Jerusalem —œ mountains surround her; and Jehovah surrounds His people from now and to eternity.
— Psalm 125:2
That Christ may make His home in your hearts through faith, that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be full of strength to apprehend with all the saints what the breadth and length and height and depth are, and to know the knowledge-surpassing love of Christ, that you may be filled unto all the fullness of God.
— Ephesians 3:17b-19
It is in the church life, in the testimony of the Lord, that we begin to realize what a marvelous Christ we have. When we try to enjoy Christ on our own, for ourselves, we find out that He is very limited. It does not mean that He is not with us, but He can only be realized by our own small mentality. Because we have a small and selfish mind, we have a small Christ. But when we come into and enjoy the church life we realize, “He is not only my Christ, He is the Christ of all these dear brothers and sisters!”
When we are in the church life we eventually come to know the Lord through the experiences of all the saints. Then the Christ of so many brothers and sisters becomes our Christ. We enjoy their Christ, and they enjoy our Christ. We enjoy the Christ of young people and old people, fine people and rough people. Christ becomes so great and so high in our experience. He becomes like the high mountains surrounding Jerusalem. This is a precious realization. We should love and appreciate the Christ we have in the church life. We should all declare, “Lord, we are so thankful that you have brought us here! We have such a rich, heavenly, bountiful, and glorious Christ, because we are in the church life!”
Adapted from The Journey of Life, pages 51-52.
Monday: “Upheld by Grace”