From the moment I started pulling out my MacBook and rolling up my sleeves in that coffee shop, I knew one thing was real: I fell in love with you. A love so deep I gave you my all—from my mind and body to my spirit and soul.

As a 1st-year trainee deeply in love with you, I never saw the end of these updates. I only saw myself writing the next one.

And so I wrote. I took every bit and ran with it, and I ran after every loose photo opportunity for you. You asked for my hustle, I gave you my heart. I wrote through the sweat and hurt. I did everything for you because you made me feel alive.

You gave a Philly/Hong Kong S&R church kid his FTTA email updates dream and I’ll always love you for it. But I can’t love you obsessively for much longer. This year is all I have left to give. My soul can take the pounding, my body can handle the grind, but my spirit knows it’s time to say goodbye.

And that’s okay. I’m ready to let you go. I want you to know now so we both can savor every moment we have left together. The good and the bad. We have given each other all that we have.

And we both know, no matter what I do next, I’ll always be that trainee with the rolled-up sleeves, MacBook and coffee on the table, 5 seconds on the clock, hands on the keyboard, and cursor on the “send” button. 5… 4… 3… 2… 1…

Love you always,

PNG

New Jerusalem

“And I saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband” (Rev. 21:2)

The conclusion of the Bible is not that we will go to a physical place (heaven) and live in a heavenly “mansion” (John 14:2, KJV) for eternity, but that we are becoming the New Jerusalem—a heavenly, spiritual, and divine sign, which is a fitting ending to a book with such great spiritual significance.

The Lord has been merciful to show us what He has intended for us to become, and this should be the goal and destination of our Christian life. Today, as the Lord grants us a spirit of wisdom and revelation (Eph. 1:17), we need to see this last great sign in the Bible for what it really is, so that we would not be passive regarding spiritual things, but would live out to become and work out to build the New Jerusalem.

This is the ultimate consummation, not only of the entire divine revelation in the Holy Scriptures, but also of every positive thing (including our lives) and of the eternal purpose of the Triune God to mingle Himself with the redeemed, regenerated, and transformed tripartite man. Once we see the New Jerusalem, we have the answer to all our questions today.

Video—2103 Gone but Not Forgotten

Final Thoughts

Second Year

Term 3 has been going well! I sit in the fourth row in main class now (super close to the speaker) and I’m really enjoying the view. Second year classes are also living up to the hype, and I cannot wait to be brought further by the Lord into the intrinsic significance and deeper experience of the truth this term.

Nuggets

• We are a new creation in Christ—our past does not define us!

• Our goal in praying and confessing is just to spend more time with the Lord

• God’s eternal love is not only a love in affection, but a love in life

  • Love draws us, but life transforms us

• The basic qualification for us to speak for the Lord is to love Him with our whole being

  • How would we describe the Christ we know?

• As Eve was from Adam, so the church is from Christ

• God’s economy—dispensing, mingling, expression—is waiting for us to fulfill

Hymn—“I Thank Thee, Lord“

“I take Thee, Lord, to be my all.
Since all Thou art is mine;
I nothing have, and nothing am;
That nothing, Lord, is Thine.
Thou shalt be everything to me
In all things my sufficiency.”

1

“Dear Substack”—a retirement letter and tribute to Kobe Bryant (#24)’s “Dear Basketball”

Another 20 weeks, another rewind…

In many trainees’ experience, term 2 is the term of crucifixion, where many inward dealings begin to take place. In fact, the four terms of the Training are often likened to the processes of incarnation, crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension. Undoubtedly, for me, term 1 was an incarnation, as I felt like a born-again Christian relearning the significance of my faith (Term 1 Recap). But has term 2 really been a crucifixion to me?

Video—Mason Taking The Blood

In many ways, this term has actually been “the greatest.” Term 2 saw me receiving a taste of the greatest blessing from the Lord—transformation—through my new habits of prophesying (update 14) and praying (update 17).

This term, I also saw more of the greatest miracle—our regeneration (update 16), the greatest commandment—to love one another (update 18), and the greatest vision—the high peak of the divine revelation (update 20)—and our experience of it (update 21).

Finally, despite going through the greatest suffering in the final weeks, it was not in vain because I allowed Christ to be everything to me (update 15) by daily turning to Him, receiving the Spirit (update 19), and walking by the Spirit (update 22). By faith, term 2 has brought me closer to my marvelous and greatest eternal destiny—reigning in life with Christ in the New Jerusalem.

That said, there is no better way to rewind than to look back at “the greatest” highlights, or the top 10 defining moments of my second term at FTTA:

#1—Pinky Prophecy

2/21 (Pre-Training)

Coming into term 2, I had a strong desire to “get the most out of the Training” as I faced the uncertainty of whether I would be returning after the term. Combined with the realization that I had barely prophesied last term, I swiftly made a pact with my companion (again) to speak at least once every week this term. The result? (see pics below)

As expected, this journey was full of ups and downs. Sometimes, I had so much enjoyment, especially after preparing and serving as a PSRP facilitator (so crazy), that it was difficult not to share it in class. But at other times, it felt like I had to force myself to share (to keep the pact) after struggling to find the motivation to stand up, partly due to fatigue, but mainly because I was unclear about the purpose of prophesying.

So why do we prophesy? On the one hand, it is to speak for and speak forth God. On the other hand, it is to be constituted with the truth and with the utterances of the ministry.

Sometimes, we may feel that our speaking is empty because we have no experience to back it up. But this term, I gradually learned not to be discouraged by the fact that our knowledge often surpasses our experience, because we must first know the truth before we can experience it. If we simply remain faithful to obey the leading of the Spirit to speak, we will be further constituted with the truth, Christ will be released and dispensed into others, and the Body will be built up.

“Whenever you come together, each one has a psalm, has a teaching, has a revelation, has a tongue, has an interpretation. Let all things be done for building up” (1 Cor. 14:26)

#2—Bus Drivers

3/3 (Week 3)

On the side of campus shepherding work, there has also been a drastic change for me. I no longer had a 4th-term gospel partner (GP) to ride along with; instead, I became a co-bus driver with my new 1st-term GP, Max. This meant that a lot more preparation had to be done ahead of our appointments at USC, and I often found myself focused on preparing “good” Bible studies by compiling many points and learnings for the students. So although our first appointment was nerve-racking (we actually had three appointments that day), the preparation carried us through, and we continued with this approach for the rest of the semester.

Outwardly, our times appeared to be fruitful, and the students continued to meet with us for more appointments. However, their growth in life had actually been minimal or even stagnant. In retrospect, I realized that I needed to take better care of my abiding in Christ, because shepherding is not merely a matter of teaching, but of an overflow of life.

Going forward, rather than focusing so much on the doctrinal facts in our preparation, we should simply abide in Christ, who is life, so that life will flow into us, through us, and out of us into those whom we are contacting and shepherding.

#3—My Heart

3/25 (Week 6)

In 2103 (my house), a new romance was formed, and this relationship was publicly declared in the week 4 publication of PNG’s FTTA Updates (update 15), in which the loving pair was introduced with the hymn lyric, “I am His, and He is mine.” Two weeks later, this very lyric was sung repeatedly in class, and stanza after stanza, Carlos and I, along with other faithful readers of the updates, gazed, giggled, and smiled back and forth, treasuring the loving bond that had been built between the roommates…

It takes great power for our heart to be fully possessed. Even the whole world with all its wealth can never fill our small heart (Hymn #1025). This is why the four-fold power in Ephesians 1 is needed for Christ to make His home in our heart, so that we would be full of strength to apprehend with all the saints the vast dimensions of Christ, know the knowledge-surpassing love of Christ, and be filled unto all the fullness of God (Eph. 3:16-19). So as Carlos departs from FTTA, Christ is making His home more in my heart, to which I can only say, “Amen.”

#4—Bad Haircut

Weeks 6-10

Back in week 6, I suffered my first major dealing of the term when my hair was fatally “mega-faded” by a barber, rather than “mid-faded.” Immediately after the incident, I consulted many brothers, who thankfully persuaded me against my original idea of opting for a buzz cut, instead advising me to flip my hair to the other side to cover the “mega-fade.”

This experience was the Lord’s further breaking of my outer man and self-confidence, which actually made it easier for me to stand and prophesy because I started caring less about saving my face. As they say, the Lord knows the Training we need, not the Training we want.

#5—Sunshine State

4/13 (Week 9)

Three weeks later, there was an opportunity to present for the Florida gospel trip, so:

Original Script (mistakenly not followed):

“It is pleasant for the eyes to see the sun” (Ecc. 11:7b)

“So now, we move on to the “sunshine state” of Florida, which is the third most populous state in the US and home to two of the largest universities—UCF (Orlando) and UF (Gainesville)—each having around 70,000 students. Relatively speaking, given the population of the state and schools, the Lord’s testimony has not been adequately represented in Florida.

In the last several years, there have been GTCA efforts in several cities to enlarge this testimony (Fort Myers ‘14-15, Orlando ‘18-22), and as a result, Florida has seen significant migration and growth. For instance, the church in Orlando saw an increase from around 50 saints in 2020 to around 200 saints today.

When we visited Florida for our gospel trip, we were not only impressed by the number of saints who migrated there, but also how burdened they were for the gospel, as well as how they formed many vital groups in their communities. In the homes, they are shepherding students in an atmosphere of love and ushering the local saints into their function to live a normal Christian life. Praise the Lord for the migration work in Florida and for His raising up of the many vital groups there!”

Audios—Bloopers from the Presentation:

#6—Push It Out

5/7 (Week 12)

And then, the perfecting came.

As usual, I prepared for God’s Economy class by doing the reading, composing a prophecy, and practicing speaking it the day before. So coming into the class, despite the fact that Brother CB was the speaker and that only 12 trainees (out of 220 total) could share, I stood up feeling well-prepared.

And as usual, despite having memorized and rehearsed my prophecy 8+ times (as recommended), when my turn came, nervousness took over and my mind went blank, which prompted me to glance down at my notes as I spoke. This was out of fear that I would forget my points or the proper utterances, similar to what happened when I gave the Florida presentation without my laptop.

Toward the end, I caught a grin from Brother CB, and as I suspected, he added a response after my speaking:

Audio—Bro. CB’s Response:

I had forgotten the Spirit in my speaking. I had to put my laptop down and speak again. I had one minute to prepare a completely different prophecy on the spot, one that allowed the Spirit to come forth through me.

Then, I spoke again, this time with much more spirit. But Brother CB had some more perfecting for me, urging me to “push out” my spirit even more:

Audio—Bro. CB’s Perfecting:

He was right. Our speaking is much more life-giving when we include the Spirit.

Our human spirit is like the pilot light of a gas stove, which is a small flame that never goes out. This is the gift of God that we need to fan into flame (2 Tim. 1:6), and the easiest way to fan our spirit into flame is simply to exercise and force ourselves to open our mouth. Then, the Spirit can take the lead and spread from our spirit into our mind, emotion, and will, causing them to become sober, loving, and strong. Praise the Lord that we can exercise to choose the Spirit!

“For God has not given us a spirit of cowardice, but of power and of love and of sobermindedness” (2 Tim. 1:7)

#7—Paper Cuts

6/7 (Week 16)

If there is one word to describe my term, it would obviously be “greatest” (joking); but actually, as I touched upon in the previous points, it would be “desperate,” which was also a main theme of the fellowship we received at the 2nd-term brothers dinner (pictured in update 22).

Our time at the Training is something that we can never have again, but we still need to become more desperate to redeem our time and get into the word, because the logos (God’s written word) is what allows us to have the rhema (God’s instant speaking). Practically, we can read the Bible at three speeds—speed-reading, chapter by chapter, and pray-reading through the verses—to be constituted with the word and have the Lord’s speaking to us again personally.

But how can we develop this desperation? It is by daily strengthening our initial consecration. Therefore, every day, we should renew our consecration by opening our entire being to the Lord again, asking Him to gain more of our heart, save us from our casualness and indifference (or our tendency to complain about the “paper cuts” of FTTA), and bring forth the proper desperation in us.

#8—Angelenos

6/12 (Week 17)

Back in week 10, I was walking back to the parking lot after a Lord’s Day meeting, lost in my thoughts, when I was suddenly stopped in my tracks—a gospel tract was handed to me, and I was asked to hand it to a bystander. This moment signaled the beginning of it all…

Toward the end of the semester at USC, we had many more opportunities to contact people, whether through gospel preaching or by handing out Bibles, which ultimately consummated in the Bible distribution at the LA World Cup Fan Fest.

This transition from shepherding students in appointments to going out for the gospel was a big struggle for me initially. But after realizing that without contacting people, there is no way to minister Christ, I had to learn to stand against my natural disposition, enlarge my capacity, and even learn to love contacting people. In the end, as long as we take care of the indwelling Christ and the divine life, this overflowing life will be expressed as love and will spontaneously issue in our contacting people.

“God desires all men to be saved and to come to the full knowledge of the truth” (1 Tim. 2:4)

#9—The Revelation

Weeks 11-19

“That their hearts may be comforted, … unto the full knowledge of the mystery of God” (Col. 2:2)

For weeks, creation eagerly awaited the revelation. At last, the great mystery hidden in God throughout the ages was unveiled and made known.

Videos—Broooodee! (Tomi, pick a pitch bro)

Despite the groanings (to the Lord), it was not pretty at the end. But, Christ was experienced and gained, God’s life was dispensed, and eternal memorials were formed, and that’s what really matters.2

Hymn—“God’s Only Goal in Time“

“Jeeeesus! Call His name today!
Jeeeesus! Call Him day by day!
Jeeeesus! In His name we pray!
God’s life dispensed,
Now I’m convinced,
Lord, You’re God’s goal and way!”

#10—A Believer

Weeks 19-20

Coming out of a prolonged period (weeks 17-19) of darkness and restless nights, I had a decision to make: either to dwell in my self after the ultimate dealing of the term and call it quits in the final week, or to open myself completely to the Lord’s direct, piercing word at the Semiannual Training. Well, welcome to the aftermath of the revelation…

"On the one hand, heirs of God; on the other, joint heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him that we may also be glorified with Him” (Rom. 8:17)

As believers and children of God, we can and should grow to become sons and heirs of God. This further growth, which goes beyond our initial relationship with God, requires that we grow in life daily and normally. For the divine life to spread and grow faster within us, we need to give Christ the way all the time. As such, we need the shining of God’s light as His coming of mercies (Luke 1:78-79) to remove the obstacles within us that hinder His life.

At the end of term 2, the Lord visited me in this way to expose my biggest obstacles. In particular, He used a situation to show me that I had been obsessed and self-deceived, even at times feeding my self-confidence, which had hindered life from growing in me. I needed to be saved further from these things by living under the shining of the divine light, which is in God’s word and in the sense of life in my spirit.

Many of us can testify that the human life is a life of suffering, and all of us are currently facing something. But how should we respond to trials and tribulations?

First, we should see that these situations and environments are what God has assigned to us for the divine life to grow and mature within us. If we realize this, when things do not go our way, we will not murmur, complain, or question the Lord. Rather, we will open ourselves to His dispensing and take the Spirit in us to cooperate with this killing work, because “no death, no life.”

Suffering is an incarnation of grace, but this does not mean that we should pray for more suffering, because the Lord will apportion whatever suffering we need. When we “suffer with Him” (Rom. 8:17) in this way in “all things” (Rom. 8:28), our suffering will not be in vain, and it will issue in our growing in life unto maturity to become full sons and heirs of God.

And so, as I reflect on my two-week period of suffering, the hidden God (Isa. 45:15) who was apparently absent in caring for me was actually very active, operating silently yet mightily within me to remove more hindrances to His life. During this time, He not only stripped me of my confidence in my self, but also caused me to pray persistently and utterly depend on Him. Though outwardly unpleasant, this experience showed me that I truly needed Him and could not go on without Him.

Hopefully, this will issue in more contact with the Triune God going forward so that I can continue to experience the linking faith that joins me to the unsearchable riches of Christ, enabling me to live by Him and in a life union with Him day by day. And thankfully, I chose to open myself to the Lord’s shining and speaking at Semi, because through it, He gave me the full revelation and a deeper appreciation of what it truly means to be a believer today.

