Meeting God's Need and Present Needs in the Lord's Recovery - 1

Message Title: God's Need in the Present Age

we do have some personal needs in our daily life, for which we are not ashamed and we will bring to our Father. but God's need in the present age is much greater than our individual needs.

I. in order for His will to be done on earth and for His eternal purpose to be fulfilled, God needs our cooperation. 

if we say that God does not have a need, this just means that we do not know God. we should not initiate anything, because we are not the source of anything. but we do need to cooperate. God can carry out on earth what He has planned in heaven only when He has people who will cooperate with Him. God needs to gain people on earth who will cooperate with Him and work with Him accoding to His mind. 

our eyes need to be opened to see that God has His limitations and to see how we should cooperate with Him. God created man with a free will, so He put HImself under certain limitations which is related to our human will, whom and what we will choose. when God put Adam in the garden of Eden, He told Adam not to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. at that time, God was already putting Himself under limitation and He gave Adam the freedom to choose, meanwhile, He also indicated that He wanted Adam to choose Him. 

As members of Christ's organic, mystilcal Body, we are either expressing Him or limiting Him. the Lord needs to bring us to the point where we have nothing to hinder Him from doing whatever He wills. we need to pray to the Lord that He would bring us to this poing when nothing will hinder Him, but we will open the way for Him to do whatever He wants to do. Once the Lord has brought us to a place of total responsiveness to Him, He will have a free and unhindered way to accomplish His will; then there will be nothing that God cannot do to carry out His purpose on earth. 

II. God needs man to recover the earth. 

Genesis 1:26 And God said, Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of heaven and over the cattle and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.

God's intention in giving man dominion is to subdue God's enemy, Satan, who rebeeled against God. Man was created by God to have dominion over the earth, to subdue it, conquer it, and thereby recover the earth for God. we all should have such an aspiration within us, "Lord, I give myself to You to be among those who carry out the work of God, no matter what it costs." 

God wants man to deal with His enemy, and He created man for this purpose. God wants man to express His image and exercise dominion to recover the earth for His kingdom. if we do not restore the earth from the hand of Satan, we have not yet achieved God's purpose iin creating man to subdue the earth and have dominion; we need to deal with Satan and recover the earth for the earth for the benefit of God and to satisfy His need. 

"we must distinguish the difference between the work of saving souls and the work of God. Many times the work of saving souls is not necessarily the work of God. Saving souls solves the problem of man, but the work of God requires that man exercise authority to have dominion over all things created by Him. God needs an authority in His creation, and He has chosen man to be that authority. If we were here just for ourselves as mere men, then all our seeking and longing would be to love the Lord more and to be more holy, more zealous, and save more souls. All of these pursuits are good indeed, but they are too man-centered. These things are concerned simply with the benefit of man; God's work and God's need are entirely neglected. We must see that God has His need. We are on this earth not merely for man's need but even more for God's need. Thank God that He has committed the ministry of reconciliation to us, but even if we have saved all the souls in the whole world, we have not yet accomplished God's work or satisfied God's requirement. Here is something called God's work, God's need. When God created man, He spoke of what He needed. He revealed His need to have man rule and reign over all His creation and proclaim His triumph. Ruling for God is not a small thing; it is a great matter. God needs men whom He can trust and who will not fail Him. This is God's work, and this is what God desires to obtain.

We do not lightly esteem the work of gospel preaching, but if all our work is just preaching the gospel and saving souls, we are not causing Satan to suffer fatal loss. If man has not restored the earth from the hand of Satan, he has not yet achieved God's purpose in creating him. Saving souls is often only for the welfare of man, but dealing with Satan is for the benefit of God. Saving souls solves man's need, but dealing with Satan satisfies God's need.

Brothers and sisters, this requires us to pay a price. We know how the demons can speak. A demon once said, "Jesus I know of, and with Paul I am acquainted; but who are you?" (Acts 19:15). When a demon meets us, will he flee or not? Preaching the gospel demands that we pay a price, but a much greater price must be paid to deal with Satan.

This is not a matter of a message or a teaching. This requires our practice, and the price is extremely great. If we are to be men whom God will use to overthrow all of Satan's work and authority, we must obey the Lord completely and absolutely! In doing other work it matters less if we preserve ourselves a little, but when dealing with Satan, we cannot leave one bit of ground for ourselves. We may hold on to something of ourselves in our study of the Scriptures, in preaching the gospel, in helping the church or the brothers, but when we are dealing with Satan, self must be utterly abandoned. Satan will never be moved by us if self is preserved. May God open our eyes to see that His purpose demands that we be wholly and absolutely for Him. A double-minded person can never deal with Satan. May God speak this word to our hearts. ' - the Glorious Church PP 10-12

III. God needs to end this age 

God needs to end this age in order to bring in His kingdom. in Matthew 24 and Luke 17, the Lord likened our age to the days of Noah. this means that we need to learn to live an overcoming life at the end of the age when the days are becoming darker and more evil. also, at the same time, like Noah, we also need to participate in the building work of today's Ark. eventually, we will enter into what we have been building, and what we have built will become our salvation. 

today, there are only two things on earth:

1. the crooked and perverted generation

2. the church as the corporate expression of Christ. 

if we would be the corporate expression of Christ in the church life, we need to be today"s "family of Noah" buildint the corporate Christ as the ark that will deliver us from the crooked and perverted generation and usher us into the coming age of the kingdom of God. we have to be careful whether we are building ourselves up into the Ark, and whether we are encouraging others to enter into this building work also. God wants the church, the ark, where we can be saved from today's evil generation. when this ark is built up, the Lord Jesus will return. the Lord cannot come back without this built ark, no matter how much He desires to come back, because He needs our cooperation to build up the ark.