human life--see how far you can go on just one meal. On pages 456-457 he talks about how this all hinges on our taking the time to be with God, listen to this:

"As we daily take time to eat food, we should daily take time to absorb the Lord, take time to assimilate the riches of Christ. Our contact with the Lord should not be rushed. If we are in a hurry, we shall not be able to absorb much of His riches. We need to allow adequate time for prayer. This will enable us to absorb more of the riches of our God.….spend more time in your spirit to adore the Lord, to praise Him, to offer thanks to Him, and to speak to Him freely. As you fellowship with Him in this way, you will absorb His riches, and He will add more of Himself into you" (Lee, Witness. Life-Study of Colossians. Anaheim: Living Stream Ministry, 1979, Print). 

      But all of this is not just for yourself.  At the end of this chapter he connects Colossians 2:19 with Ephesians 4:15-16 "…according to the operation in measure of each one part, causes the growth of the Body unto the building up of itself in love."  He points out here that these two verses show us that the Body of Christ is depending on us to grow!  Each day we all need to spend time alone with God so that we can grow, and this growth is what will help the Body of Christ grow and be built up. 


You can listen to excerpts from the Life-Study of Colossians given in 1979 on The Life-Study of the Bible with Witness Lee. 

Other Posts on the Life-Study of Colossians:

What is God's Will in Colossians 1:9?
What is the Stewardship of God in Colossians 1:25?
What is the Hope of Glory in Colossians 1:27?
What is the Mystery of God in Colossians 2:2? (Part 1)
What is the Mystery of Christ in Ephesians 5:32?   (Part 2)
What is the Greatest Mystery?
What is God's Intention for Your Life?
From the Life-Study of Colossians - What Happens When We Pray?
How Does God Get the One New Man in Colossians 3:10?
What Does Colossians 2:7 Say About Spiritual Growth? (Part 1)
What is the Goal of Spiritual Growth in Colossians 2:19?  (Part 2)
What is Christ Doing at the Right Hand of God in Colossians 3:2?

How Does God Get the One New Man in Colossians 3:10?

The Bible tells us that Christ died to produce one new man.  

       For He Himself is our peace, He who has made both one and has broken down the middle wall of partition, the enmity.

      Abolishing in His flesh the law of the commandments in ordinances, that He might create the two in Himself into one new man, so making peace.  Ephesians 2:14-15

     It's obvious from these verses that the peace that Christ made on the cross is very powerful.  It blasted through centuries of Jewish religion and Gentile pagan living.  This peace dissolved all the differences between not only those two cultures but every kind of culture on the face of the earth today.  Now that's amazing peace!   

  It touched me In Chapter 32 of the Life-Study of Colossians that the peace Christ made on the cross produced the oneness between all the Lord's believers. 

      And in Colossians 3:10 we can see how strong Paul is to point out that in this new man that the Lord created on the cross there isn't any cultural distinctions:  And have put on the new man,…where there cannot be Greek (those who favored philosophical wisdom) and Jew (those who favored miraculous signs), circumcision (those who observed Jewish religious rituals) and uncircumcision, barbarian (an uncultured person), Scythian (considered the most barbarous), slave, free man, but Christ is all and in all.  All the definitions in parentheses come from excerpts from the footnotes in the Recovery Version of the New Testament.

    For about ten chapters in the Life-Study of Colossians Witness Lee talks about how the people in Colosse were distracted by their cultures.  Paul uses the words deluded in Colossians 2:4 and defrauded in 2:18 to describe what had happened to them.  in Chapter 41 brother Lee gives a bit of a background and says Asia Minor, now present day Turkey, was actually a melting pot of cultures and eventually it pervaded the church life there.  