My Next Chapter

After some wrestling with the Lord throughout the term, He has made it abundantly clear that I should return for my second year of the Training. Hallelujah!

Honestly, my first year at FTTA has been the greatest year of my life, and while term 2 was indeed a term of crucifixion, the Training as a whole has been everything I needed, everything I wanted, and so much more.

The Lord still has much to gain in me, but as I enter term 3, these are three main matters that I will seek to build on and continue praying for:

1. My Christian Identity

   1. For Him to expose the vanity in the things that I still find my identity in, so that I can be turned to having Christ alone as my identity

2. My Inward Reality and Experience

   1. For Him to make the truth more real to me by making me an open vessel who constantly chooses God’s perfect will, remaining open to His drawing and “motioning toward” Him by pursuing Him daily

3. My Vision of the Divine-Human Incorporation

   1. For Him to show me more angles of God’s economy and increase my consciousness and sense of God, changing the way I see the world, my life, and how I conduct myself as I carry my King (S.O.S. 3:9) and become a place of His rest (Isa. 66:1) by loving Him (John 6:56) and eating Him (John 14:23)

Final Thoughts

To Me, For You

Thank you for your continual support in reading my email updates!

These updates (#23 being “The Greatest,” get it?) have been really enjoyable to write because they serve both as a way for me to look back on the Christ that I have gained and also as a channel for me to (attempt to) supply you all with more life and truth.

However, as I head into year 2 with more responsibilities, I am considering adjusting the length and focus of these updates so that I can continue writing at a similar pace. Please let me know what you would prefer the focus to be, as your feedback is very important to me! (use anonymous poll below)

Video—Goodbye, Imani 🙏

Nuggets

• Even with two years in the Training, we only get to know how much we don’t know

• Religion is worshipping God without any enjoyment of Christ, and neither God or man can be satisfied

• “Lord, make us the “immediately” disciples who respond to Your call”

• “We may be the only Bible someone reads in their life”—2nd-term sis

• Mingle the word with prayer for it to become spirit and life

  • Enlightenment rests on the mercy of God

• Our divine and mystical birth certificate is a double spirit—the Spirit with our spirit

• Every Christian has been assigned a special journey that he has to take himself

• The Christian life is a process of resurrection

  • “Lord, I need today’s measure of resurrection life”

• It’s a miraculous normality to be an overcomer (WL)

• Love is what motivates us to die

Hymn—“Lord, How Long?“

“Lord, how long, dear Bridegroom,
’Til You come, Lord, how soon?
Don’t delay for that coming day.
Grant me, Lord, to be filled
With You, Lord, every day.
Dearest Lord, take me all the way.”

Audio—FTTA Graduates (& me lol)

2

Hymn—“There is a Great Mystery“

“There is a great mystery,
A wonderful story;
For ages ’twas hidden,
Now shown in His wisdom;
’Tis a divine romance
Of God and man in time;
Beyond understanding,
Yet seen in God’s speaking.”

“Lord, thank you for the revelation of the great and hidden mystery, which was a fun chapter in this wonderful story that I will forever be grateful for.”

Audio—6/24 @2103

“God fell in love with man; for only God’s love can make man just the same as He in life and in nature. We are His expression, His bride, His enlargement; forever, together, we’re living inseparably as one couple eternally.”

With love,
Paul 🙂

“God said, Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them have dominion over all the earth” (Gen. 1:26)

Did you know that we were made to be kings? Let’s take a quick tour of the Bible!

In the beginning, we see that God’s purpose is to produce a corporate man who expresses His image and exercises His dominion (Gen. 1:26), and man can carry out this purpose only by partaking of Christ as the tree of life (Gen. 2:9). As such, we are all “triple-E majors” today—those who eat the tree of life, express God’s image, and exercise God’s dominion.

However, because man sinned and fell short of the glory of God (Rom. 3:23), man began to express Satan instead of God, thus nullifying God’s purpose temporarily. To restore man to His original purpose, God has come to carry out His complete salvation—not only His judicial redemption through Christ’s death according to God’s righteousness, but also His organic salvation through the life of Christ (Rom. 5:10)—so that man can express God and reign in life.

“The Lord God will shine upon them; and they will reign forever and ever” (Rev. 22:5b)

Whether we know it or not, God has destined us to reign forever and ever with Him. Because we have been regenerated1 with His divine, spiritual, heavenly, kingly, and royal life, no failure of ours can nullify this marvelous eternal destiny—we are becoming God’s co-kings!

But this is not some abstract or distant thing for us in the millennial kingdom, because God desires us to live a kingly, reigning life today. For this, He is leading us through the processes of His organic salvation, which include regeneration (John 1:12-13, 3:5-6), sanctification (Rom. 6:19), renewing, transformation (Rom. 12:2), conformation, and glorification (Rom. 8:29-30) to make us kings to reign in life. As we continue to grow in His life, having the Triune God as life increase within us, we subjectively experience what it means to reign in life.

1—Righteousness & Grace

“Grace might reign through righteousness unto eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Rom. 5:21b)

“Those who receive the abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the One, Jesus Christ” (Rom. 5:17b)

You might be wondering, “How can we go from being sinners to reigning in life?” Well, it is through grace, which we can receive by first receiving the gift of righteousness (Rom. 5:21). God’s righteousness not only binds Him to forgive us of our sins, but also is the base and means for us to receive grace.

As sinners, we simply need to repent and confess our sins, and He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins (1 John 1:9), enabling us to receive an abundance of the gift of righteousness. Then, in His blood, we can come forward with boldness to the throne of grace (Heb. 4:16) in our spirit, and grace as a river shall flow2. Along with the abundance of the gift of righteousness, we also receive an abundance of grace (Rom. 5:17) to reign in life!

In our experience, there is so much to reign over—primarily Satan, sin, and death—but our reigning in life over these things is actually quite counter-intuitive according to Romans 5. Instead of an outward exercise of authority, it is actually an inward submission to His throne and to His reigning in us, because we can only reign in life when grace reigns in us. This means that God has to first set up His throne in us, and we have to be under the ruling of His divine life.

Out of His inward reigning, we can receive an abundance both of grace and of the gift of righteousness, so that even through death situations, we can still have life and peace within. Then, we can continually receive Him as grace by eating, drinking, and breathing Him, so that God can dispense Himself into us and we can grow in life. As we grow in life, we will mature and reign in life. May the Lord save us much more in His life so that we can be kings to reign in life today and be His co-kings to reign with Him in the next age.

2—God’s Will

“He will eat curds and honey until he knows how to refuse evil and choose good” (Isa. 7:15)

The way we can be strengthened to remain under the ruling of the divine life is to enjoy “curds and honey,” which signify God’s richest grace and sweetest love. As the Lord produces in us a reproduction of Himself, or a God-man who ate curds (butter) and honey to be obedient to the Father in every instance of His human living, we will be able to refuse evil and choose “good,” which is the will of God.

In Ephesians, we see that God’s will is to gain a Body for the enlargement, expansion, and expression of Christ. Today, we need to enjoy this Christ as our everything, specifically as the replacement and reality of all the offerings in Hebrews 103, so that we can practice the Body life seen in Romans 12 to fulfill the will of God for His believers. For us to live the Body life is the goal of our reigning in life.

“I exhort you therefore, brothers, through the compassions of God to present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, well pleasing to God, which is your reasonable service” (Rom. 12:1)

A way to live the Body life is to “present our bodies a living sacrifice” to God, or to offer our time, energy, and strength to attend the meetings of the church and fulfill God’s will. But this can only happen through our seeing of the many compassions of God, especially in His:

• Choosing and loving us

• Sending His Son to die for and justify us

• Transforming and conforming us into His Son’s image

• Making the mystery of His will known to us

So we need to ask the Father to captivate us with His compassions, because when we see this, we cannot help but “present our bodies as a living sacrifice” to fulfill God’s will, and this becomes our “most reasonable service.” Praise the Lord for His compassions toward us, that we can choose God’s will for the sake of the Body.

Hymn—“Just Enjoy the Triune God“

“Merciful compassions of our God,
Rising sun will visit from on high,
Guide our feet, into the way of peace!
Just enjoy the Triune God!”

3—City of Life

What is the Body of Christ? It is the incorporation of the Triune God with the tripartite believers. We know this because 1 Corinthians 12:13 shows us that we have all been baptized [1] into one Body [2] in one Spirit and were given [3] to drink one Spirit. As the members of the Body, we are in one Spirit, and the Spirit is in us.

As God continues to carry out His organic salvation in us, this incorporation that is first the Body of Christ will consummate in the New Jerusalem, which is a mutual dwelling place of God in man (Rev. 21:3) and man in God (Rev. 21:22).

“He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me and I in him” (John 6:56)

We participate in this mutual abode with God when we eat and drink Him and enjoy the all-sufficient grace of God. Out of this enjoyment, grace will reign “unto eternal life” (Rom. 5:21) and we will reign in life forever and ever. Each time we enjoy Him and allow grace to reign in us, we are one step closer to the consummation of the New Jerusalem.

The New Jerusalem as the incorporation of God with man is the aggregate and totality of the divine life, because God Himself is eternal life (John 14:6, Eph. 4:18). It is a city of life with a jasper-colored appearance (dark green; rich in life), and at its center is the throne of God and of the Lamb, out of which flows the river of water of life (Rev. 22:1).

Today, as we drink of this water, the flowing Triune God4 flows us into eternal life (John 4:14), which is the New Jerusalem. This is the most glorious destination, where we will drink of the river of water of life and feed on the tree of life to shine out5 the glory of the Triune God and reign in life forever and ever. This should be the unique and ultimate goal in our Christian life—that is, to build up and become the New Jerusalem.

“I saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband” (Rev. 21:2)

Final Thoughts

The End or The Beginning?

Was this update written while I studied for the full min final? Maybe, but as final exam season has wrapped up at FTTA and the term is coming to a close, there is a quiet but heart-wrenching sense of departure as the 4th-termers prepare to leave the Training. While this is bittersweet, I am excited for the new beginning of the church life for these graduates, with whom I have built something eternal. To my brothers and sisters in life, let’s continue to run the race together as one!

Nuggets

• “If we came in as a good trainee, it would be tragic if we leave as a better trainee”

• “The meetings are boring because I am blind”—4th-term sis

  • “Lord, I turn my heart to you so that I may see you! (Eph. 1:18)”

• We only reveal something deep within our heart to someone we love

  • God has given us a new mind to know Him, new emotion to love Him, and new will to choose Him

  • “If you’re ever mad at your wife, spend time with your Husband”—4th-term bro

• “We can't see the throne if we are sitting on it”—2nd-term bro

  • Instead of asking self-centered or man-centered questions, ask God-centered questions

• It’s not enough to be “Jesusly human,” but we should learn to be “Jesusly French” (if migrating to France)

• The one Spirit (1 Cor. 12:13) is the most satisfying beverage in the universe

  • “The church life is a messy kitchen, but it’s where the food comes from”—2nd-term sis

• “Lord, save us to the uttermost—use this suffering to work the weight of glory into us”

Hymn—“Come, Lord Jesus“

“As we become the same as Christ
In life, nature, expression, and function,
We are qualified to work with Him
For His Body.

And our prayer is—
“Come, Lord Jesus!”
Lord Jesus, come!””

3

We can enjoy the Lord as the replacement and reality of all the offerings in Hebrews 10:

• Burnt offering—“Lord, live in me again a life absolutely for God and His satisfaction”

• Meal offering—“Lord, I would like to partake in your divinely enriched humanity, that which is so tender, sweet, balanced, and perfect”

• Sin offering—“Lord, operate in me as the law of the Spirit of life to set me free from the law of sin”

• Trespass offering—“Lord, your blood cleanses me of my every sin that I may drink of you as the living water”

• Peace offering—“Lord, you are the peace and fellowship between me and God and between me and the other members of the Body”

• Wave offering—“Lord, I can enjoy you as the ever-living One”

• Heave offering—“Lord, all things are under our feet because you have seated me in the heavens with you and I am in an organic union with you as the ascended and all-transcended Christ”

“Lord, thank you that we can enjoy you as our all in all!”

As discussed in update 20, the vision of the age is defined by the Bible and the apostles’ teaching as its boundaries, and this all-inheriting vision encompasses every major revelation in the Bible and consummates in the highest peak of the divine revelation.

Now, we need to realize that this “diamond in the box” of the Bible can be viewed from different angles:

• On God’s side, the highest peak is God’s economy—God becoming man to make man God through His dispensing of Himself into man

• On man’s side, the highest peak is the Body of Christ—the organism of the Triune God

• Together, these two angles present to us an eternal view of the New Jerusalem—the union, mingling, and incorporation of God with man

Hymn—“God has Called Us for His Purpose“

“Oh, may a clear, controlling vision of
The Lord’s economy direct my heart,
And burn in me until my spirit’s wholly set afire!
With spirit strong and active we’ll press on
To consummate God’s goal—
New Jerusalem, Hallelujah!”

Today, the last major item remaining to be recovered in the complete vision is the Body of Christ. This is the revelation that God showed Paul on the way to Damascus1, and Paul completed the word of God (Col. 1:25) according to this vision of the Body.

“Everyone therefore who hears these words of Mine and does them shall be likened to a prudent man who built his house upon the rock” (Matt. 7:24)

May the Spirit of reality guide us into the reality of what God is showing us! If we truly see this vision, it should affect and change us2, and we can no longer live in a lukewarm way. The spontaneous result of seeing the high peak of the divine revelation is that we would live a God-man life. Vision is not just for revelation’s sake, but should issue in experience.

The Experience

Betrothing Ministry

All spiritual experiences start with love in the heart, and the beginning of our love for the Lord is our seeing a vision of His Person and His living, in which we see His surpassing preciousness, which captivates and captures us wholly.

Love is the bridge that connects vision and experience, and the New Testament ministry is a betrothing ministry3 that stirs us up to love the Lord, making us crazy lovers of Jesus. Love is the shortest route to the Lord (Hymn #477) because, as we love Him more, not only do we think about Him all the time, but since we become what we love, we also begin to experience Christ in His experiences as seen in the Gospels.

In a sense, the high peak of the divine revelation could also be viewed from the angle of the divine romance. As we spend adequate personal time and go through enough experiences with the Lord, while being in a constant and intimate touch with Him, we will begin to learn Christ (Eph. 4:20) and learn what satisfies Him.

Having learned Christ subjectively, we will not be constantly checking if we are living according to the items of the vision, but whether we are living to Him (2 Cor. 5:15). In this way, He shows us how to live a God-man life, and His Person becomes our real controlling vision.

“For your Maker is your Husband; / Jehovah of hosts is His name” (Isa. 54:5a)

God-Man Living (Personal)

In the Gospels, we see that Jesus as the first God-man lived a life in which He did everything in God, with God, and for God. God was in His living, and He was one with God. This is the God-man living, which is the pattern of the life that God desires.

Today, as the Lord is adding Himself to us as the Spirit, we are becoming the same as He is. He is perfecting us to be not good men, but God-men, or those who deny our natural life and live by Him as the divine life. As such, we are not ordinary human beings trying to live the God-man living, but we have been born again with the divine life to be the divine species in the kingdom of God. We are simply the sons of God who are the reproduction, duplication, and continuation of Christ.

As we continue to partake of God’s life and nature to become one with Him, we will spontaneously express Him by living the God-man living that the Lord Himself lived.

Hymn—“Make Me One with You“

“Lord, here I am, I’m enterable.
Saturate me and possess me today.
Gain me, increase more in me,
Make Yourself thus one with me.
Lord, make me You, in life and nature,
Deify me, Lord, and Christify me,
Sonize me even today,
For Your dear Body’s sake”

God-Man Living (Corporate)

On the other hand, our being sanctified to live the God-man living is also a corporate matter, and it should result in producing the Body of Christ. This means that we live and express the Lord both personally and corporately in the church, which is His Body.

As seen in Ephesians, the reality of the Body of Christ is the union and mingling of God with man to live out a corporate God-man (4:4-6, 24), or a universal man that is the same as He is in life and nature.

