Another look at Watchman Nee and his sayings.

I hope you are enjoying being introduced to Watchman Nee or reintroduced to his writings. Looking back to the writings of those that have gone on before us can help us to see the reality of what Christ has done in a different light. 

Just as we may not remember all we ate last week we are still drawing strength from it, I pray you will draw strength from these quotes.

• Take this as the secret of Christ’s life in you: His Spirit dwells in your innermost spirit. Meditate on it, believe in it, and remember it until this glorious truth produces within you a holy fear and wonderment that the Holy Spirit indeed abides in you.

• Human nerves are rather sensitive and are easily stirred by outside stimuli. Words, manners, environments, and feelings greatly affect us. Our mind engages in so many thoughts, plans, and imaginations that it is a world of confusion. If we are favorably inclined to yield to the Lord, to take up His yoke, and to follow Him, our soul shall not be aroused inordinately.

• Faith looks not at what happens to him but at Him Whom he believes.

• God gives His Own Self totally to us that we may offer ourselves completely to Him.

• Naturally there are many reasons for not possessing greater faith, but the gravest of these is probably an evil conscience. A good conscience is inseparable from a great faith.

• We should not open our mouths too hastily upon approaching God. On the contrary, we first must ask God to show us what and how to pray before we make our request known to Him. Have we not consumed a great deal of time in the past asking for what we wanted? Why not now ask for what God wants?

• When one tries to increase his knowledge by doing mental gymnastics over books without waiting upon God and looking to the guidance of the Holy Spirit, his soul is plainly in full swing. This will deplete his spiritual life. Because the fall of man was occasioned by seeking knowledge, God uses the foolishness of the cross to “destroy the wisdom of the wise.

• How true it is that without guidance of the Holy Spirit intellect not only is undependable, but also extremely dangerous, because it often confuses the issue of right and wrong.

• Our old history ends with the Cross; our new history begins with the resurrection. 

• “The Spirit is both a builder and a dweller. He cannot dwell where he has not built; He builds to dwell and dwells in only what he has built.”
  

• Outside of Christ, I am only a sinner, but in Christ, I am saved. Outside of Christ, I am empty; in Christ, I am full. Outside of Christ, I am weak; in Christ, I am strong. Outside of Christ, I cannot; in Christ, I am more than able. Outside of Christ, I have been defeated; in Christ, I am already victorious. How meaningful are the words, “in Christ.”

• “Lord, I am willing to break MY heart that I might satisfy THY heart.” 

• It does not matter what your personal deficiency, or whether it be a hundred and one different things, God has always one sufficient answer, His Son Jesus Christ, and he is the answer to every need.

• God is not seeking a display of my Christ-likeness , but a manifestation of His Christ.

• Negligence in prayer withers the inner man. Nothing can be a substitute for it, not even Christian work. Many are so preoccupied with work that they allow little time for prayer…Prayer enables us first inwardly to overcome the enemy and then outwardly to deal with him.

• The Blood deals with what we have done, whereas the Cross deals with what we are. The Blood disposes of our sins, while the Cross strikes at the root of our capacity for sin.

• I want nothing for myself; I want everything for the Lord.

• Good is not always God’s will, but God’s will is always good.

• All knowledge is the outgrowth of obedience; everything else is just information.

• Today, even amongst Christians, there can be found much of that spirit that wants to give as little as possible to the Lord, and yet to get as much as possible from Him. The prevailing thought today is of being used, as though that were the one thing that mattered. That my little rubber band should be stretched to the very limit seems all important. But this is not the Lord’s mind. The Lord wants us to be used, yes; but what He is after is that we pour all we have, ourselves, to Him, and if that be all, that is enough.

• Living in the Spirit means that I trust the Holy Spirit to do in me what I cannot do myself. This is completely different from the life I would naturally live myself. Each time I am faced with a new demand from the Lord, I look to Him to do in me what He requires of me. It is not a case of trying but of trusting; not of struggling but of resting in him.

• Man’s thought is always of the punishment that will come to him if he sins, but God’s thought is always of the glory man will miss if he sins. The result of sin is that we forfeit God’s glory: the result of redemption is that we are qualified again for glory. God’s purpose in redemption is glory, glory, glory.

• The right attitude is this: that I have my own will yet I will the will of God.

• Death is our emancipation.

• “If we throw ourselves open to God, He will reveal. The trouble comes when we have closed areas, locked and barred places in our hearts, where we think, with pride, that we are right.”
  

ACTION STEP: ​Sometimes it helps for us to look back so we can see ahead. Those that paid the price for revelation paid greatly that we might learn. As I read and share these writings with you I pray they strengthen you from the inside out.