   The problem he says in chapter 33 is that by default we unconsciously live out the culture we're born in.  After we're saved, we begin to meet with other believers from different cultures.  And it's only a matter of time before our cultural opinions explode, and that is probably one of the reasons there might be so many divisions out there among believers.  But God desires to gain one new man, and I appreciated this clear explanation on why:

"However, God's eternal purpose is to have a corporate people to be the Body of Christ for His expression.  But if mankind remains divided by cultural opinions, how can God's purpose be carried out? It would be impossible. But according to Ephesians 2:15, Christ's death on the cross has abolished all the cultural ordinances and differences terminating them…This very peace, the peace of Christ, is what Paul refers to in Colossians 3:15 (Lee, Witness. Life-Study of Colossians. Anaheim: Living Stream Ministry, 1979, Print). 

   After reading this I looked up Colossians 3:15 in my Bible, I was like wow this arbitrating peace is really like our brother said for the Body of Christ:  And let the peace of Christ arbitrate in your hearts, to which also you were called in one Body,…" He then points that after this verse Paul talks about letting the word of Christ dwell in us, and later he speaks about persevering in prayer because all of these spiritual practices help swallow up  all of our cultural opinions that cause division in the Lord's Body.  

     As I was thinking about everything I've been reading these past few weeks on culture this sentence in Chapter 38 stood out to me:  "The goal of God's dispensation of Himself into us is the one new man (Page 322).   I think what touches me with these excerpts is that God's eternal purpose centers around His gaining this one new man.  

You can listen to excerpts from the Life-Study of Colossians given in 1979 on The Life-Study of the Bible with Witness Lee. 

Other Posts on the Life-Study of Colossians:

What is God's Will in Colossians 1:9?
What is the Stewardship of God in Colossians 1:25?
What is the Hope of Glory in Colossians 1:27?
What is the Mystery of God in Colossians 2:2? (Part 1)
What is the Mystery of Christ in Ephesians 5:32?   (Part 2)
What is the Greatest Mystery?
What is God's Intention for Your Life?
From the Life-Study of Colossians - What Happens When We Pray?
How Does God Get the One New Man in Colossians 3:10?
What Does Colossians 2:7 Say About Spiritual Growth? (Part 1)
What is the Goal of Spiritual Growth in Colossians 2:19?  (Part 2)
What is Christ Doing at the Right Hand of God in Colossians 3:2?

From the Life-Study of Colossians - What Happens When We Pray?

     Why pray?  When I was growing up, prayer wasn't a fun thing to do, especially when I had to pray something like ten Our Fathers and five Hail Marys in penance for my sins.  For years prayer was mechanical and punitive. I really didn't know what it was about.  And on the wall outside my bedroom was the quote--Prayer Changes Things, but I didn't know how.  

   Even after I was saved, I didn't pray much.  Maybe before dinner but nothing personal. But when I was a sophomore in high school, I started talking to God.  Here's how it happened.  When I was at my grandparent's farm I used to like to walk along the fields, and at that time in my life I was going through some major life events. 

   With the sky spreading above me and the beauty of nature surrounding me, it just opened my heart, and one day I just started talking to God about everything. Looking back I don't even think I would have told anyone I was praying on those walks.  

    Since that time I have grown in both my understanding and experience of prayer.  There are a lot of lessons to learn here. Over the years I have learned a lot about prayer by simply praying with others. And I've been greatly helped by the writings of both Watchman Nee and Witness Lee on prayer.  A few outstanding books that come to mind are:  The Prayer Ministry of the Church and Lessons on Prayer.  And whenever a verse is on prayer in a particular Life-Study, Witness Lee  shares some practical experiences and fellowship (you'll see an example of that below). 

    I also like to journal some of my prayers. Several years ago my friend Patty's mom showed me a shelf filled with her prayer journals.  She had been a missionary in Madagascar when Patty was little, and her mother told me she liked to record her prayers and also any answers.  Years after that when a teacher gave me a journal as a gift, I started writing my prayers in it. 