But, how can we experience this reality of the Body? We have to see that…

“In whom you also are being built together into a dwelling place of God in spirit” (Eph. 2:22)

In Ephesians 2:22, the phrase, “dwelling place of God in spirit,” reveals not only the marvelous fact that [1] God lives in our spirit, but also that [2] God’s dwelling place (or His temple)5, which is the church as the Body of Christ, is in our spirit. This is how the Body divinely and mystically exists in our spirit, and we cannot experience and realize the Body life unless we exercise and live in our spirit.

To be in our spirit is to be in the reality of the universal Body of Christ. Seeing this, we need to remain in our spirit and pray for the Lord to keep us in our spirit all throughout the day. “Lord, keep me in my spirit!”

Walk by the Spirit

As we are living in our spirit, we not only have the presence of the Lord, but we are one spirit with the Lord (1 Cor. 6:17), in the same way that the Lord lived by the Father and was inseparable from Him. When we live by the Spirit, we can walk by the Spirit.

“Walk by the Spirit and you shall by no means fulfill the lust of the flesh” (Gal. 5:16)

“If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit” (Gal. 5:25)

In Galatians 5, Paul uses two Greek words for “walk” to help us better understand what it means to walk by the Spirit:

• 1: περιπατέω or peripateō (5:16)—a common, habitual daily walk

  • Related to our being and the way we live, behave, and conduct ourselves

• 2: στοιχέω or stoicheō (5:25)—a definite, particular, and regulated walk

  • Our walking according to the divine rule with a clear goal and aim

While these two kinds of walks are distinct, they should not be separated because they are both by the Spirit and the second walk depends on the first one. In other words, we need to first build up the habit of daily walking one spirit with the Lord before we can have a definite walk for the Lord’s purpose.

1—Peripateō (common walk)

How can we cultivate such a habit to daily walk by the Spirit? We first need to see that God’s desire is not only for us to be joined to Him as one, but that we would live, walk, and do everything by Him.

Spiritually speaking, we all need to learn how to walk. Although we are not always one spirit with the Lord throughout the day, we can exercise to receive the Spirit by turning to our spirit. For example, before we speak or react to something, we can exercise to pause for a moment and “look up to heaven” (Matt. 14:19). Before we do anything, we can “look up,” turn to our spirit, and check with the Lord who indwells us.

Every day is a new day for us to practice being one spirit with the Lord!

2—Stoicheō (regulated walk)

Having developed a habit of walking by the Spirit in our daily living, we are qualified to enter into the stoicheō walk, or a regulated walk toward God’s goal.

We all have goals in our Christian life. For some, the goal is to enhance their human life, believing that their faith in Christ will make them a better human being and improve their way of living. As such, they walk by their ethics or morality and try to be good, honest, and faithful, instead of walking by the Spirit. This is to live and walk according to their own standards and to care for their own preferences, without having God’s goal in mind.

However, with the stoicheō walk, everything is reversed. Rather than God helping us reach our goals, our human existence and everything we do is to fulfill God’s goal. It is no longer about our preferences or goals, but we are entirely and wholly regulated by the Spirit.

God’s goal is God’s economy, or God’s purpose and desire to dispense Himself into man to make man God in life and nature (update 20). If we truly see this goal, we will see that God created us and regenerated us for this specific purpose, and the goal of God’s economy becomes the goal of our Christian walk. We should not only live for God’s purpose, but also press on toward God’s goal.

Where there is a will, there is a way, and God has provided us a way to reach His goal. The Bible shows us four rules or principles that we should stoicheō walk by to reach God’s goal:

1. By the regulation of the Spirit (Gal. 5:25)

2. By the new creation (Gal. 6:16)

3. Pursuing Christ to gain Him (Phil. 3:16)

4. Practicing the church life (Rom. 12, Eph. 4)

As we are walking on this unique highway towards God’s goal, these principles serve as lanes that govern our walk. If we simply focus on the destination and stay within these lanes, we would not be distracted by anything happening around us, but we would march forward until we reach the goal.

May the Lord continue to strengthen our spirit! When we walk by the spirit, having both the peripateō and the stoicheō walks, we give the Lord the ground to impart more of Himself into us to make us the same as He is in life and nature, and we are brought one step closer to God’s goal—the consummation of the New Jerusalem. Let us continually exercise to turn to our spirit and remain in an intrinsic touch with the Lord, so that we would live and walk by the Spirit to do everything in and with our spirit!

Final Thoughts

Nuggets

• Our enjoying the New Jerusalem today is our qualification to enjoy it in the next age

  • The God-man living is a foretaste of our experience and enjoyment in eternity

• Visionaries are not idealists—they don’t get discouraged by situations

  • Only with vision will we have reality and deliverance

• We need to reject self-confidence and live in the realm of God-dependence

• The weakest meeting is more powerful than the strongest individual Christian

• “My goal is not teaching a good Bible study, but that life would flow”

• God is a listening God

• “Whether we are happy or sad, we can read the Bible”—JO

  • Experience the Lord as joy amidst our sorrow!

  • God’s speaking today comes through the Word and the exercise of our spirit!

Hymn—“Little New Jerusalems“

“God desires that we would be
Little New Jerusalems.
We can live this experientially.
In our being there should be
A throne, a river, and a tree,
A golden street, and a wall for the enemy.

Christ should be enthroned as our King
With no blockage to His flow,
Then our enjoyment and our life supply is He.
As you have received Christ, walk in Him.
Build and fight for protection.
Then as pure gold, like clear glass shining we will be.”

2

Jacob is an example which shows that seeing a vision should affect and change us—after seeing God face-to-face in Genesis 32 and wrestling with Him, Jacob’s walk became different (had a limp), which indicated the beginning of his transformation.

5

“Do you not know that you are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?” (1 Cor. 3:16)

“In whom all the building, being fitted together, is growing into a holy temple in the Lord” (Eph. 2:21)

As they say, we should not leave the Training without seeing the vision. After almost two full terms in the FTTA, I can finally say that I am starting to see something of the vision…

Hymn—”Lord, My Eyes are Seeing”

“Lord, my eyes are seeing,
Lord, my ears are hearing,
All that You’ve been speaking.
My heart’s understanding too”

What we see means everything.

In the Bible, a vision is an extraordinary spiritual scene that God unfolds to the eyes of our heart (Eph. 1:18), and we need this heavenly vision to keep us in the genuine oneness and to give us the boldness to go on in the Christian life. The one vision is the holding factor of the one accord2, enabling us to have one mind, one heart, one will, and one purpose. This vision should also be the standard and basis of our service so that our service would be according to the building ministry of the age3.

“Where there is no vision, the people cast off restraint” (Prov. 29:18a)

On the negative side, if we do not see the vision, we would have no restraint and regulation in our living. Some may serve the Lord according to a partial vision from the Bible, doing things for God with a good heart, but in reality, this is far removed from carrying out what the Lord is after. As such, we need to see the complete vision revealed in the Bible and be governed, restricted, directed, and preserved by it.

The vision that the Lord has given to us is an all-inclusive, all-encompassing, and all-inheriting vision.

The present vision of the age is unveiled in the whole Bible, which is an autobiography of the Triune God that reveals God at the beginning (Gen. 1:1) and the New Jerusalem at the end (Rev. 22:21). In other words, the Bible does not begin with the creation of heaven and earth and end with a heavenly mansion, but it starts with a bachelor God and ends with the eternal mingling of the Triune God with the chosen, redeemed, regenerated, and transformed tripartite man.

When we see this, we would not be focused on receiving material favors from God, but rather on mingling with God by receiving His dispensing. We are not merely instruments used by God, but vessels that are filled with God.

As we trace the vision that God gave to man throughout the ages, we see that God’s vision is progressive, or stage by stage, where the visions of the forefathers were inherited4 by the saints that followed. At the end of the Bible, we have Revelation and the New Jerusalem as the ultimate consummation of all the divine revelations—there is nothing more left to be said or seen. Today, we have full confidence that we are serving under the vision because we have the vision of the New Jerusalem.

As we are living in the age of completion and consummation today, our vision must match this vision—the complete vision that includes the economy of God, the mingling of God and man, the dispensing of the Divine Trinity, the believers’ salvation in Christ, and the New Jerusalem.

The highest peak of the divine revelation given to us is the central revelation of God becoming the flesh (John 1:1, 14), the flesh becoming the life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45), and the life-giving Spirit becoming the sevenfold intensified Spirit (Rev. 1:4; 3:1; 4:5; 5:6) to build up the church (Matt. 16:18) that becomes the Body of Christ (Eph. 4:15-16) and that consummates the New Jerusalem (Rev. 21:2, 9, 22:17, Gen. 2:22, John 19:34).

In short, it is the revelation of the eternal economy of God5—God becoming man and man becoming God:

• God became man through incarnation

• Man becomes God (in life and nature, but not in the Godhead) through regeneration (John 1:12-13, 3:5-6), sanctification (Rom. 6:19), renewing, transformation (Rom. 12:2), conformation, and glorification (Rom. 8:29-30)

This is God’s economy6, or the mystery which throughout the ages has been hidden in God (Eph. 3:9) and hidden in His heart (Job 10:13), but has now been unveiled to us so that we would develop to the uttermost the experiential organic union with the Lord.

To be honest, I was quite perplexed and bewildered when I heard these messages concerning “the vision and ministry of the age.” But after struggling with the Lord for a bit with this matter, I realized that it truly is His mercy that we are not satisfied with what we have seen and still want to see more, especially concerning the New Jerusalem.

This is my takeaway and response—Today, we need to continually connect face-to-face with Him, because the way to live out and work out the New Jerusalem is the enjoyment of God as grace. For the high peak of the divine revelation to not be just a slogan or a mere movement to us, we need a personal, affectionate, private, and spiritual relationship with the Lord to receive God’s dispensing of Himself into us, which is God’s only goal in time. We also need to stay in the Lord’s word so that He can open our minds to understand the Scriptures and receive more revelation, light, and sight to see more of the vision.

We have to be like Paul, who was captured by and obedient to the vision after seeing the wonderful Person who was in an intrinsic oneness and union with all His believers. If we truly see this, we would forsake our past ministry, or past priorities, and join ourselves to the vision and ministry of the age to closely follow God’s consummate and ultimate vision.

The followers of Jesus were the most blessed people because even though they followed the Lord blindly, they eventually also inherited the visions of the previous ages and saw what He saw. Today, we are not following any man or his teachings, but the vision of the age, which is Christ Himself as the centrality and universality of God’s economy.

This is the “diamond in the box” of the Bible—when we experience its contents, the Bible will become our autobiography. May the Lord be merciful to us to show us more of this vision and have it wrought more into our being.

Final Thoughts

Baby-Gods

It is true. As children of God who have received God through our believing into Him and being regenerated, we are becoming God in the way that a son is becoming his father. Day by day, He is sanctifying us to become the same as He is in life, nature, appearance, and even mannerisms, so that we would become His duplication, enlargement, and expression. This is God’s heart’s desire and this is our destiny—we are sons of God, not anything else.

“You are gods, / And all of you are sons of the Most High” (Psa. 82:6)

Nuggets (classes)

• Is God’s economy our stewardship?

• We are speaking sons of the speaking God

  • Without contacting people, there is no way to minister Christ

• “My goal is not to finish this chapter; my goal is the Triune God”

  • We don’t need more teaching, but more dispensing

• Our regeneration is a birth, not a graduation

• The spirit is the only way to substantiate the Spirit

• The spoken word of God is the best wrinkle remover

• The Christian life is an overwhelmingly positive experience

  • Don’t worry about perfection, just worry about praise

• “People change; look at Demas”—WL

• “We are more God today than yesterday”

Hymn—“Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus“

“Turn your eyes upon Jesus,
Look full in His wonderful face,
And the things of earth will grow strangely dim,
In the light of His glory and grace.”

I am a complicated person because I am a tripartite being.

I am a child of God and I have Him in my spirit (2 Tim. 4:22). Yet in my soul I still carry my own thoughts, opinions, ideas, concepts, and natural love, and my body often follows those preferences. Even as a regenerated believer, my soul can still be the most prominent part of my being at times.

“If anyone wants to come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow Me” (Luke 9:23)

However, because I have been crucified with Christ (Gal. 2:20), I need to learn and practice denying my soul-life—not the soul created by God, but the corrupted self that still tries to direct my living. The self is something to improve or retrain; it is something that must be denied.

Where I end, God begins. As the soul-life is being denied, the Lord as the Spirit spreads from my spirit into my soul, uplifting and enlivening its faculties with His resurrection life. When I deny myself, my mind, emotion, and will become proper and spiritual, enabling me to express the Lord through these very faculties. In this way, I become a spiritual man who is able to know and discern the things of God.

Who Are You?2

In the past, we were compelled by sin to do things we did not wish to do. Yet the Lord appeared to us, and through the binding and loosing prayers of the saints (Matt. 18:15-20), we repented and were restored to the fellowship of the church. This is similar to the Lord’s appearing to Paul on the road to Damascus, which caused him to ask, “Who are You, Lord?” (Acts 26:15). Today the Lord may not appear to us in a great light, but He comes to us as the Spirit.

“What woman having ten silver coins, if she loses one silver coin, does not light a lamp and sweep the house and seek carefully until she finds it?” (Luke 15:8)

The Spirit is the woman in Luke 15 who seeks diligently, and we are the Lord’s treasures typified by the lost coin. It was not easy for Him to reach us, for we are such complicated beings, so the Spirit has to carry out a fine work to gain us. Before we were saved, we were under the Spirit’s lighting, sweeping, and seeking. He not only convicted us concerning sin, righteousness, and judgment, but also led us to repentance and to receive Christ as our life supply. The Spirit swept and searched until He found us—what a mercy this is!

“God chose you from the beginning unto salvation in sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth” (2 Thes. 2:13b)

God is a purposeful God, and He will gain what He is after (Isa. 14:27). Before we believed, God had already chosen us in eternity past to be sanctified (1 Pet. 1:2) and made holy (Eph. 1:4). Although His choosing and sanctifying are one action in His eternal view, from our standpoint in time sanctification is carried out by the Spirit in three stages:

1. Sanctification in the Spirit’s seeking—before our repentance

2. Sanctification by the blood of Christ—at the time of the our believing

3. Dispositional sanctification—the full course of our Christian life

God’s full and complete salvation is not only for us to be objectively and positionally separated unto Him, but also for us to be subjectively and dispositionally sanctified so that we may become God’s sons in a full way. This takes place through the continual impartation of God’s holy nature into every part of our being, making us holy as He is holy. The Spirit’s dispositional sanctification makes us a new creation (update 17), brings us on to maturity in life, and leads us further into glory.

“Because those whom He foreknew, He also predestinated to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the Firstborn among many brothers” (Rom. 8:29)

Day by day, we are being transformed in the divine life and conformed to the image of the firstborn Son of God. As we are inwardly filled with the divine life and are metabolically changed by it, we are simultaneously being conformed outwardly to arrive at a full-grown man (Eph. 4:13).

Conformation is not produced by our own effort, but by the operation of the law of the Spirit of life (Heb. 8:10). This organic law is the power of the indestructible life, and it works spontaneously, dispenses the Triune God into our tripartite being, and shapes us into the image of the firstborn Son of God. As we allow the law of the Spirit of life to operate in us, we put to death the practices of the body (Rom. 8:13) and are saved from our our self and its expression.

Through this process, we will eventually reach the highest goal in God’s salvation—to be conformed to the image of Christ, the God-man, who is the union of the processed Triune God with the transformed tripartite man.

Who Are We?3

The proper Christian life is a life of receiving the Spirit—not once or occasionally, but continually and daily.

To work Himself into us, God has given us two great gifts—the Spirit and the Word. However, because the Bible is often used merely as a source of knowledge, and even as a basis for arguments or division, and because the Spirit is often considered “too mysterious” and causes confusion, these two gifts can become, in practice, two tragedies.

We must not forget God’s ultimate intention to work Himself into our being. God is always transmitting and dispensing Himself, and our responsibility is simply to open our being, exercise the two gifts He has given us, and receive a fresh aspect of Christ day by day.

