Weekly Pursuit—Week of June 9, 2024

In 1 Corinthians 9:25 Paul says, “Everyone who contends exercises self-control in all things; they then, that they may receive a corruptible crown, but we, an incorruptible.” Paul exercised self-control in all things for the gospel’s sake in order to run the Christian race. He was not loose. This shows us that he endeavored like an Olympic athlete.

If you are disciplined, coached to contend, you must learn how to exercise self-control in everything—in drinking, in eating, in dressing, in combing your hair, in putting on your tie, and even in your laughing or weeping. I saw some brothers laughing uncontrollably and some sisters weeping without ceasing. We need to learn to exercise self-control in our laughing and weeping.

For sixty-eight years I have been under God’s training and my own self-control. This is what makes it possible for me to open up the Word. In 2 Timothy 2:15 Paul told Timothy that he had to learn to cut the word straight, as in carpentry. We can expound the word of God in a proper way, in a straight way, by having ourselves exercised to do everything accurately.

When I was in Shanghai in 1947, a few of us co-workers were fellowshipping one day about our work. One sister who was a deaconess came to us in an excited way. She said, “Brother Lee, upstairs in the ceiling there is a big hole.” As she was speaking, she gestured with her hands to show me how big the hole was. I asked her, “How big?” She said, “This big!” The gesture with her hands was slightly smaller than before. I asked her again, “How big?” She said, “Like this.” I asked again, “How big?” She said, “About this big.” Each time I asked, the hole she described became smaller and smaller. Eventually, we found out that the hole in the ceiling was actually very small. If we apply this principle to ourselves, we will realize how inaccurate we are.

I was able to compose those thirty items of the character training by my learning. We need to be trained not merely with Bible knowledge. We want to be trained to grow in life. The things of life grow according to regulation. All kinds of fruit are shaped according to the regulation of the life within them. The shaping takes place by the growth of life. Life regulates. We need to be trained to grow in the Lord’s life. Then we will be regulated. Because of the fall, our humanity is unregulated, so there is still the need of some outward training, which we call character training. (Collected Works of Witness Lee, 1993, vol. 2, “The Training and Practice of the Vital Groups”, ch. 4,  pp. 308-309)