Hi everyone!

Greetings from Oak Glen! This is overdue, but we have recently crossed the quarter mark, and man, it truly is a privilege to be here. I’m starting to taste what it really means to “enjoy” the training, and I’m really glad that the Lord has been starting to get a breakthrough in that with me. Before coming here, my prayer has been that the Lord would have a way to give me the training that I need, not the training that I want. Since then, I can testify that He has sovereignly been answering that prayer in almost every aspect of my training experience so far. The schedule, the classes, my gospel team, and so many other things have all functioned to expose my lack, but also the need to Christ through exercising to live by His life. I thank the Lord that my natural energy has really run out, thinking that I can just abide with the training and all its facets in my natural self, and the real training is actually starting for me. I’m learning to live according to the principle of “not I but Christ”, and I eagerly again to see all the riches He has in store for the rest of my time here.

Here are three truth nuggets I’ve recently enjoyed:

The prerequisite for our experience of Christ is that we love Him. In the church life, there is much emphasis on the spirit and while this is well-founded (as it is the means whereby we fellowship and receive God Himself into us), the most important part of our being is actually our heart. Don’t grab your pitchforks at me just yet, as we need to see that the heart is gateway to our being.

Proverbs 4:27 - Keep your heart with all vigilance, / For from it are the issues of life.

All that comes out of our spirit must pass through the heart. While we may be regenerated to have the very life of God in us, it is our heart that governs how much of that zoe life is able to saturate our being for Christ to make His home in us. It is the very switch of life, and our receiving and growing in life depends very much on whether our heart is open. Many times, we may ask why we don’t have the Lord’s leading in certain matters or why we may not love the Lord. This is not a problem with our spirit, it is a problem with our heart. We have to realize that whether God can touch these things in us depends on whether our heart is open. Every genuine experience of the Lord is dependent on our love for Him, and God is very attentive to whether we can exercise our hearts to love Him.

1 Samuel 16:7 - For it is not how man sees that matters; for man looks on the outward appearance, but Jehovah looks on the heart.

2 Corinthians 4:4 - In whom the god of this age has blinded the thoughts of the unbelievers that the illumination of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, might not shine on them.

To be a new testament minister of the new covenant, we have to pay attention to the goal and purpose of our conduct, which is to be governed by the shining of the glory of the gospel of Christ. The gospel that we have is the very embodiment of God of glory, and our preaching should just be our shining forth of this glory. To preach the gospel, all we have to take care of is His shining within us to shine forth to others. It is not a matter of inspiring eloquence that people are attracted to Christ, it is the beaming of this precious treasure that we have within us which will cause others to spontaneously drawn to the Christ that is manifested with glory from us. How do we take care of this shining?

2 Corinthians 4:7 - But we have this treasure in earthen vessels that the excellency of the power may be of God and not out of us.

We have to treasure this treasure within us and this treasure is the very face of Jesus Christ in us indwelling in our spirit. The very God of this universe came to us in the person of Jesus Christ that was processed to become the Spirit in our spirit to illuminate the knowledge of the glory of God to us. This shining is within us constantly, and the more we treasure the fact that this is happening in us, the more our being will be permeated with the shining of the glory of Christ as a gospel to others.

The miraculously normal Christian life is to live a life under the Lord’s appearing. We need to see today that the Lord is appearing us to call us to live before His face. How do we do this if our living is with so many distractions pivoting us to the world? Whether it be school, work, or family occurrences, there are all sorts of things that we might be forced into to be a part of this satanic world; how then can we really live according to this calling? We need to take care of our inward condition, and Paul was a pattern to us in this regard.

Galatians 6:14 - But far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom the world has been crucified to me and I to the world.

This was not a matter of the outward, but rather Paul’s inward condition. Our being in this world is something we cannot change and we have many needs that necessitate us to venture into the world, but what we CAN change is where our heart is. Our heart needs to be capacity of the new covenant: a heart that can be turned to the divine life. Only in this way can we, when in the midst of the world, have experiences where we aren’t in the hands of the evil one.

Upon hearing this I was reminded of Daniel, when presented with the king’s choice provision, he had set his heart to not be defiled. The Lord isn’t after spiritual monks that live an isolated life - actually this is even contrary to the rapture presented in Matthew 24. Rather, He is after a people that can, in the midst of their daily lives, have a heart set and directly solely to be the Lord in every situation, even if it is an activity of the world. Only through this can He gain a people that are in the world, but not of the world. A person who lives Christ by loving the Lord and beholding Him as they live their normal lives is such a person living the way of the Christian life.

Thanks for tuning in! Hopefully I will be more prepared and timely for my next update haha. Until next time :)

Daniel Fan