With the Word, rather than focusing on the theological study of Christ’s Person, we should turn to the living Person of Christ Himself. We should also take the Word of God by means of prayer (Eph. 6:17-18). With the Spirit, who is all-inclusive, compound, and life-giving, we should continually receive Him by breathing in the pneumatic Christ and by praying unceasingly (1 Thes. 5:17).

When we continually receive Him into our being in this way, we are brought into an incorporation with the Triune God. In the gospel of John, we see that the “mysteriously awesome” Triune God exists and works in coinherence, or mutual indwelling, where the Son is the Father’s embodiment and the Father is operating invisibly in the Son. The Triune God has established a model in His living and working, and He wants to reproduce this reality in us. He is bringing us into a divine-human incorporation so that the way we live and serve is not apart from Him.

This is a “mysteriously wonderful and awesome” reality that exists in the Triune God, yet it is one in which we are included and can be brought further into. May He continue to unveil more of Himself to us!

Final Thoughts

Nuggets

• We should learn to compose not only prophecies but also praises (Psa. 45:1)

• “Are we willing to let go of our past ministries/priorities?”

• Nothing damages the Body more than the individualistic man

• In the church, Christ is all and in all (Col. 3:11)

  • There is room only for Christ

• Our opinion from the self is the expression of Satan’s mind

• We don't have an “elevator salvation,” but a “staircase salvation”

  • Our experience should advance gradually and not be stagnant

Hymn—“God Has a Dream“

“God, you and me, a dwelling place to be—
God in man, and man in God, one entity.
Now, it’s my dream, my vision and life to be!
God has a dream realized in you and me”

Love is hard.

Love is unstable, and love is a struggle.

Love is full of ups and downs. One day we may be crazily in love, burning in our heart and emotion, and the next day we may be grumpy and discouraged by the environment, feeling like we should just give up. Love is hard because our natural human love is frail.

“You shall love the Lord your God from your whole heart…You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Mark 12:30-31)

In Mark 12, Jesus commanded His believers to love the Lord and to love one another. There are no other commandments greater than these, for all the others are fulfilled with love, since “on these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets” (Matt. 22:40).

"Even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this shall all men know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:34-35)

We love because God first loved us (1 John 4:19), and Christ is manifested through our love for one another. We may not always have the confidence that we could love the Lord or others in this way, but we can simply turn to Him and say, “Thank you for commanding me to love you” (M.E. Barber). Through this, God can saturate us with Himself so that we may love Him and love others, because…

Hymn—“My God is Joy“

“My God is joy!
His joy my strength.
He fills my days
With ceaseless praise.
My God is love,
Unspeakable, So wonderful,
With glory full, oh God,
Become my joy today”

Love is personified. Love is God Himself.

God abides in us as divine and incorruptible love. His love is better than wine (S.O.S. 1:2) and as strong as death (S.O.S. 8:6). When we have God as our love, our love becomes eternal, unquenchable, and unchanging (Jer. 31:3). We must keep ourselves in this love, even being constrained by the love of Christ (2 Cor. 5:14), so that we can love Him and love others with God as our eternal love.

Love builds up (1 Cor. 8:1b), and love is indispensable for the building up of the Body of Christ for the fulfillment of God’s economy.

Love is not only for our experience and enjoyment but for us to live out the immeasurably rich Triune God. With God as our prevailing and transcendent love, we are enabled to “love one another warmly in brotherly love” (Rom. 12:10) under any circumstance and to live a corporate life in Christ so that God may gain a glorious corporate expression.

As defined in 1 Corinthians 13:1-8, love is the most excellent way for us to build up the church.

God as love suffers long, is kind, is not jealous, does not brag, and is not puffed up (v. 4). His love is not provoked (v. 5), rejoices with the truth (v. 6), endures all things (v. 7), and never falls away (v. 8). How we need this love to increase in us!

If we have the gift of prophecy and know all mysteries and knowledge, but do not have love, then we have nothing, and our speaking is merely sounds without life (v. 1-2). Even if we sell all our possessions to feed others, but do so without love, even seeking to boast, then we profit nothing (v. 3). This shows that merely fearing God, worshipping God, and believing in God are all inadequate; loving Him is the indispensable requirement. Whatever we do, we should “do all to the glory of God” (1 Cor. 10:31) and with God as love.

Hymn—“O Jesus, I’m Crazy Loving You“

“Forgetting all that I’m outwardly doing.
Forgetting all of my thoughts of improving.
You only want to be loved,
I give my love unto You;
A crazy lover of Christ, I’m jumping for joy”

God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son to die for us (John 3:16). Not only so, He included us in His death so that we would be freed from living in ourselves.

Sometimes, we are burning with love for the Lord and want to do something for Him. However, we need to love the Lord in the way of stopping our self-initiated doing. Do not try to be humble and avoid being proud, and do not try to do good and avoid doing evil. We simply need to love the Lord and remember that we were made as lovers, in His image, to love Him.

As we simply abide in Christ, love is infused into us, and we receive the transmission of life, which we can overflow to others. Through His love in us, not by our effort, our labor in the Lord becomes a labor of love (1 Thes. 1:3), and we can be faithful stewards who minister the word and fulfill God’s desire for all men to be saved and set free by the truth.

Love is not a secret crush, but it is developed through spending much time in secret with God. The more we enjoy His grace, the more love we will have (1 Tim. 1:14).

Love increases in us as we continually listen to His voice and hold fast to Him (Deu. 30:20). Our love is not merely a sweet, warm feeling, but a face-to-face contact and an ever-deepening intrinsic touch with the Lord. For this love to grow, we need a substantial hidden life with the Lord (Col. 3:3), spending adequate personal time with Him in secret and living in the presence of our hiding God.

In our personal time with the Lord, we need to be continually attracted by Him so that we may advance in our divine romance with Him (update 16). Our affectionate relationship with God is that of husband and wife, in which we are drawn to Him and He “kisses us with the kisses of his mouth” (S.O.S. 1:2). As we love God with our first and best love, our entire being is occupied by Him, and we are lost in Him, so that He becomes everything to us and we are one with Him. Through this intimate fellowship with God, we can enter into His heart and apprehend all its secrets (1 Cor. 2:9).

May we be those who daily “kiss Him and hold on to Him,” loving Him with our whole being in our life and work, so that our love for God and for others may continue to increase (2 Thes. 1:3).

Hymn—“His Banner Over Me was Love“

“He brought me into the banqueting house,
And his banner over me was love.
Sustain me with raisin cakes,
Refresh me with apples,
For I am sick with love.
His left hand is under my head,
And his right hand embraces me.
Oh! You are beautiful, my Beloved”

Final Thoughts

Saving Grace

Thank you for reading this update! If you ever struggle with love like I did these past two weeks, I’d recommend listening to the three songs from this update in this order: “His Banner Over Me was Love,” “Our God is Joy,” and “O Jesus, I’m Crazy Loving You.” They have really been a saving grace to me.

Nuggets (Classes)

• We are rich in the word, but we need to be rich in patterns

• Don’t come to the meetings by yourself—come with a multitude

  • “I see God manifested in the flesh!”

• God is continuously supplying us the Spirit bountifully

• The easiest way to fan our spirit into flame is to open up our mouth

  • Our experience will follow what we see and speak

• This is a matter of relationship, not just doctrine

  • Our relationship with God is affectionate, personal, private, and spiritual

  • “Wasn’t that such a romantic time with the Lord?”

Video—Race to Grace 🏆 (w.Daniel)

Videos—GP Dunk Contest (9’): Maximo 🐇 vs Paulito ⚡

In a random Thursday class (BOC I), I demonstrated my catch-and-shoot form (basketball) after speaker DHO asked me to “be ready to shoot the ball.”

That unsuspecting moment reshaped how I shoot from then on, each time considering the intrinsic spiritual significance of my shooting motion…

So, how did we get here?

1—Abundance

“For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks” (Matt. 12:34b)

According to DHO, earlier that week Tomi and I had a “breakthrough” at the USC prayer meeting. On my end, I recall something within prompting me to pray at least once for every prayer burden, which DHO must have noticed, since I had never done this before. No doubt, the prayers came out of an abundance of the heart.

There should be an abundance in our experience that is expressed in our meeting life. As portrayed in Hymn #1216, everything is rooted in the inner life, carried out in our daily life, and manifested in our meeting life according to the principle of abundance.

When we are in love with someone, we think about them all the time. Likewise, we should think of the Lord in our hearts and behold the Lord in our spirit so that we may be freshly inspired concerning Him. When our heart is attuned and our spirit is keen, we will see Jesus in the meetings. Then our hearts will be overflowing, and we will spontaneously express our inspiration in praise.

After exhorting Tomi and me in class, DHO’s prayer was that our “breakthrough” would not be sporadic, but become a new habit.

2—Habits

What is the primary frustration to our participation in the meetings? It is not a lack of abundance, a quiet disposition, or comparison with others, but our habits. We simply do not habitually participate, nor are we willing to change our habits.

However, this is what the churches need—normal functioning members who praise the Lord at the table, offer genuine worship to the Father, and even “speak five words” (1 Cor. 14:19) for the building up of the church. We speak because, in our personal fellowship with the Lord, something has been revealed to us and received by our renewed mind. In this way, we minister the word of God and edify the saints for the building up.

“My heart overflows with a good matter; / I speak what I have composed concerning the King. / My tongue is the pen of a ready writer” (Psa 45:1)

We should be serious about building up a habit of speaking the word of God.1 We can overcome the biggest fear of public speaking not by outward improvement, but by realizing that we have the highest truth. This is how we become ready in season and out of season, being “ready to shoot” and dispense Christ at any time.2

Delightful Kingdom

God loves us for no reason, but He calls us for a reason—to enter into His kingdom and glory (1 Thes. 2:12). This is the gospel of the kingdom that we should proclaim today.

In the New Testament, the gospel and the kingdom are parallel, and the gospel is proclaimed so that rebellious sinners might be saved, qualified, and equipped to enter into the kingdom. Christ did not merely die for our sins, but He died so that we would be transferred into another realm.

The kingdom of God is not a physical place, but God Himself. The way to enter into this kingdom is to receive God as life by first repenting, that is, having a change in concept, and believing in the gospel (Mark 1:15). Only by having the divine life can we enter into the divine realm (John 3:5).

Then, by passing through sufferings, our faith can grow, our love can increase, and our endurance can be maintained. As we live in the church life and allow the authority of God to operate in us, Christ as the kingdom seed (Mark 4:26) grows within us to become our righteousness, peace, and joy (Rom. 14:17).

“Who delivered us out of the authority of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of the Son of His love” (Col. 1:13)

Seen in Colossians 1:13, the kingdom is “of the Son of His love,” a realm in which we are ruled in love with life. It is a delightful kingdom saturated with love, where the source and outcome of everything we do is love, and whose atmosphere is an enjoyment beyond words.

New Creation

“If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old things have passed away; behold, they have become new” (2 Cor. 5:17)

In my two terms in the Training so far, God’s economy class has been the highlight as we have been covering Galatians, my favorite book in the Bible.

In writing the book of Galatians, Paul’s concern was not merely to present justification by faith or to expose the law, which does not give life (3:21), but to reveal and highlight the matter of God’s new creation, in which God is adding Himself to us. As we enjoy the divine sonship and the organic union we have with the Triune God to live and walk by the Spirit (5:16), we are becoming the new creation.

In Galatians 6:15, we see a contrast between the new creation and circumcision, which is an ordinance of law involving religion and the flesh. But praise the Lord—the law has been replaced by Christ (2:19-20), and circumcision has been fulfilled by Christ’s crucifixion (6:14)! Today, we are not only being transformed by Christ as our life, but, by experiencing the cross in our spirit, we are also being separated from the religious world to live the new creation.

This is why Paul made the cross his boast (6:14), because Christ’s death terminated the religious world to Paul and Paul to the religious world, which worships God without Christ. Paul later even declares that “a new creation [with God as its element and Christ as its life] is what matters” (6:15).

“Therefore we do not lose heart; but though our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed day by day” (2 Cor. 4:16)

Day by day, as we are joined to the Lord as one spirit (1 Cor. 6:17), we are being renewed in the spirit of our mind (Eph. 4:23). As the renewing Spirit renews us (Titus 3:5), we can put off our old man in Adam (Eph. 4:22), that is, our natural being without God’s divine life and nature, and put on the new man in Christ (Eph. 4:24) to become the new creation of God.

In the new creation, we can enjoy the grace of Christ and experience the bountiful supply of the Spirit in our spirit, and He becomes everything to us in our experience. As we walk by the Spirit3, which is the rule of the new creation (6:16), we can enjoy peace.

Actually, having peace is a result of bearing the brands of Jesus (6:17), which signify that we belong to the Lord. Like Paul, who suffered persecution in the form of physical scars and, spiritually, lived a continually crucified life, we too today, to some extent, bear these brands and experience persecution as Christians. This is because those according to the flesh are always opposing those who are according to the Spirit (4:29).

But we should not be discouraged, because these persecutions are actually an indication that we are in the center of God’s economy. Rather, we should have the assurance4 and peace that we are one with the Lord Jesus and are taking the right way of the cross.

May we be those who learn to take the way of the cross, realize and enjoy the grace of Christ as the Spirit in our spirit, and live the new creation today!

Final Thoughts

Nuggets

• God is not just a wonderful uncle providing us with all the goods

• The church meetings are just the “tip of the iceberg”

• We all should contend for the faith and guard ourselves from idols (1 John 5:21)

  • Do we have the beating heart of the truth within us?

• We are the least extreme people, because we hold to the twofoldness of the divine truth

• Our mind is a battlefield 24/7

• Confession is simply saying “Amen” to His light

  • “Lord, apart from You, I am nothing and can do nothing”

• “The Training is a gym—it’s where you fall”—Carlos Macias

Hymn—“I am the Lord’s“

“I am the Lord’s! Yet teach me all it meaneth,
All it involves of love and loyalty,
Of holy service, absolute surrender,
And unreserved obedience unto Thee”

On a bustling afternoon at USC, Max and I wove through crowds of students on our way to meet brother SY and our new gospel contact WH. In the heart of the USC Village, we took a small outdoor table, found a brief pause amid the chaos, sipped our Starbucks, and eased into conversation.

Right out of the gate, WH started sharing about what he had learned in his philosophy class about self-improvement and dealing with sin, turning our conversation into fellowship. It was clear he was struggling with why people keep falling into sin and how we can be freed from it…

Since the fall in Genesis 3 (update 9), man received a sinful nature that is far stronger than his good nature. Because of this, our need today is not to salvage or improve our natural, fallen human life, for it cannot be changed. Rather, all of us, even the so-called good people, need to receive another life by being regenerated.

“Do not marvel that I said to you, You must be born anew” (John 3:7)

According to John 3:7, to receive and experience Christ as the real life of God (update 15), we must be born of God. We should not marvel at this, since it is an obvious fact, even a circumstantial necessity, that we must be born of a different source, because our human life was created as a vessel to contain God. Without God, we lack substance, and we are empty and vain.

Through our baptism, our old life was terminated, and a new life, the eternal life of God, was germinated within us. The Triune God—the Father who is working1, the Son who is living2, and the Spirit who is anointing3—now lives in us.

Not only so, we have been baptized into a living Person (Gal. 3:27), an effective death (Rom. 6:3), the divine name (Matt. 28:19), and a living organism (1 Cor. 12:13), putting us into Christ to experience an organic union with Him. Every day, we should live in the reality of baptism, allowing Christ to continually bring us through death and resurrection, so that He can be life in us and enable us to advance in the Christian life.

“As therefore you have received the Christ, Jesus the Lord, walk in Him” (Col. 2:6)

As we see in Colossians 2:6, we should walk in Him and grow in the Christian life according to how we received Him, that is, according to the principle of regeneration:

1. Not I

   1. We in our natural life are not only sinful, but also good for nothing but death and burial

   2. We simply cannot do it, but this is not the end…

2. We Need God

   1. He can do it!

      1. If we are nothing, He has to be everything to us

   2. But don’t stop here…

3. Open and Receive

   1. He has done everything to become the Spirit that we can receive Him

When we pass through sufferings or are shined on, we come to realize that we are short and have failed. These are opportunities to experience God as life, recognizing that we simply need Him to come in to be all the things we could not be or do. As Christians, we should not try to rescue ourselves through self-effort or virtue, nor should we ask God merely for strength and help. Instead, we should simply open ourselves to Him, receive Him, let Him supply us, and allow Him to work through us.