         This week I read a striking section in Chapter 39 of the Life-Study of Colossians  on prayer. Colossians has a few verses on prayer; in chapter 4 Paul writes--"Persevere in prayer, watching in it with thanksgiving." Anyway in this section Witness Lee wonderfully connects prayer in Colossians to living Christ in Philippians 1:19. This verse  says, "For to me to live is Christ…."  These excerpts come from pages 334-335:

"If you would experience Christ and live Him, we need to remain in an atmosphere of prayer.  Many of us can testify that by prayer we are brought into the spirit, where we are one with the Lord and take Him as our life.  This experience is so precious that when we are enjoying it, we do not want it to end….However, as soon as our time of prayer is over, much of the time we revert to our natural way of living.  We are no longer in an atmosphere of prayer. ...When we pray ourselves into the spirit, we are one with the Lord, we enjoy His presence, and we spontaneously live Him".  (Lee, Witness. Life-Study of Colossians.  Anaheim: Living Stream Ministry, 1979, Print). 

A lot of times I only think of praying because I need  answers.  But I don't always see that bigger than that answer is prayer brings me into touch with the living Lord.  And like it says in this chapter, we spontaneously receive the grace to express the Lord in all the situations we're going through each day.  And by the way, a lot of my talking to the Lord I still do on my walks!  

I had to buy this when I found this at the book store
 because now I know He does!

You can listen to excerpts from the Life-Study of Colossians given in 1979 on The Life-Study of the Bible with Witness Lee. 

Other Posts on the Life-Study of Colossians:

Do You Know What God's Will is in Colossians 1:9?
What is the Stewardship of God in Colossians 1:25?
Have You Seen What the Hope of Glory is in Colossians 1:27?
From the Life-Study of Colossians - Have You Seen the Mystery of God Revealed in Colossians 2:2? (Part 1)
From the Life-Study of Colossians - Have You Seen the Mystery of Christ?   (Part 2)
From the Life-Study of Colossians - What is the Great Mystery in Ephesians & Colossians?
What is God's Intention for Your Life?
From the Life-Study of Colossians - What Happens When We Pray?
How Does God Get the One New Man in Colossians 3:10?
Do You Know How the Believers Grow in Colossians 2:7? (Part 1)
Do You Know What the Goal of Spiritual Growth is in Colossians 2:19?  (Part 2)
What is Christ Doing at the Right Hand of God in Colossians 3:2?

Other Related Posts on Prayer

From the Life-Study of Matthew:

What is the Crucial Significance of Lord's Prayer in Matthew 6:9-13?

Have You Seen the Battle Between the Two Kingdoms in Matthew 12:26-28?

From the Life-Study of Luke:

Why is Persistent Prayer Important in Luke 18:1-8?

From the Life-Study of Acts:

How is Acts a Book on God's Move & Prayer?

Seeing God's Move & Satan's Frustration in Acts 14

From the Life-Study of Galatians:

How Do We Practically Enjoy Grace in Galatians 5:18?

From the Life-Study of Ephesians:

How Do We Apply the Armor of God in Ephesians 6?

From the Life-Study of Philippians:

Why Does Paul Put Anxiety and Prayer Together in Philippians 4:6?

From the Life-Study of Colossians:

From the Life-Study of Colossians - What Happens When We Pray?

What is Christ Doing at the RIght Hand of God in Colossians 3:2?

From the Life-Study of 1 Timothy:

What is Paul's First Exhortation in 1 Timothy 2:1?

Other Posts:

Why Prayer Matters

Calling on the Lord Makes a Difference! 

Hearing God   (From Collected Works of Watchman Nee, Vol. 18 - Tell Him)

What is God's Intention For Your Christian Life?

  What is God’s intention for your Christian life?  I heard a message this week that put it all together in one enlightening sentence.  All week long I’ve been thinking about that message which was a Wednesday night sharing on Living Stream Ministry’s website (If you click on the link Webcast Subscription Service, you can register.).  The speaker started off by asking three thought provoking questions:

What is the governing vision of the Bible?

 Has that governing vision been worked into you?         Are you directed by that vision?

Then he went on to give the best definition of this vision:   "The governing vision of the Bible is that God wants to work Himself in the Trinity into His chosen and redeemed people to saturate their entire being for the producing of the Body of Christ consummating in the New Jerusalem.” He said it’s a huge job for God to work Himself into millions of believers.  Think about it—we're not inanimate objects; we're living beings with a will!

