God’s Economy: recovered by Witness Lee, enjoyed by local churches

The Experience of God’s Economy

The Continued Experience of God’s Dispensing: Breathing, Drinking, and Eating Christ

Breathing Christ The believers’ experience of God’s dispensing can be likened to breathing, as John relates in his Gospel. On the evening of His resurrection, the Lord came to the room where His disciples were gathered. Although all the doors were shut, Jesus appeared and stood in their midst (20:19). After greeting them and showing them His pierced hands and side, He did something very peculiar: “He breathed into them and said to them, Receive the Holy Spirit” (v. 22b). Christ’s breathing into His disciples that evening was His initial dispensing into His Body. Christ today, as the Spirit in resurrection, continues to be the living air for us to breathe. Just as we cannot live the physical life without breathing air, neither can we live the Christian life without breathing the resurrected Christ. Day by day we need to breathe in Christ as the living air to sustain and refresh our inner being.

If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink.
(John 7:37b)

Drinking Christ The Bible also compares our experience of the divine dispensing to drinking. In John 4, the Lord Jesus promises that whoever drinks of the water that He gives will never thirst again, for the water that He gives becomes in the believer a fountain of water gushing up into eternal life (v. 14). In addition, in John 7:37 the Lord Jesus “cried out, saying, If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink.” Furthermore, in the epistles we are told that all the believers in Christ were given to drink one Spirit (1 Corinthians 12:13).

Eating Christ Christ is not only our living water; He is also the bread of life to us. In John 6, Jesus fed a great multitude with only five loaves and two fish. Shortly afterwards, He explained that He Himself is the true bread to satisfy man’s real hunger:

I am the bread of life; he who comes to Me shall by no means hunger, and he who believes into Me shall by no means ever thirst.

He who eats Me, he also shall live because of Me (vv. 35, 57).

God does not want us to do many things for Him.
He wants us simply to enjoy Him.

In His economy, God does not want us to do many things for Him. He wants us simply to enjoy Him. Yet most Christians are influenced by the mistaken concept that they need to work for God and serve God in order to please Him. Nevertheless, in all their work and service for God, there may not be much enjoyment of God’s dispensing. If we are to remain in the center of God’s economy, all of our service for God must be the issue of our enjoyment of Christ dispensed into us as our breath, drink, and food.

Regeneration | Breathing, Drinking, Eating
Our Human Spirit | Growth and Transformation