“For the mind set on the flesh is death, but the mind set on the spirit is life and peace” (Rom. 8:6)

When we experience Christ, we have a sense of life that is full of peace. This is not outward peace in our circumstances, but an inward peace—a peace in our spirit, in our heart, and in our whole being. Along with this peace, we also sense joy, rest, comfort, ease, strength, life supply, light, and liberty. We no longer have to live according to religion or a standard without Christ; instead, we can enjoy the supply of the water of life in our spirit—this is real freedom…

Simply put for our brother WH at USC: “We are in Christ, and Christ is in us—so we should just live Christ!”4

Abba Father

An issue of regeneration is that we become sons of God for eternity.

God’s economy is to produce many sons for His corporate expression (Heb. 2:10, Rom. 8:29), and Christ’s redemption is to bring us into the sonship of God, so that we may enjoy the divine life and have the position and privilege to inherit the things of the Father.

“But when the fullness of the time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under law” (Gal. 4:4)

“And because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father!” (Gal. 4:6)

In Galatians 4, we see two sending forths from our Father to produce many sons. At the completion of the Old Testament time, God first sent forth His Son (v. 4), and then He sent forth the Spirit of His Son (v. 6) to accomplish God’s economy. Without the Spirit, our sonship is vain. But by the Spirit, we receive the divine birth and the divine life, and through the Spirit, we grow unto maturity to gain the position and privilege of sonship.

Today, we should remain in the sonship of God to enjoy the life supply of the Spirit in Christ, so that we may become His heirs to inherit all He has planned for His eternal expression.

“But you have received a spirit of sonship in which we cry, Abba, Father!” (Rom. 8:15b)

“God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father!” (Gal. 4:6b)

Pairing these two parallel verses, we see that our regenerated spirit (Rom. 8:15) and the Spirit of God (Gal. 4:6) are mingled as one, and that our spirit resides in our heart. This shows that the sonship of God is realized by our subjective experience in the depths of our being, meaning both our spirit and our heart must be involved.

When the Spirit cries within us, He cries from our spirit and through our heart. “Abba” is an affectionate cry that reflects the intimate relationship in life between a genuine son and a begetting father. The more we cry, “Abba, Father,” in our spirit, the deeper the sweet and intimate sense in our heart becomes. This proves that we have a genuine, bona fide life relationship with our Father and we are truly His sons.

Divine Romance

“I will also give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will take away the heart of stone out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh” (Eze. 36:26)

After being regenerated, God also gave us a new heart to love Him. This new heart is not the old, hard heart of stone, but a soft, tender, and conscious heart of flesh. Even when we sin, this longing heart causes us to repent and return to the Lord—this is truly a mercy from God. Today, we know we are saved simply because we love Jesus.

“God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God and God abides in him” (1 John 4:16b)

“We love because He first loved us” (1 John 4:19)

Our love begins in the Triune God, who is yearning to unite, mingle, and incorporate with us. Because God abides in us as love, we will also share this same yearning—to be incorporated with Him, but also to not be alone...5

We become God’s dwelling place by loving Him with our first and best love and by participating in the four stages of the divine romance revealed in Song of Songs:

1. Attracting and Pursuing

   1. “Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth! / For your love is better than wine” (1:2)

   2. “Draw me; we will run after you” (1:4a)

   3. His drawing power is our pursuing power

2. Experiencing the cross (2:14)

   1. Satan causes us to fear the cross

3. Living in the heavenlies to be God's new creation in resurrection (4:18)

4. Becoming the sanctuary, the Holy of Holies (6:4)

   1. “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word, and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make an abode with him” (John 14:23)

   2. “That Christ may make His home in your hearts through faith, that you, being rooted and grounded in love” (Eph. 3:17)

   3. These verses show that Christ is making us His duplication and His dwelling place in love

We need to treasure Song of Songs as a sacred and romantic book that reveals the affectionate relationship we have with God—not that of master and slave, but of husband and wife. Through this, we can truly say, “I am my beloved's, and my beloved is mine” (S.O.S. 6:3).6

Foreign Language

French, Spanish, Japanese, Greek—these languages are all foreign to us. But can you imagine that the matter of abiding in Christ and enjoying Him can also be foreign? Unfortunately, this is the reality for many Christians, who focus more on doctrine, rituals, and practices rather than on Christ Himself. We need the Lord’s mercy so that we won’t miss Him.

“You have been brought to nought, separated from Christ, you who are being justified by law; you have fallen from grace” (Gal. 5:4)

When we are separated from Christ, we are brought to nought from Him, deprived of all profit and enjoyment from His riches, and He is made void of effect. As branches grafted into Christ, we should abide in Him to partake of all He is to us. Practically, this means being under the hearing of faith, because faith leads to more appreciation and love for the Lord. The more faith operates, the more it brings us into the riches and profit of the all-inclusive Spirit.

“Lord, have mercy on us and grant us grace that we would not be brought to nothing from You. Keep us under the hearing of faith and abide in You as the all-inclusive One to enjoy Your riches every day!”

Speaking of foreign languages, I had decided this term to switch from Greek to Character class. In my first class during week 4, the Lord sovereignly arranged for me to sit next to Joseph (4th-term bro), and together we would volunteer to lead the lesson summary presentation in week 6.

The 5-minute presentation went well. Having been prophesying more this term (primarily in 1st-year classes), I found that I was not nervous, despite speaking from the stage to a large audience. Instead, I was focused on releasing my spirit in my speaking (all thanks to my brother Joseph).

Through my experience preparing for the presentation with Joseph, as well as my time preparing to facilitate PSRP with Carlos earlier that day, I learned that it’s not so much about the tasks themselves, but about coordination.

Coordination is indispensable for developing a proper character and our usefulness to the Lord. This doesn't depend solely on our capability or spirituality, but on our openness and ability to coordinate with others. Without proper coordination, our functioning can even damage the Body.

The goal of God’s economy is to build up the church as the Body of Christ, and the Lord has given us the blueprint for His building:

1. Material—Christ is everything

   1. Not wood, grass, or stubble, but gold, silver, and precious stones

   2. We need to experience the death and resurrection of Christ

2. Site—Ground of the church

   1. Ground of locality, ground of oneness

3. Building work—Coordination

   1. Coordination is nearly equivalent to building

Coordination is how we can build. When we come together to serve, we are not merely completing a task—we are being built up. With proper coordination, we can build and recover the practical oneness of the Body of Christ.

Final Thoughts

Nuggets

• All of our “why’s” is the New Jerusalem—“Fulfill what you have spoken, Lord”

• Learn to treasure and welcome the constant visitation of the Triune God

• It’s not an experience of life if we don’t grow

• We are not just called, but also chosen and faithful

• The accumulated revelation will become a governing vision

• The Divine Trinity is “one essence in three hypostases”

  • He exists as dispensing in the Godhead, with each of the Three being “the complete God”

• The Father and the Son mutually indwell each other and work together as one

• Strength without coordination is useless

  • As someone is taking the lead, we should learn to walk backwards and sideways with them

• He loves us without reason

Hymn—“He’s My God“

“God is there for me tomorrow,
As He is for me today;
That He’ll take my cares and sorrow,
And He’ll wipe them all away;
There’s no crisis that He can’t bear,
There’s no storm He can’t abate;
He’s my God, He’s my God”

Another year, another International Women’s Day (my bday)—shoutout to all the women and sisters in the church!

It’s truly been a wild year.

Last year around this time, I was in NYC celebrating my 25th International Women’s Day. I still recall looking up across the dining table and thinking to myself, “Is this the perfect will of God?” After all, I had just been patiently sitting in the car for more than an hour, reading my Bible in the driver’s seat and watching the time tick away as I gazed to my right, waiting for the shadow I had been expecting to finally emerge.

That day, I made a choice to not go along with it anymore. I decided to stand firm with the Lord and in my faith—not to participate in the event, but to remain in my car, where the presence of the Lord was. I chose to no longer live merely with the permissive will of God, but to accept only His perfect will. That day, I chose to give myself fully to Christ and the church.

In 2026, this special day looks a little different. There is no NYC visit, no reservation on Resy, no fancy dinner, and no car. Looking out the window from my room at Grace Gardens, I see the vibrant yet calm Modjeska Park on a warm afternoon. To my right sits a stack of Bibles and ministry books, and of course, my lovely roommate, Carlos, whom the Lord calls a “good boy.”1 Yet in my heart, I finally have true love and peace.

I definitely made the right choice.

Real Life

When some eventually found out about my decision to attend the FTTA, they were baffled and suggested that I pursue what is “real” instead. Of course, in the world, what is seen is considered real. However, in the Bible, the definition of what is real is completely different—only that which is eternal is real2. In fact, the things that are seen are merely vanity and shadows of reality, which is Christ Himself. All the lives in God’s creation are simply figures, types, and shadows of His divine life.

“Laying away for themselves a good foundation as a treasure for the future, that they may lay hold on that which is really life” (1 Tim. 6:19)

In the world, the higher the consciousness of a life, the more we value it. For example, our frustration over the death of a plant may escalate to mourning over the death of a pet. If this is the case, how much greater should the difference be between our valuation of the unreal lives and the life that is real?

We need to appreciate the divine life more and start to look at the universe differently—by seeing Christ as the reality of all positive things. As we experience Christ as life, we realize that life is a Person, and that life is simply Christ Himself.3 He and His life are what is real.

Our Choice

To become our life, God went through the processes4 to become the life-giving Spirit that He might enter into all His believers.

Before Christ came, men lived according to the principle of the law and were under its curse because of it. The law is likened to a curse because keeping it requires the use of the flesh, in which nothing good but sin dwells (Rom. 7:18, 20). Because the wages of sin is death (Rom. 6:23), if we were to follow the law, we would have to keep every command perfectly to avoid sin and death. Yet no one can do this except Christ. In effect, the law says, “Keep me, or die,” which is why those who try to keep the law are under a curse.

But one day, God entered into humanity as the only sinless One and fulfilled all the righteous requirements of the law, completing the test with a passing grade of 100%. Not only so, Christ also redeemed us from under the curse of the law after the Father put that curse upon Him, where He died being judged according to the law and through the law. In God’s eyes, Christ became the unique sinner, because all of our transgressions and sins were placed upon Him. He fulfilled and satisfied the demands of the law, not for Himself, but for you and for me.

Today, after His resurrection, God is in us as the Spirit to bountifully supply us. On His side, God has accomplished everything to become our life, and on our side, we simply need to be people of faith (see update 12) and experience Him as life. Our choice today is to turn away from the curse of the law and enjoy Christ as grace and reality so that He may be our life and our everything.

“So then they who are of faith are blessed with believing Abraham” (Gal. 3:9)

Christ Our Life

“For to me, to live is Christ” (Phil. 1:21a)

As Christians, we are simply people who live Christ as life. The Bible reveals that there are five progressive steps to the experience of Christ as life:

1. Christ revealed in us (Gal. 1:15-16a)

2. Christ living in us (Gal. 2:20)

3. Christ being formed in us (Gal. 4:19)

4. Christ being magnified in us (Phil. 1:20)

5. Us arriving at the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ (Eph. 4:13)

I was really impressed to see in Galatians the degree to which Christ wants to dispense Himself into us. According to 4:19, Christ wants to form Himself in us, meaning that He wants to permeate our being and to saturate our inward parts. This is why Paul prays in Ephesians 3:17 that Christ would make His home in our hearts, not only spreading into our mind, emotion, and will, but actually becoming our mind, emotion, and will.

It is God’s intent and pleasure, that His Christ be revealed, wrought, and formed in us!5 Seeing this, we should simply allow the all-inclusive Spirit to occupy every part of our inner being.

Today, we are presented with a choice between our spirit and flesh, as they are constantly warring against each other. But as New Testament believers brought forth by grace, we are children according to the Spirit. As such, we should “cast out the maidservant” (Gal. 4:30a), which signifies our flesh, and lay aside the law and everything other than Christ Himself. By remaining in the fulfillment of God’s desire, which is for us to enjoy grace, Christ, and the all-inclusive Spirit as the blessing of the gospel, we can be converted from everything else to Christ.

Let us make this choice and let Christ be everything to us!

Final Thoughts

Perfect Will

There has been a strong emphasis this term on following the perfect will of God in everything we do. Ultimately, this is our choice—to remain in God’s permissive will or to accept only His perfect will. May we be those who welcome the Lord’s shining on the source of our thoughts and feelings (whether they are of ourselves or from the Father), seek His perfect will, and trust that He has the best planned for us.

“Father, duplicate your heart in us, and may your heart’s desire become our heart’s desire.” If we pray in this way, the Lord will put in our heart the New Jerusalem—the consummation of the perfect will of God.

Nuggets

• Knowledge does not withstand the flesh, but life overcomes

• Faith is a camera which photographs the scenery of grace

• The amount of the unsearchable riches of Christ we can experience is expanding even today

• The Divine Trinity is the framework and basic structure of the Bible

• We know the Triune God not in the vastness of the universe, but in the personal realm of our heart

• We see how the Body of Christ should be by seeing how the Triune God operates

• The years of parenting can be the most fruitful years of our lives

• “You might not become a husband; you might become a wife first instead”—a good boy

Hymn—“God’s Choice“

“It is worth it today to,
give all that I have for the church.
I now see the value,
and pay such a price for this pearl.
I choose…

God’s choice: the pearl of great value!
What is my choice? I will stand with the Lord!
I choose, the church of great value!
I will make this choice, to give all I have for the church!”

Welcome back! Before we dive into what’s new in term 2, please enjoy a brief photo montage from my 7-week interim:

Offseason Moves

We have breaking news coming out of Anaheim, CA. There has been a three-team trade accepted between 2103 Grace, San Francisco (CA), and Round Rock (TX), sources tell Paul Ng at FTTA. Details of the reported trade:

• San Francisco (CA) receives Jasper Lim and an espresso machine

• Round Rock (TX) receives Samuel Torres and a pink durag1

• 2103 Grace receives two first-round picks in the Spring 2026 FTTA draft

With the draft picks, 2103 Grace plans to select Tim Huang from San Jose (CA) and Jayden Parrish from San Marcos (TX), both of whom will report to camp for the start of Pre-Training week.

In other news, USC has traded Mike Yu and his expiring contract to Stanford for the draft rights to Max Santana and Mak Santana from Denton (TX). As part of the roster shuffle, Elona Ogbaudu has been released to free agency (Anaheim community). With these moves, USC is hoping to stabilize its team for the foreseeable future (only the next 20 weeks).

To be honest, it was tough for me to go through these changes and say all these goodbyes (I don’t know how some can do it 3 times in the Training). But through hymn #846, the Lord comforted me and reminded me that for my spirit to flow, I need to forsake the past and just beseech Him. Oh, may my spirit flow!

Hymn #846—“Oh, May My Spirit Flow“

“Oh, may my spirit flow,
Oh, may it flow!
Now I beseech Thee, Lord
Oh, may it flow!
My past I would forsake,
The iron walls would break,
My spirit free would make;
Oh, may it flow!”

Some Overflow

ICSC (Orientation Weekend)2

Humanity has three main problems, but there are three simple answers:

1. What are we doing here? What’s the meaning of our life?

   1. Our purpose of living is to express God

2. Why do bad things happen in our life?

   1. Our sufferings today are for us to gain God

3. What is our future, our destiny?

   1. Our destiny is to become God3

“For our momentary lightness of affliction works out for us, more and more surpassingly, an eternal weight of glory, Because we do not regard the things which are seen but the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal” (2 Cor. 4:17-18)

A Healthy Teaching (Pre-Training)

“Be diligent to present yourself approved to God, an unashamed workman, cutting straight the word of the truth” (2 Tim. 2:15)

In the church life, we are under a healthy teaching that ministers life to us. Here we learn not merely to be a “good” Christian or how to preach the gospel, but to be constituted with this teaching so that we can cut straight the word of the truth. This healthy teaching, the apostles’ teaching, is centered on Christ’s Person and His redemptive work. It is the heart of God’s New Testament economy and the holding factor of our one accord in the church, keeping all the saints pursuing in oneness.

