My Testimony

[aron]

Originally Posted by Freedom

You may have noticed that my screen name is “Freedom”. I chose that name because in coming here, I want to free myself from anything that is keeping me from the Lord. Unfortunately this has just been the system of the LC itself. Though I am still in the LC, I look forward to the freedom that I will eventually realize.

Remember that Christ bought your freedom on the cross. It is yours. It is a gift from the Father of us all. He loved us and sent His Son. Now we are free. The worst thing you could do is struggle to leave the LCs. Just realize that you are free and one day you will see the open door the Father has placed for you. Don't try to create your own door. Trust the Father.

The only practical advice I would give is that "Christianity", long the shibboleth of the LCs (shibboleth = foil, or "other") actually offers much blessing for the seeking believer. The LC mantra was that all blessing had been extracted by the "ministry", so that Living Streamers could simultaneously claim a "rich heritage" from Christianity yet avoid it, calling it deformed, degraded, and so forth.

But let me recast the idea: the great East-West schism occurred in 1054. The Roman Catholic Church subsequently lost much of its heritage. Then the Reformation occurred 500 years later, and the Protestants lost more of their heritage. When John Calvin et al came back to the text, now shorn of much interpretive power, they had little more than their own logic. And with that they fashioned a theology and went on.

My point is that there is a lot of revelatory source material out there. It begins in the first centuries after the apostles, and lies in plain sight, but it today (I write as a 21st century Protestant Evangelical) it's largely forgotten or ignored. The Bible has revelation beyond our feeble capacities, and certainly beyond Nee and Lee's interpretive power. They were trying to build and establish a "church", so you got "Christ and the Church in the Psalms" and so forth. You got the interpretation they wanted at the time to keep their flock in line.

Today, when I look at their writings I believe that they barely even skimmed the surface. If you display some curiosity regarding your Christian heritage God will take you deeper than you could have dreamed. God will take you into His own dream, focused on a person, Jesus Christ the Nazarene, displayed in the words of scripture in more breadth and depth and power (i.e. 'reality') than Nee and Lee could ever have managed (admittedly they were busy with other things).

My point is that if you seek you will find. "You will seek Me, and find Me/if you search for Me with all your heart." Don't try to leave the LCs, and don't think that you must reinvent the wheel. Look where that approach got Watchman Nee! No, but rather seek the God's Christ and the Spirit will lead you where It wills. The text will subsequently open to you, and speak to you, with you, in you, and through you, and you'll be satisfied, because you'll be approaching God's satisfaction and delight, which is none other than His Beloved Son.

Let me put it this way. As you approach the Son, you simultaneously approach the Father's throne, because the Son is there. He is variously portrayed seated at the right hand, standing by the throne, and working in front of the throne, among the flock.

Believe me that as your awareness begins to awaken of God's Obedient Son there at the Father's throne, you won't be concerned with dry recitals of HWMR. You'll be occupied with more interesting things (all of which doesn't assume your own obedience and approval, but who can obey, lest they first see and hear, and believe[Rom.10:14]?).

I leave you with a spiritual view of freedom.

"I run in the pathways of your command/for you have set my heart free."

[aron]

Originally Posted by aron

The Bible has revelation ... beyond Nee and Lee's interpretive power. ...You got the interpretation they wanted at the time to keep their flock in line.

This is why if you go to a "Crystallization training on Isaiah" today, for example, you will get repeated, vague warnings about not being "one" or "under the ministry", about being "rebellious" and "leprous" and so forth.

I regularly attended the bi-annual LSM trainings. ... I began to hear the constant innuendos put forth about “negative” writings on the internet, “rebellions”, and so on. What really struck me about it is that here I was attending a training to hear the word of God, and instead they often would diverge into making these very broad statements about “rebellious ones” or “negative writings”, all of which was supposedly irrelevant to me. I could never see why they brought up such things in the first place.

It may have little or nothing to do with the text at hand, at least beyond some general point at the surface. But they are stuck there because their situation (unending schism, need for power and control, etc) keeps them in that interpretive slot. The freedom to explore the Word and find out what God really wants to say has been curtailed. The message (i.e. their conception of current need) has been imposed on the text, rather than the text guiding the message.

Another interesting thing: I don't know what it's like today but when I was still in the LCs I remember looking at the HWMR outlines and noticing how much the imperative was stressed. Look for phrases like "We need to" or "We must" or "We should" or "We have to". What God has done in Christ Jesus is largely ignored, and a host of man-made requirements have been placed on the seeking one. All of which is to keep you occupied, and busy, and your attention focused on their task at hand. And the vision of Christ loses its unfolding dynamism, and becomes static, and recedes. Local Church "orthodoxy" has subsumed revelation.

[Freedom]

Originally Posted by aron

Remember that Christ bought your freedom on the cross. It is yours. It is a gift from the Father of us all. He loved us and sent His Son. Now we are free. The worst thing you could do is struggle to leave the LCs. Just realize that you are free and one day you will see the open door the Father has placed for you. Don't try to create your own door. Trust the Father.

Thank you for your response. I am just glad that I was able to finally come and post my testimony. I realize that on my part some decisions are required. As for the path ahead of me, I trust that God will open the door and show me the way.

[Elden1971]

Originally Posted by Freedom

Thank you for your response. I am just glad that I was able to finally come and post my testimony. I realize that on my part some decisions are required. As for the path ahead of me, I trust that God will open the door and show me the way.

Dear Brother,
Christ IS the WAY. The Holy Spirit will always lead you to Christ and Christ will always lead you to the Father. Whom the Son sets free is free indeed. You are free to worship in spirit and in reality. Take time to be intimate with the Lord. He chose you, He bought you with a price, you are not your own, you are complete in Him and NOTHING can separate you from the Love of God in Christ Jesus. He will finish the work which he has begun and He will build His Church.
Please feel free to contact me for personal fellowship.