 So in order to accomplish this he said the Triune God had a council for each one of us what sequence of events would be necessary to work Christ into us. Step back from your life and take a good look at it from this perspective. I was very touched by this particular statement: “God has a detailed arrangement for your whole life.”

Anyway on Friday I was reading on my break Chapter 36 of the Life-Study of Colossians, and after the opening paragraph on page 303 was the subtitle—God’s Intention.  I’m thinking to myself, wait a minute I just heard a message on Monday on this subject. 

“…we need to see that according to the full revelation in the Bible God’s intention is to work Himself into His chosen people. This intention is the focal point of the divine revelation in the Scriptures.  In order for God to work Himself into us, He must be triune….This indicates that the Father cannot be separated from the Son, nor the Son from the Father.

….Through the process of death and resurrection, the Son became the life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45), the Holy Spirit who gives life.…As the all-inclusive Spirit, the Triune God is working Himself into our being. The deepest part of our being is the spirit, which is surrounded by the soul and the body. Christ as the processed, all-inclusive life-giving Spirit is in our spirit, seeking to spread Himself into all the parts of our  soul and eventually to saturate our bodies to make us absolutely the same as He is.  When this takes place, our whole being will be permeated with Himself (Lee, Witness.  Life-Study of Colossians. Anaheim: Living Stream Ministry, 1979, Print).

 I'm going to close this post with the prayer at the end of this chapter:  "We need to pray, 'Lord Jesus, I want to be taken over, occupied, and possessed by You  I want to give You my full capacity and all the room in my being.  Lord, I don't want to be limited or frustrated in my experience of You.'" (Page 311).

You can listen to excerpts from the Life-Study of Colossians given in 1979 on The Life-Study of the Bible with Witness Lee. 

Other Posts on the Life-Study of Colossians:

What is God's Will in Colossians 1:9?
What is the Stewardship of God in Colossians 1:25?
What is the Hope of Glory in Colossians 1:27?
What is the Mystery of God in Colossians 2:2? (Part 1)
What is the Mystery of Christ in Ephesians 5:32?   (Part 2)
What is the Greatest Mystery?
What is God's Intention for Your Life?
From the Life-Study of Colossians - What Happens When We Pray?
How Does God Get the One New Man in Colossians 3:10?
What Does Colossians 2:7 Say About Spiritual Growth? (Part 1)
What is the Goal of Spiritual Growth in Colossians 2:19?  (Part 2)
What is Christ Doing at the Right Hand of God in Colossians 3:2?

What is the Mystery in Colossians 1:25-27?

   Everyone likes a good mystery, and probably the greatest mystery of all is in the Bible.  And if it weren't for Paul's writings, we still might be trying to figure it out. And I have to be honest and say, if it weren't for the ministry of both Watchman Nee and Witness Lee, I never would have seen what the Bible was talking about on this matter!

      Paul tells us clearly in Colossians 1:25-27:  I became a minister according to the stewardship of God, which was given to me for you,  to complete the word of God, 

     the mystery which has been hidden from the generations, but now has been manifested to His saints.

    To whom God willed to make known what are the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.  

  
      In all his years of ministry Witness Lee  shared a lot on this mystery, which he shows from the Word has two parts. One part is the mystery of God which is mentioned in Colossians 2:2:  "That their hearts may be comforted, they being knit together in love and unto all the riches of the full assurance of understanding, unto the full knowledge of the mystery of God, Christ."  

    It's almost like the whole focus of the gospels is that Christ wants to become the life-giving Spirit so that He can get into His disciples!  In John 20:22 it says,  "And when He had said this, He breathed into them and said to them, Receive the Holy Spirit." The second mystery is  the mystery of Christ which is mentioned in Ephesians 3:4--By which, in reading it, you can perceive my understanding in the mystery of Christ.  It's clear from the New Testament that God wants all His regenerated believers to meet as the church. 

My granddaughter making a snow angel.