Therefore, we should love the apostles’ teaching just like we love God’s economy. And rather than being limited not to certain ministers, we should be governed by and restricted to the vision and teaching of God’s economy, which is something that is healthy, of life, and builds us up.

His Appearing (Pre-Training)

“But rise up and stand on your feet; for I have appeared to you for this purpose, to appoint you as a minister and a witness both of the things in which you have seen Me and of the things in which I will appear to you” (Acts 26:16)

Saints, let’s rise up and stand on our feet! I enjoyed seeing in Acts 26:16 that we have been appointed as ministers and witnesses, not of dead doctrinal knowledge, but of the living Person of Christ and of the things in which the Lord will appear to us.

The FTTA is altogether focused on Christ and on bringing us deeper into the depths of God. Yet it is all too easy in the Training to focus on getting the best grades, demonstrating the best character, concocting the best prophecy, or being the “best” trainee, but still miss Christ Himself. If we saw the things but missed Christ, then we have missed the point.

But if we see Christ, something within us would cause us to rise up. My prayer this term is that I would turn away from merely trying to accumulate Biblical facts in my study times. Rather, through His appearing, I want to come before Him, touch Him, and have genuine, subjective experiences of the things in which I have seen and heard of Him. Lord, I want to love You and Your appearing more!

“For you can all prophesy one by one that all may learn and all may be encouraged” (1 Cor. 14:31)

Having digested the things that we have seen of Him, we can then prophesy and minister these riches to others. Prophesying is not only our ability, but also our obligation. If we don’t speak, we are furthering the clergy and laity system4. Lord, make us those who rise up to prophesy for the building up of the Body!

Final Thoughts

Prayer Request

Praise the Lord for a wonderful Pre-Training and strong start to term 2, but please pray for my healthy going on amidst the outward changes in the Training, as well as other distractions, that I would continue to seek His perfect will for me and daily seek His appearing.

Nuggets

• Life grows by regulation unto maturity and function

  • Under the restrictions of the government of the Son of His love, our love for the Lord grows

• Sufferings all produce a renewing5, allowing us to learn how to live not by the natural life, but by another life

• We should follow the voice of our conscience and the instruction of our intuition

  • It’s a mercy that God has put in our spirit the function of the conscience

  • If God is happy with the blood, then I am happy also

• Life is the container of the truth

  • We should have life abundantly and be filled with the truth

  • Let’s pay a little price to buy the priceless oil

• Through our prayer, we can be the outlet of God’s will

• No one who sees God will remain the same

• Our mingled spirit is our refuge

Hymn—“Your Words Were Found“

“Your words were found,
And I ate them.
And Your words became to me,
The gladness and joy of my heart,

I will muse upon Your precepts,
And regard Your ways,
I will turn the Bible into
Both my prayer and praise.
I will sing it in the morning,
And I’ll pray it all day long,
Until Jehovah has become
My strength and song”

1

“Heavenly Father, where will I go on my gospel trip?

Will it be China or ol’ Mexico on my gospel trip?

It could be San Fran by the bay,
Australia where they say, “G’day!”
But I pray I’m sent to my favorite place—
Orlando!”

By God’s mercy, my prayer was answered when I was assigned to Florida for my interim gospel trip. Last month, I spent two weeks visiting the churches in four Florida cities with my team of six trainees. This is how the trip went down:

Day 1 (Philadelphia—Orlando)

• Touched down safely in my favorite place (Orlando) after a 2-hr flight delay

• Reunited with David Shobe, one of my YP serving ones in Philly

• Shared my testimony at the YP meeting with focus on my personal relationship with the Lord and staying in the Body

• Held a real gun for the first time

Day 2 (Orlando)

• Began the day by leading someone to be saved (what?)

  • Sam, Daniel, and I all stayed with our host Ryan, and during our visit his business partner Eden was also in town, giving us the chance to lead him to the Lord during breakfast

• Attended the Orlando Lord’s Day meeting and prophesied about the True One (1 John 5:20)

• Played ultimate with UCF students (saw the craziest rocket) and basketball at the gym—absolutely dominated w.Sam+Daniel

• Finished the night with tacos

Day 3 (Orlando)

• Joined our first coordination and learned about the history of the church in Orlando

• It was MLK day so we went exploring Disney Springs after stopping by Nery’s house to visit her chickens

• Had my first progressive dinner at 3 houses—heard many encouraging testimonies, played competitive pop-a-shot, and a sister made the us a custom trainees cake

Day 4 (Orlando)

• Finally tabled on UCF campus (lol)

  • Went out two by two w.Sam to pass out some Bibles and even led a student to pray to receive the Lord!

• Joined rekindle event at UCF, where the topic was our being New Testament prophets

• Enjoyed bonfire and s’mores at Nery’s and met our boy Bereket (UCF freshman)

• Made gift basket for host Ryan and his cat, and had a meaningful late night 1:1 conversation with him for 30 mins while eating ice cream

Day 5 (Orlando—Gainesville)

• Ate breakfast with Ryan for the last time—he cooks well and cooked a lot

• Cherished by brother Charles who took us to see manatees (sea cows) on our way up to Gainesville

• Nery and Alejandra (trainees from Orlando) joined us as their gospel trip is a week after ours

  • Nery helped drive the van which I was very thankful for

• Met Randy and Osh (hosts) and had dinner with some visiting students

• Shared my testimony at UF college meeting with focus on dealing with anxiety and the vanity of the world

Day 6 (Gainesville)

• Joined coordination and had an appointment with Randy and a new believer at UF

  • He had a lot of questions and believed the end time was near, but we brought to Him back to life and started our time together by each sharing our testimonies of how the Lord became real to us

• Tabled at Santa Fe college and passed out Bibles

  • Discovered that I can fit 6 Bibles in my pant pockets while holding another Bible in my hands (yes, the answer to the IG poll is 7 Bibles)

• Fellowshipped w.David (UF student) at Bible Study and enjoyed Randy’s great overview of Exodus2

  • “The central thought of Exodus is that Christ is the redemption, salvation, and supply of God’s people and the means for them to worship and serve God so that in Him they may be built up with God together for them and God to meet, communicate, and dwell mutually”

Day 7 (Gainesville)

• Tabled at UF to pass out Bibles

  • This campus was less warm than the others and we were getting rejected more, so I tried a new method by handing out a Bible while sitting on the bench. It actually worked and a student took my Bible. Two brothers then followed suit (copied me)

• Met up with Shiloh (old friend from HK) and saw gators before heading to home meeting

  • Explained to a new one the relationship between Adam and Eve, Christ and the church, and Ephesians 5 (may be normal to y’all but not me lol)

Day 8 (Tampa—Fort Myers)

• Joined the Florida college outing in Tampa (picnic island park)

  • Shared beach pics in FTTA bros chat to remind them of warmer days

• Filmed jump shot videos w.team before trying Jeremiah’s Italian ice

• Had amazing homemade pizza at Cossio’s (host) after arriving in Fort Myers

Day 9 (Fort Myers)

• Broke the bread in Fort Myers Lord’s Day meeting and prophesied about being poor in spirit (Matt. 5:3)3

• Went to another beach and had ice cream w.saints before exploring downtown Fort Myers w.team

• Had amazing steak and bbq dinner

• Stayed in the same room as Daniel, so we used the TV to do Bible quizzes (and watched funny videos and a movie)

Day 10 (Fort Myers)

• Tabled at FGCU campus and roamed two by two w.Daniel

  • Led a student to receive the Lord

• Explored Edison and Ford museum

  • Met up w.Shavar+Michael (other trainees) who were also in Florida

• Enjoyed coffee w.bros and amazing feast at home meeting

• Had another movie night w.Daniel

Day 11 (Fort Myers)

• Tabled at FGCU again and went out two by two w.Chhavon (UCF senior)

  • Chhavon and Carlos (full-timer) traveled from Orlando to help with distributions

  • Had 30-min convo with student who believed in science but was open to us, and fellowshipped with another who was reading the Bible

• Explored Naples and went shopping w.Sam+Daniel

  • Sang hymns w.saints at the beach

• Tried Publix chicken for dinner (surprisingly good)

• Had an extra steak dinner at Cossio’s after prayer meeting (we ate a lot in Fort Myers)

Day 12 (Tampa)

• Traveled to Tampa and joined USF Bible study (2 Cor. 11)

  • We need to return to the simplicity and purity toward Christ4

• Started to feel sick but was healed after trying Chinese medicine w.bros

• Drove around Josh’s (host) self-driving Tesla

• Played fun numbers card game (The Mind) w.Josh+Daniel

• Joined YWS meeting and shared my testimony focused on personal struggles while learning to preach the gospel

Day 13 (Tampa)

• Tabled at FSU and roamed two by two w.Sam

  • Handed out many tracts before having a 45-min fellowship with pastor Sam from a nearby table—he dispensed life and encouraged us with his experience of the Lord in a near death moment and his evangelical work in Uganda, while urging us to abide in the Lord (John 15:5) in all that we do

• Shared my gospel trip enjoyment at suburb small group

Day 14 (Tampa)

• Explored downtown Tampa w.saints on our last full day in Florida

• Was beyond exhausted at the college meeting but took funny pics of Daniel+Sam (also exhausted)

• Revived by playing The Mind card game w.bros past midnight

Day 15 (Tampa—Philadelphia)

• Jolene (funny sis) drove Philly trainees to airport and gave us care packages

• Joined other trainees on the last days of their Philadelphia gospel trip

Video—Florida Gospel Trip Edit by Henna

Final Thoughts

Florida!

Praise the Lord for all He is doing in Florida. It was an absolute joy and blessing to blend with all the saints and to enter into the Lord’s work together. In all four cities that we went to, the saints went above and beyond to care for us. Every one of the saints and churches are glorious and golden.

At the same time, there is a definite need for full-time teams to be raised up in Fort Myers and Tampa, and I urge you all to join me in prayer for this burden.

May the Lord continue to bless Florida and bless the 150 Bibles and 400 tracts that were passed out. Also, may He preserve the 13 who prayed to receive Him and gain many more remaining fruit on the campuses. Thank you Lord and all the saints for an amazing gospel trip—I will never forget the memories made and I cannot wait to visit Florida again soon.

Nuggets

• Principle of firstfruits in going to FTTA—giving our best years to the Lord

• Open to the Lord as wide as we can and as far as it depends on us

• Satan will send us people (ex. Felix) to waste our time

• The discipline of the Holy Spirit is the greatest means to receive grace

• “I die daily” (1 Cor. 15:31b)

• Each blow I suffer is true gain to me (Hymn #626)

• We can’t turn the objective to the subjective, only the Spirit can

Hymn—“Loved with Everlasting Love“

“Things that once were wild alarms
Cannot now disturb my rest;
Closed in everlasting arms,
Pillowed on the loving breast.
Oh, to lie forever here,
Doubt and care and self resign,
While He whispers in my ear,
I am His, and He is mine”

20 weeks. Just like that, term 1 has come and gone.

At the start of the Training, the question for me was, “Who else is worthy?” (update 1), worthy of such sacrifice, consecration, and commitment. At the time, the answer was, “There is no one, only you Jesus.”

At the end of the day, whether the commitment is two years, one year, or just 20 weeks, that’s still a significant amount of time, and a lot can happen.

So what has happened to me spiritually over the past 20 weeks? How have I progressed and grown? Has anything changed regarding my stance to the question? It’s time to rewind…

One way I have definitely grown is in writing emails. In just 20 weeks, I somehow managed to send out 11 updates—a feat I am not sure I will ever match again. Among this term’s updates, these are some fun segments (linked!) that I really enjoyed writing:

• Update 2 - Our Destiny

  • “Draft Night”

  • A drama and tension-filled night clouded with the uncertainty of my gospel team assignment

• Update 6 - Gospel of Paul

  • “To Philadelphia”

  • My attempt to greet and update the saints in the style of the Apostle Paul

• Update 8 - No Longer I

  • “Battle of Los Angeles”

  • Rivalry between USC and UCLA was superseded by a peace treaty meeting and Large Group Gathering

Jokes aside, I shared in update 4 - A Testimony2 that I came to the FTTA seeking a fresh start in my spiritual life—one that involved a full surrender of my heart to the Lord and a transformation in His life so that I could express and glorify Him. Because of this, I entered the Training having this expectation to receive some feeling that would help gauge or confirm my spiritual growth.

However, over the course of this term, the Lord gradually shifted my focus from my own concept to simply seeking Him in my ordinary days (update 5). Often through my gospel contacts at USC, He kept bringing me back to Himself with another, more important question: “How do you know that God is real?”

1—Who is God?

So, how do I know? Who is God? And how has He been real to me?

Growing up, especially in moments of doubt, I was always bothered when people used the Bible in circular arguments3 to convince me that God is real. The logic typically went something like this: “I believe that God is real, therefore His Word (the Bible) must be true; and because the Word says God is real, He must indeed be real.” To me, it felt like an endless loop that, at the time, I considered nothing more than a logical fallacy (see footnote 3).

But from a young age, I realized that the Christian life is a matter of faith. Because God hides Himself (Isa. 45:15), dwelling in unapproachable light whom no man has seen nor can see Him (1 Tim. 6:16), no amount of physical “evidence” could ever fully convince me that He is real. For God to be real to me, I first had to believe in Him.

“Now faith is the substantiation of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (Heb. 11:1)

“Looking away unto Jesus, the Author and Perfecter of our faith” (Heb. 12:2a)

Now faith is an abstract matter. From my experience, I have learned that it is not something we can generate on our own. No matter how hard we try, sometimes we simply cannot believe, nor can we persuade others to do so. But Hebrews 12:2 reveals that Jesus is the Author and Perfecter of our faith, meaning that He is the very faith infused into us as our believing power. When we look away unto Him and open to receive Him, He comes into us to become our faith in Him. Hebrews 11:1 also says that faith substantiates and convicts the things hoped for and not seen. It is by faith that we are able to substantiate the unseen God.

By faith—who is Christ Himself in us—we are able to believe. By faith, we believe that Jesus is the Son of God and the faithful Witness of God (Rev. 1:5). By faith, we also believe that the Bible is the complete and perfect word of God (update 3), and that every word in the Scripture is God-breathed (2 Tim. 3:16). And by faith, Christ as the Word of God (John 1:1) declares and expresses God (update 9), making Him known to us.

By faith, we call on the Lord’s name and get His Person (update 11), and we enter into a divine romance with Him after being reconciled to Him (update 10). By faith, we take God’s presence as our living map (Heb. 11:8), and He becomes our way, our reality, our life, our future, and our Answer (update 8). And by faith, we open to the Lord, converse with Him, and even sing this song to Him:

Hymn—“Thousands of Conversations“

“If You lead me a way that I know,
It would not benefit like the ways unknown.
As You lead me a way that I don’t understand,
I only can open to You.

This leads to thousands of conversations:
“Who are You, Lord? What shall I do?”
Each one forms a piece of our journey together,
An eternal memorial between me and You”

This term, I learned to gradually open more and more to the Lord, having countless conversations with Him and allowing Him to work Himself into me as my faith and my believing power. Because of this, today I can say that the Lord is very real to me.

For God to be real to us, we all need to know Him subjectively. No matter how much we objectively know that God is real, we cannot be satisfied with this knowledge, nor with “borrowed light” or others’ experience of the Lord (hearsay in update 9). Just like the cheesecake being passed around in update 7, we can only know its deliciousness by subjectively experiencing and enjoying it.

Whenever we feel weak, it is the perfect opportunity to stand against our feelings and exercise our spirit of faith (2 Cor. 4:13). With our little power (Rev. 3:8), we can turn to Him and open ourselves unreservedly. In this way, we give Him full access in our being, and we ask Him to shine on us and reveal Himself to us personally, so that we may know Him and believe in Him. The key is simply to open to Him.

2—Who else is worthy?

When I asked this question at the beginning of the term, my mindset was still framed around sacrifice. But 20 weeks later, my concept on this matter has changed. This song truly encapsulates my current, transformed view:

Hymn—“If I Gained the World, but Lost the Savior“

“If I gained the world, but lost the Savior,
Would my gain be worth the lifelong strife?
Are all earthly pleasures worth comparing
For a moment with a Christ-filled life?”

Coming to the FTTA to learn how to live a Christ-filled life—seeking first His kingdom (Matt. 6:33) and being His at any price—should never be spoken of as a sacrifice, but rather a privilege untold (Hymn #473). Nothing is more important than His presence, and we should care only for His presence4. This was my realization after reflecting on my original question, but more importantly, I realized that the Lord is not only worthy of our time; He is worthy of so much more, especially our first love and our praise.

In the recent Semiannual Training5, I really enjoyed learning what it means to give the Lord our first love:

• Give Him the first place in all things (Col. 1:18)

• Take Him as the center, content, and circumference of our personal universe

  • “He is before all things, and all things cohere in Him” (Col. 1:17)

• Behold His beauty and ask for the counsel of Jehovah in every detail of our Christian life and work (Psa. 27:4)

• Be dominated, governed, directed, and moved by our mingled spirit

  • “Lord, conquer me. Never let me win. Defeat me all the time!”

• Have a clear sky with God's sapphire throne above it

  • Nothing is between us and the Lord, and He can rule and reign within us

When we love Him with our first love, being constrained by His love (2 Cor. 5:14), the Lord can make His home in our hearts through faith, enabling us to know Him and His knowledge-surpassing love (Eph. 3:17-19).

Hymn—“O that Christ May Make His Home“

“O that Christ may make His home my heart,
Spread Himself in every part!
Saturate and life impart!
That with all saints, I may apprehend
All the vast dimensions of my loving Christ”

He is also worthy of our praise. In Revelation 5, John wept “because no one was found worthy to open the scroll” (v. 4). But Christ, the Lion of the tribe of Judah who defeated the enemy (v. 5), and the Lamb who was slain for our redemption (v. 6), is “worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals” (v. 9). Praise the Lord—there is One worthy! Worthy is the Lamb (v. 12)!

Here we see that in the whole universe, no one is worthy to open the seals and the mystery of God's economy except Christ, the overcoming Lion and the redeeming Lamb. He alone is qualified, and this aspect of the His worthiness is universal and immeasurable, because without this scroll, the universe would have no meaning. For this reason, as we follow the Lamb, He is worthy of our praise and even of our lives.

Hymn—“These are They Who Follow the Lamb“

“These are they (who are undefiled,)
These are they (without guile.)
These are they who follow the Lamb.
These are they (who were purchased)
From among men, (firstfruits to God.)
These are they who follow the Lamb, who follow the Lamb”

3—There is no one, only you Jesus

“Whom do I have in heaven but You? / And besides You there is nothing I desire on earth” (Psa. 73:25)

Amen! This was my subjective experience6 of learning to know and love the Lord at the FTTA. Through many encounters and conversations with Him this term, He restored to me the gladness of His salvation and sustained me with a willing spirit (Psa. 51:12) to continue pursuing Him. Now that term 1 is over, it’s time to forget the things which are behind and stretch forward to the things which are before7.

Needless to say, I will be coming back for more dispensing, perfecting, and pursuing—see you all in term 2.

Final Thoughts

Interim

The first-term bros are having regular (daily) prayer calls throughout the interim to be knit together in love (Col. 2:2). Keep us and our going on in your hearts, and also let us know how we can pray for you!

Nuggets (from Semiannual)

• “Buckle up, we are going to the throne”

  • Seeing Him as our King is like experiencing another salvation

  • When we get into our spirit, we are dethroned

  • We are destined to be kings, and His desire is to make us people of the throne

• The law is a still photograph of God, but Christ is a living movie of God

• When people see us, they see Christ—this is a high definition of the church

  • We should glory in oneness, not in differences or in standing out

• He is the Alpha and the Omega—what He originates, He consummates

• Service is God coming into us and coming out of us

  • God's only goal in time is to dispense Himself into us day by day

• The tree of life is the crucified and resurrected Christ (1 Pet. 2:24, John 11:25)

  • Every kind of problem is a result of a shortage of life

  • Human concepts are dark because they alienate and separate us from God (Eph. 4:18)

• We need to frequently proclaim the victory of Christ!

• Faith means that we believe God is—He is everything to us and we are nothing

• “And Enoch walked with God, and he was not, for God took him” (Gen. 5:24)

  • Every moment is an encounter with Him

• “Will we choose the way of ministry over gift?”

Hymn—“I Live, If You Stand Firm in the Lord“

“I live, if you stand firm in the Lord.
You live, if I stand firm in the Lord.
My going on is for you,
Your going on is for me,
Not separate entities,
I need you saints desperately!”

After joining local families for Thanksgiving meals, the Training returned to Oak Glen to tune in to the conference in Indianapolis on the “all-inclusive Christ as revealed in Matthew.” That weekend, we saw Christ unveiled as the living Star1, the Physician and the Bridegroom2, the center of the processed Triune God3, the One who gives us rest4, and the One who has all authority in heaven and on earth5. He also bears a mighty name—Jesus, His name given by God (Matt. 1:21), and Emmanuel, His name called by man (Matt. 1:23).

Jesus is not merely a title, but Jehovah Himself being our Savior and becoming our salvation. I enjoyed seeing how His name saves us, moment by moment, from our moods, doubts, and unbelief. He is the eternal “I Am” (Exo. 3:14), the One who always is, and His name has everything we need—light, life, power, wisdom, and rest. When we simply call, “Oh Lord Jesus,” we receive Him as the all-inclusive One.

Actually, when we call on the Lord Jesus, we get into His Person. His name is for us to believe into (John 1:12), be baptized into (Acts 8:16), and to be saved by calling upon it (Rom. 10:13). In His name we are healed (Acts 4:10), washed, sanctified, and justified (1 Cor. 6:11). Calling on the Lord is like spiritual breathing: we breathe out what troubles us and breathe in the Spirit.

“But flee youthful lusts, and pursue righteousness, faith, love, peace with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart” (2 Tim. 2:22)

I also really enjoyed these six points on how to call on the Lord6:

1. Out of a pure heart (2 Tim. 2:22)

   1. Not looking for a feeling, or an experience, but just looking for Him

   2. “Lord, we don’t need a leading; we just need You”

2. With a pure lip (Zep. 3:9)

   1. By repenting for our unclean lips and enjoying the cleansing of the blood

3. With an open mouth (Psa. 81:10)

4. Corporately (2 Tim. 2:22)

5. Daily (Psa. 88:9)

6. For all our days (Psa. 116:2)

One highlight of the conference was the 15 minutes we spent calling on the Lord. Though we scattered across the camp to call separately, the entire place resonated with the sweet echo of His name. By the end, there was truly nothing between us and the Lord.

“Behold, the virgin shall be with child and shall bear a son, and they shall call His name Emmanuel” (Matt. 1:23)

Finally, I was touched by His name, Emmanuel, which means God with us. This is the name we call after having some experience and realization that God is truly with us. He is not only our Savior, Redeemer, Life-giver, but also the all-inclusive, indwelling Spirit. As Emmanuel, He is not only outside of us, but His presence is always with us in our spirit all the days (Matt. 28:20).

We know that we have His presence when we sense His smile as we look into the index of His eyes. This is what it means for Paul to live in the person of Christ (2 Cor. 2:10). Today, we need to ask the Lord not merely for His help, but for His presence and smile. May the Lord be merciful and not allow anything to rob us of His presence. Whatever hindrances we may face, if we have His presence, we have already overcome. When we have Emmanuel, we have everything.

Videos—Oak Glen Singing & Sick-day Harmonizing w.Sam (“Mighty Name of Jesus”)

Family Matters

It was just another Saturday morning in week 17. I was exhausted, thinking about finals, and expecting nothing profound in CYPC class (sorry). Then I was moved to the front row, and my eyes landed on the lesson title: “Cooperating with God for His Move as Parents Entrusted With Their Children to Cultivate and Nurture Them in the Lord.” I had to lock in immediately…

Marriage and family life are essential parts of God’s move on the earth. Contrary to the thought that singleness makes someone more “useful” to God, God’s ordination is that we are married for His purpose7. Marriage, and eventually children, are not distractions from God’s move but a continuation of it.

Parents are entrusted with their children, who are ultimately God’s possession, and are responsible to cultivate and nurture their humanity so they can become vessels useful to the Lord. This requires living under a “divine limitation”—not being absorbed in our career8, possessions, or activities for children, but making decisions joined to the Lord and living because of Him.

“Because I live, you also shall live” (John 14:19b)

The goal is of parenting “in the Lord” is not outward success but producing God-men, that children would grow up loving the Lord, valuing the church life, and choosing God’s purpose for themselves. For this, parents must be one with each other, exercise self-control, and live out what they teach to raise children with proper discipline, humility, and aspirations.

May the Lord gain many such families, that the church may be strengthened and God’s economy can advance through the generations.

The Last Dance

With the term coming to an end, fatigue and illness have swept through the Training. Mike and I were no exception. Yet, despite battling flu and fever9 in week 18, we toughed it out for one last dance together at USC.

On Friday, we met with two students that we regularly have appointments with, both of whom expressed gratitude and shared that our time together has helped them in their Christian journey, especially in understanding the fundamentals. Though disappointed that the trainees won’t return to USC until March, they are looking forward to resuming appointments next semester.

“God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truthfulness” (John 4:24)

We concluded the time by each praying according to John 4:24—praying to God in our spirit with genuine sincerity over something we were thankful for this term. In the end, we parted with smiles as the students sailed off into the sunset, and Mike and I headed back home to Anaheim. Crawling through LA traffic during the 1.5-hour drive, the consensus was clear—it was all worth it.

Looking back on this term, one of my favorite memories was leading a home meeting with Mike in week 11.

Brother Ben was out of town that weekend, so Mike and I volunteered to lead the meeting in his place. Our group had been reading through the Bible (one chapter a week) and that Friday we would be covering Acts 8. In this chapter, we wanted to touch the matter of receiving the economical Spirit of power through the laying of hands of the disciples10, a truth that is by no means easy to present.

Because of this, our preparation began a week in advance when we started to brainstorm ways to make this truth more approachable to younger ones. Ultimately, knowing that we have some (little) basketball players in the group, we landed on using an example involving a basketball team: the players representing the believers, the coach representing the disciples, the team jersey representing the economical Spirit of power, and the team representing the Body of Christ. With the blessing of both brother Ben and brother Stephen, we proceeded that night with our game plan.

Upon arriving at the home, however, it became clear that things might not go as planned. First, the USC students brought three new ones to the meeting, which shifted the dynamic and diverted some of our original focus. Then, with the parents not at home, the young people started being themselves (annoying). To top it off, all the ruckus caused dinner to run long and the meeting to start late, leaving little time for the Bible study. Under these circumstances, Mike and I had to stand against our disposition to step up and initiate “crowd control.”

Despite the chaotic start, we were eventually able to deliver the basketball team analogy. In doing so, we exercised the third step of the God-ordained way—perfecting—by supplying the function of the saints through interactive questions, allowing both the students and younger ones to participate. This unique approach helped keep everyone engaged throughout the meeting.

Afterwards, some even shared to us personally that they enjoyed the message and appreciated the basketball analogy. Although the night unfolded differently than expected, we are grateful for the experience, which provides a valuable lesson for hosting future meetings in our homes.

Final Thoughts

Free Book!

I achieved perfect attendance by being punctual for all scheduled events for 4 straight weeks (11-14)! Chasing this feat came at the cost of getting sick and suffering back pain for a week (16), but I’ll learn to better load-manage next time.

Nuggets

• Man’s mingled spirit is a gate of heaven

  • When we touch the Lord Spirit, the Lord as the heavenly ladder instantly brings us to heaven

• To be a law keeper is to be under a curse—it doesn’t matter how well we do (Gal. 3:13)

• First rest, then work, not the other way around

• “Lord, what is your perfect will for me?”

Videos—First day on the job at ESPN!

Video—Brothers Fire Circle (singing “Whispers from Above”)

More Hymns!

1st-term bros dinner singing (SoundCloud)

This time of year always fills my heart with gratitude, and these are just a few of the people I’m thankful for:

• 2103 (house)—for being a goofy bunch

• Sam & Jasper (2103)—for late night snacks

• Carlos (roommate)—for phone basket

• Mike (GP)—for being a pattern

• Tomi (USC)—for being genuine (& always around)

• Gary (USC)—for fast & furious driving

• Elona & Imani (USC)—for GOW reading in the car

• Josue (my guy)—for positive vibes

• Ezra (Philly)—for Boston singing time

• Daniel (Philly)—for pick & pop all day

Giving thanks is easy when we “count our blessings,” especially when we consider what the Lord has done for us or supplied us with. But when our blessings seem to run out, or when our situation grows dim, it’s not as easy to feel thankful. God’s will for us, however, is to give thanks in everything—not only when things are good, but also when they are hard.

“Always rejoice, Unceasingly pray, In everything give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you” (1 Thes. 5:16-18)

In these verses, Paul gave three seemingly “impossible” commands—always rejoice, unceasingly pray, and in everything give thanks. He was not speaking theoretically but from personal experience. Paul’s life was anything but trouble-free, yet even in the midst of persecution and suffering, he was full of thanks. How is this possible?

This was Paul’s secret for giving thanks for all things—“in the name of the Lord Jesus.”1 To be in the Lord’s name is to be in His person and to be one with Him. Practically, to be one with Him and live Him, we simply need to contact Him in our spirit by praying and calling on His name.

May we be those who do all things in Him and give thanks in everything!

A Peaceful Life

This weekend, our house took a night out in LA and fellowshipped with some USC brothers over dinner. Toward the end, we sang hymn #719 again and again, pray-reading each line on the many ways to enjoy God’s perfect peace and rest.

Hymn #719—“Like A River Glorious” (YouTube)

“Stayed upon Christ Jesus,
Hearts are fully blest;
Finding, as He promised,
Perfect peace and rest”

The life of a Christian should be characterized by quietness and trust2. A helpful illustration is a hurricane: although the wind turns furiously around it, its eye remains perfectly still. Likewise, our strength lies in a life that revolves around a stable center. Outward activities may swirl like furious winds, yet inwardly we can remain at peace. In the midst of a busy daily life, we are not idle, but we can still expect peace and quietness as we go on. This is God’s promise to us—that in quietness and in trust will be our strength.

Thank you, the Lord Jehovah, for your perfect peace and rest!

Lord Spirit3

As Christians, we have the wonderful fact that Christ died and resurrected for us. But we must go further and see that He is continually reaching and supplying us (Gal. 3:5) as the consummated Spirit. With this realization, we are rescued from merely having an objective knowledge of Christ or trying to imitate Jesus outwardly, and we can enter into a deeper, subjective enjoyment end experience of Him.

“O foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was openly portrayed crucified? This only I wish to learn from you, Did you receive the Spirit out of the works of law or out of the hearing of faith?” (Gal. 3:1-2)

In Galatians 3:1-2, we see that after the Lord died and resurrected, He now lives as the Spirit4. “Christ” in Galatians 3:1 is “the Spirit” in 3:2. Today, the Spirit is more real5 than anything our hands can touch, even more real than Jesus the Nazarene on the earth. In our spirit, we can access the Triune God who dwells in unapproachable light (1 Tim. 6:16) yet has been processed for our enjoyment.

Thank you, Lord Spirit, for reaching and supplying us!

Greatest Blessing

The greatest blessing, or the blessing of the gospel6, is not merely “going to heaven” or even the forgiveness of sins, but receiving the Spirit, the ultimate consummation of the processed Triune God. When we see this, we won’t wait for a “second blessing,” because we have already received the Spirit, who is now operating within us to bring us into an organic union and divine romance with the Lord. There is nothing higher than this.

“For if we, being enemies, were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more we will be saved in His life, having been reconciled” (Rom. 5:10)

According to Romans 5:10, we were once enemies to God, even diametrically opposed to Him. But through the death of His Son, we were reconciled to God—this is for our judicial redemption. The same verse also shows us that in His life, we will saved much more, having been reconciled—this is for our organic salvation.