   Anyway I’ve always liked Ephesians 5:32 because it brings both parts of this mystery together—"This mystery is great, but I speak with regard to Christ (the mystery of God) and the church (the mystery of Christ)."   Last week  I read chapter 32 of the Life-Study of Colossians,  and these parts on pages 266-267 jumped out at me:  

 Furthermore, according to verse 27, this mystery is Christ in us, the hope of glory. The goal of this mystery is to produce the church.   Paul was troubled by the situation at Colosse.  The Jewish and Gentile believers were neglecting Christ and the church; they were focusing their attention on such things as Judaistic observances and heathen philosophy….Therefore, Paul wrote the Epistle to the Colossians in order to complete the word of God.…What is the completion of the word of God, the completion of the divine revelation?  In simple terms, to complete the word of God is to experience Christ subjectively and to enjoy Him in our daily living so that the proper church life may come forth to express God. This revelation is the completion of the word of God” (Lee, Witness. Life-Study of Colossians. Anaheim: Living Stream Ministry, 1979, Print).  

    Following this passage, he mentions that in order to minister Christ to others for the producing of the church we need to daily spend time with the Lord in His word with prayer. This will cause us to experience the riches of all that Christ is.  Then when we are with our fellow believers, there will be something bubbling up in us from our enjoyment of God's word to help build up the church.  

You can listen to excerpts from the Life-Study of Colossians given in 1979 on The Life-Study of the Bible with Witness Lee. 

Other Posts on the Life-Study of Colossians:

What is God's Will in Colossians 1:9?
What is the Stewardship of God in Colossians 1:25?
What is the Hope of Glory in Colossians 1:27?
What is the Mystery of God in Colossians 2:2? (Part 1)
What is the Mystery of Christ in Ephesians 5:32?   (Part 2)
What is the Greatest Mystery?
What is God's Intention for Your Life?
From the Life-Study of Colossians - What Happens When We Pray?
How Does God Get the One New Man in Colossians 3:10?
What Does Colossians 2:7 Say About Spiritual Growth? (Part 1)
What is the Goal of Spiritual Growth in Colossians 2:19?  (Part 2)
What is Christ Doing at the Right Hand of God in Colossians 3:2?

What is the Mystery of Christ Mentioned in Ephesians 5:32?

       When I grew up I always associated going to church with crosses on a building, hard wooden pews, and stain glass windows. Then in 5^th grade our family started going to the church in Yorba Linda in Southern California.  I didn’t think much about the funny name or that we met in a house instead of a typical church building.   



Our family went to spend the weekend at a mountain cabin.

     I didn’t understand how this church was any different from any other church until I was in junior high and started attending conferences with my friends that talked about the ground of the church.   Anyway like most junior highers who sit in two-hour meetings, I passed notes and whispered to my friends.  But when you hear something over and over, some things start to stick.  Many of the verses and some of the sharing got permanently etched into my memory.

   
Here’s some of what I remember, I'm just typing this while I'm thinking—In the book of Acts the believers didn’t call themselves by any name, just the name of the city they lived in.  We read every verse in the New Testament that had the word church or churches in it.  If you get out your Strong’s Concordance you can make a list.  It is amazing that church always goes with a city, and churches always refers to a region like Galatia where there were many cities. 

    And if you’re still thinking the church equals a building, it’s really helpful to go back and look at Matthew 16 and 18 where the word church is first mentioned by the Lord.  The Greek meaning for church is the called out assembly.     And in Acts 14:23 the elders were appointed according to every church, and in the sister verse in Titus 1:5 the elders were appointed according to the city.  These two verses point out that the eldership is according to one church in one city. When you read through Acts, you can see that there were thousands of believers that were raised up in this first church in Jerusalem.  These believers met like Acts 2:42 says from house to house, and they had fellowship with other churches and even gave for their needs. 

      In these conferences they would often go through church history which can be very fascinating depending on how it’s presented.  From the time of Acts there have always been a group of people who refused to buckle under the pressure of the pope, state churches, etc.  These ones--like  the Anabaptists, the Mennonites, the Moravian Brethren--met just like the believers did in Acts receiving all other believers (You can check that out in Romans 14).  Throughout all these centuries the Lord bit by bit recovered lost New Testament truths.

    Through many missionaries, the gospel came to China.  And through that the Lord raised up Watchman Nee to see the divine revelation that had been lost concerning the believers meeting according to their city. (You can read about this in Witness Lee's  biography about Watchman Nee called  Watchman Nee - A  Seer of the Divine Revelation in the Present Age which I would encourage you to read.)  Through brother Nee's reading of the New Testament and church history, he saw that the ground of the church is not built around a person like Lutherans or a practice like baptism,  but simply the city a believer lives in.   Watchman Nee began to practice what he saw, and he was also faithful to speak what he saw, and over time hundreds began to meet  as the churches in their city.  

   Through the Lord's leading, Witness Lee became a coworker of Watchman Nee, and they labored together in China for many years.  Before the communist takeover, brother Nee sent him out in 1949 in order to preserve the truths the Lord had shown them.  After living in Taiwan for several years, Witness Lee was led by the Lord in 1962 to move to Los Angeles. I remember going with my father when I was in sixth grade to hear him speak there. I had never heard a native Chinese person speak before, and his accent was very strong back then.   As a new believer, my father was very encouraged  by his speaking.

   When I was a sophomore in high school, I tried to go back to the Catholic Church.  But I couldn't forget what I had heard. The next year some friends tried to convert me to something else, but I couldn't forget what I had heard. I planned to move after I finished high school to a city where the church was meeting.  During college I also went to some of Witness Lee's live trainings in Anaheim.  And I also read Further Talks on the Church Life by Watchman Nee,  The Practical Expression of the Church and The Ground of the Church by Witness Lee.  All of these books were a great help to me.

     Last week when I  was reading chapter 18 of the Life-Study of Colossians,  I read about how the mystery of Christ is the church.  And on pages 147-148  Witness Lee gives some of his own personal testimony about seeing how the church should meet: 

      Allow me to testify of my experience about becoming assured regarding the ground of the church.  In 1932 we began to practice the church life in Chefoo, my home town…Eventually I concluded that if were to be a man, I had to believe in the Lord Jesus; that if I were to believe in the Lord, I had to love Him; and that if were to love Him, I had to take the way of the church. As a result, I received the full assurance concerning the ground of the church.  I had not only faith, but also the knowledge which caused me to have certainty. For more than forty-six years I have not changed my position with respect to the church ground, no matter how much I have suffered because of the stand I have taken....Concerning Christ as the mystery of God, we need faith, knowledge, certainty, and thorough understanding. (Lee, Witness. Life-Study of Colossians. Anaheim: Living Stream Ministry, 1979, Print). 

   So I’ve shared with you a little bit of my own journey with this truth, and I would encourage you to read the verses, pray, read these books online, and check out the resources on Living Stream Ministry's website. 

Here's a blog I checked out called Grace & Truth that has a really helpful post on this topic.

Blog Update 5-11-14:   I just read the Congressional Record from April 29, 2014 which contains a speech on both Watchman Nee and Witness Lee's ministry in China and abroad.  

You can listen to excerpts from the Life-Study of Colossians given in 1979 on The Life-Study of the Bible with Witness Lee. 

Other Posts on the Life-Study of Colossians:

What is God's Will in Colossians 1:9?
What is the Stewardship of God in Colossians 1:25?
What is the Hope of Glory in Colossians 1:27?
What is the Mystery of God in Colossians 2:2? (Part 1)
What is the Mystery of Christ in Ephesians 5:32?   (Part 2)
What is the Greatest Mystery?
What is God's Intention for Your Life?
From the Life-Study of Colossians - What Happens When We Pray?
How Does God Get the One New Man in Colossians 3:10?
What Does Colossians 2:7 Say About Spiritual Growth? (Part 1)
What is the Goal of Spiritual Growth in Colossians 2:19?  (Part 2)
What is Christ Doing at the Right Hand of God in Colossians 3:2?