Why are there two mentions of us being “reconciled”? This is because a relationship requires both sides. The first reconciliation is on His side—His initiation, His care, and His seeking a relationship with us. The second reconciliation is on our side—our responding to Him, appreciating Him, and loving Him back. As we enter into this divine romance with Him, we are brought back to God and are being saved much more in His life.

Thank you, Lord, for saving us much more!

Final Thoughts

Transpo

I passed the mock test—the penultimate step before officially becoming a shuttle driver! The final step is taking the CDL road exam in Compton after Thanksgiving.

Nuggets

• “Stop trying, just let Him…”—some third-termer

• “Just as we know our address and phone number because they’re part of our daily life, the verses also need to become part of our daily living so that they can be constituted into our being”—another third-termer

• The main goal of coordination is to touch the Spirit together

  • Nothing that hasn’t passed through the cross can enter through the door (Exo. 12)

• Our honeymoon with the Lord is to fight the enemy corporately

  • “Isn’t that wonderful?”

Hymn—“What Will Turn Our Sorrows To Joy”

“O thank You, Jesus—
Your care, Your love unchanging.
In everything, we can praise and sing;
No more complaining,
Our joy maintaining through the
One who supplies all our needs!”

This past weekend, we headed up to Oak Glen for the 2025 Fall College Conference, where hundreds of college students from across Southern California gathered to learn about “The Wonderful Jesus” as revealed in the Gospel of John. Despite the frigid weather and persistent rain all weekend, the atmosphere and my experience weren’t dampened one bit. I got to spend a lot of time with the students over meals, basketball1, and group pursuit times, and Oak Glen’s well-known food lived up to the hype. One of the brothers from USC was also baptized, making the weekend even more joyful. Overall, the conference was a highlight of the term and a refreshing break from the normal schedule at the FTTA.

In brief, we learned that Christ is the:

• Lamb of God2

  • People atone for sins in many different ways, but only the blood of Christ can deal with our sinful nature and wash away our sins

• Bronze serpent3

  • God’s salvation is so simple—all we have to do is look at Him as the One made in the “likeness of the flesh of sin” (Rom. 8:3)

• Grain of wheat4

  • Inconveniences are designed by God to “crack” our soul-life, allowing life to be added to us and dispensed to others (John 12:24-25)

• Word5

  • Whether He speaks or not, He is declaring and expressing God

• Bread of Life6

  • We are occupied with doing something for God, but He just wants us to eat Him

• True vine7

  • We are branches grafted into Christ to bear fruit for the Father’s glorification

One word that describes the bridge of time between Christ’s crucifixion (Psa. 22) and the coming kingdom of God (Psa. 24) is shepherding (Psa. 23), which means to take all-inclusive care of the flock. As the good Shepherd, Christ laid down His human soul-life that we, His sheep, might receive His divine, eternal life abundantly. Today, the Lord as the one Shepherd has formed the believers into one flock, the church, and He is shepherding us inwardly with life and peace. Sometimes, He even allows us to walk through “the valley of the shadow of death” (Psa. 23:4) so that we would turn to Him and be comforted by His presence.

However, we must see that we are not only sheep but are also shepherds ourselves…

Hymn—“Do You Love Me?”

“Do you love me? Feed my lambs,
Do you love me? Shepherd my sheep,
Do you love me? Then give My sheep something to eat”

As seen in this hymn and in John 21:15-17, the Lord asked Peter three times, “Do you love Me?” mirroring Peter’s three denials of Jesus in the courtyard. Although the Lord was seemingly reminding Peter of his shortcomings, He still commissioned Peter to feed His lambs and shepherd His sheep. This shows that even someone who considered himself a “failure” was still qualified to shepherd because he loved the Lord.

This is relevant for all believers today: no matter how we feel about ourselves, the Lord desires us to be part of His flock of shepherds who will nourish others and build up the church. In this age of mutual shepherding, the Lord shepherds us so that we may shepherd and perfect others (Eph. 4:11-12), enabling them also to become shepherds.

Satan’s Plot ♟️9

While we work with God to accomplish His economy, His adversary actively seeks to oppose Him and His plan. Like a cunning chess grandmaster, Satan maneuvers his pieces to create traps and force us into unpleasant positions. To counter and prevail, we must anticipate his moves and defend our weaknesses. Satan’s strategies to spoil God’s plan are revealed in the detailed account of man’s fall in Genesis 3.

Strategy #1—Posing harmless questions

“Now the serpent was more crafty than any other animal... And he said to the woman, Did God really say, You shall not eat of any tree of the garden?” (Gen. 3:1)

With a subtle opening move, Satan in 3:1 approaches Eve by hiding himself behind the serpent—something seemingly small and harmless. Today, Satan doesn’t come “in a red suit with a pitchfork”; instead, he often comes indirectly through questions such as, “Doesn’t God want Christians to have any fun? Why don’t you try this once? Maybe once more? Just one last time?” Even the shape of the serpent resembles a question mark. If we are not watchful, we can gradually drift and take in Satan as a substitute for God.

Strategy #2—Causing us to be content with hearsay

“And the woman said to the serpent… God has said, You shall not eat of it, nor shall you touch it, lest you die” (Gen. 3:2-3)

Since Eve had not yet been created in 2:17, she must have received God’s command indirectly from Adam. As a result, her position in God’s word was unstable. Knowing this, Satan launched his middle-game attack, tempting Eve with a question, and she blundered the advantage when she engaged and answered it in 3:2. This shows us that we should not be satisfied with someone else’s experience or word, but should contact God and receive His speaking directly.

Strategy #3—Causing our mind to doubt God’s word

“And the serpent said to the woman, You shall not surely die! For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will become like God” (Gen. 3:4-5)

Satan’s response in 3:4-5 directly contradicted God’s word in 2:17, showing that his goal in the endgame was not to win a debate with Eve but to engage her mind and distract her from exercising her spirit. He even stirred up her emotion and undermined her trust in God by suggesting that God was keeping her from “becoming like God”.

Actually, by eating of the tree of life, we would “become God” in life, nature, and expression—we should never settle for anything less than this. Rather than engaging in debates, we should simply flee or even command Satan to “Go away!” This is how we defend our position, setting our mind on the things of God and standing firm in His word.

What should we do?

Unfortunately, in 3:6 man exercised his soul to reason with the serpent and to take the fruit, failing to use his spirit to contact God. As a result, man’s entire being became contaminated by Satan, falling into checkmate by the enemy. Today, the evil is present with man (Rom. 7:21), man’s spirit is deadened (Eph. 2:1), and man is alienated from God (Eph. 4:18).

In ourselves, we can’t withstand Satan’s assaults and the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenlies (Eph. 6:12). This is why we need to live by our mingled spirit by setting our mind on the spirit (Rom. 8:6) and take up the whole armor of God (Eph. 6) by being in the Body. When we do this, we are safeguarded under Christ’s headship and can overcome the devil to fulfill God’s purpose.

Bonus—“Why did Adam also eat the fruit?”

Because Adam had received God’s command directly, he knew the certain outcome of eating from the wrong tree. Yet he still chose to eat the fruit. Perhaps the thought of being separated from the woman for eternity was too difficult for him to bear, that he would rather suffer the consequences than to lose her.

This is a picture of Christ and how much He loves us. Even when we were polluted in our entire being, He was willing to descend to us, put on the flesh of sin, and even die for us because He could not bear the thought of being separated from us—the church as His bride, His “queen,” the masterpiece of the King.10

Grace of God

Through man’s fall, Satan was injected into man’s being. It is therefore foolish for fallen man to endeavor to keep the Mosaic law, because even if we could improve our outward sinful behavior, our inward evil nature would remain untouched. But praise the Lord, grace came through Jesus Christ! John 1:17 shows us that grace is greater than the law.

“For of His fullness we have all received, and grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses; grace and reality came through Jesus Christ” (John 1:16-17)

The grace of God is just the Lord Himself, or the Triune God processed to be everything to us. He is our redemption, salvation, life, sanctification, and transformation, and He will also become our conformation, glorification, and eternity. Grace is not merely a favor or something physical or material; it is the subjective Triune God coming to live in us.

Grace is versus the law, or the totality of our natural man. Paul, for example, was a law keeper, zealous in serving God and upholding his fathers’ tradition in order to please God and establish his own self-righteousness. Whenever we strive to be right according to our own standards and ways, we remain under the law, working out our self-righteousness through our natural effort.

But God has sent His Son as grace, not only to satisfy His righteous requirements by dealing with our sin, but also to terminate our fallen natural man (Gal. 2:20).

“I do not nullify the grace of God; for if righteousness is through law, then Christ has died for nothing” (Gal. 2:21)

Even with all that He has done for us, can you imagine that we can nullify the grace of God (Gal. 2:21)? If we don’t cooperate with the Lord and deny Him the opportunity to live in us, we neglect and nullify what He has accomplished, causing us to fall from grace (Gal. 5:4) and see it as in vain (2 Cor. 6:1). We should not nullify the grace of God by going back to the law! Grace already has been given to us—we just need to take it and enjoy it.

Final Thoughts

Gospel Trip

I was assigned to Florida for my interim gospel trip in January! My team of six will be traveling between Orlando, Tampa, Fort Myers, and Gainesville to blend with the saints in each locality and participate in the local gospel work. May His perfect will be done in Florida!

Nuggets

• What is impossible with man is possible with God

• The universe came into existence for the purpose of describing Him

• The only two things certain in life are “Jesus is Lord and Satan is a loser”

• There is an indescribable joy when we bring someone to Christ

• God is not after us improving our behavior, but He wants to come in to be what we cannot be

• Do we want good, orderly, and formal, or do we want love, life, and light?

More Team Pictures!

Video—Spontaneous harmonizing w.Sam (“Lord, I just love You”)

9

I like playing chess ♟️

Few rivalries run as deep as that between USC and UCLA, with the tension spilling beyond the football field into academia and even the FTTA gospel teams. Yet, after years of quiet animosity, representatives from both sides miraculously met in a peace treaty meeting (see update 7) and, being diligent to keep the oneness of the Spirit in the uniting bond of peace (Eph. 4:3), decided to gather the teams on Friday night, October 31. And so, on the evening of Hallow, the teams dressed up in business casual and finally met—not as enemies, but as fellow partakers of the glory to be revealed (1 Pet. 5:1). Overcoming differences and history, that night shall be forever commemorated as the Large Group Gathering of Fall 2025.

Videos—Trying something new!

[Hymn—“Now from My Heart Comes” (YouTube)]

[USC team tradition to race whilst visiting UCLA—had to smoke Mike real quick]

My Instagram Verse

For those who follow me on social media, you know that my favorite Bible verse, or my “Instagram bio verse,” is none other than Galatians 2:20.

“I am crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live in faith, the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me” (Gal. 2:20)

In week 12, we took a deep dive into this verse in God’s Economy class, and I wanted to share two key takeaways that I particularly enjoyed:

1—Old “I” vs New “I”

A basic aspect of the truth of the gospel is that “Christ lives in me.”1 However, this is not an exchanged life where we exchange our “pitiful” life for Christ’s “superior” life. In Galatians 2:20, Paul says “it is no longer I who live” but continues by saying “I live,” showing no thought of an exchanged life. Rather, there is the concept of the old “I” versus the new “I.”

According to Romans 6:6, our old man has been crucified with Christ. This is the old “I” which had nothing of God in it. But through regeneration, we received God as the divine life, which resurrected the terminated old “I” and made it a new “I” with God added to it. This is how we can live a grafted life with the Lord, where we as the branches have one life and one living with the Christ as the tree. He lives in us, and we live by Him.

Actually, this resurrected new “I” is joined to Christ in ascension (Eph. 2:6). This means that we are joined to the crucified, resurrected, and ascended Lord in our spirit. In this grafted life with the Lord, we live in two realms simultaneously, and our mingled spirit2 is a gate of heaven. By turning to Him in our spirit, we enjoy the Spirit of life in His resurrection as our life and power, and we experience the Spirit of power in His ascension as the all-transcending authority.

“And raised us up together with Him and seated us together with Him in the heavenlies in Christ Jesus” (Eph. 2:6)

2—Faith and Love3

Our Christian life is a life of faith. We became a Christian not because we felt like it, but because we believed in a Person. Something was infused into us and we had to respond—this was faith. We can’t work this out ourselves and try to believe in Him. Genuine faith is Christ Himself infused into us to become our ability to believe in Him. Without Him, there is no faith.

In life, God arranges and allows many things to test our faith. Yet, even when we get discouraged, we should not dwell in our natural feelings but should simply exercise, develop, and cultivate our faith in Him. This allows our problems to be positively used by God to bring us farther into the enjoyment of Him. We began our Christian journey in faith, and we must continue in faith.

Experientially, faith is our appreciation of who the Lord is and of what He has done for us. This is why Galatians 2:20 concludes with “who loved me and gave Himself up for me.” I have always wondered why Paul added this part to the end of the verse, but he deliberately did this because he was filled with appreciation of the Lord Jesus. When we pray, “Lord Jesus, I love You and I treasure You,” our appreciation allows Him to operate within us and become our faith.

The “Answer”

In Genesis 2:174, we see that God’s first commandment was to forbid man from eating of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. This forbidding commandment, given after God put man in front of the tree of life in the middle of the garden, indicates:

• His greatness in allowing man a free will and freedom to choose

  • God did not coerce man to eat from the tree of life or put the fruit inside man

• His love for man in warning us to not live an independent life from Him5

  • God is not knowledge. God is life to us!

• His desire that man would eat Him and live a life dependent on Him

  • We need to eat God organically and assimilate Him metabolically so that our old element is discharged and His new element replaces what we are

An excellent example of a life dependent on God is Abraham, who followed God by faith. As seen in Hebrews 11:8, Abraham was called by God and obeyed to go out, not knowing where he was going. Trainees often ask, “What should I do after I graduate?” but like Abraham, we need to take God’s presence as our living map so that He would become our way, our reality, our life, our future, and our real answer. Christ is the Yes6, the incarnate answer, the fulfillment of all the promises of God to us.

At USC, Mike and I get asked many peculiar questions during appointments. But as I was contemplating to start an excel sheet to track and prepare answers for all these questions, I felt convicted to take the Lord as my pattern when He directed the Samaritan woman in John 4 to God as the living water for her satisfaction. Likewise, rather than focusing on how to answer questions with mere knowledge, we should depend on Him and direct the students to God Himself as the real “Answer.”

A Private Place

“When you pray, enter into your private room, and shut your door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will repay you” (Matt. 6:6)

“After He sent the crowds away, He went up to the mountain privately to pray. And when night fell, He was there alone” (Matt. 14:22)

A proper prayer life is crucial to pray toward God’s interest, to express God’s will, and to pray ourselves into God. Our time with God should be personal, affectionate, and private. Like the Lord said and did in Matthew 6:6 and 14:22, we need to go “up to the mountain” or “enter into our private room” to pray to the Father who is in secret. By enjoying Him in such a private way, we can have deeper experiences of the Lord and reach the depths of others when we contact them7.

Song of Songs 4:12 describes “a garden enclosed, a spring shut up, and a fountain sealed” as something reserved for Christ’s private enjoyment. This shows that, as lovers of Christ, we need to have something private and hidden for Christ alone. Having direct intimate contact with the Lord is what enables us to be rooted in Him and have life in the depths.

Final Thoughts

Nuggets

• We shouldn’t care more about hosting a good meeting than dispensing the Person

• Because we have been grafted into Christ, His experience has become our history

• “Lord, let there be nothing between me and you!”

• Don’t just be an instrument that God can use, but be a vessel that He can fill

• Turn from a life of living for God to a life living to God

• “Not I, but Christ” is the true meaning of a normal Christian life

Hymn—“Lovers of Christ”

“Lovers of Christ in His ascension
Enjoy the riches of His life.
She becomes His private garden
With its fountain, fruit, and spice.
Christ is hers and she is Christ’s dear love.”

Team Pictures

Halfway Through

Halfway through means midterm season, which went surprisingly well—we’ve completed six exams so far, with one more Greek exam next week (might fail). Objectively, I did great, acing every test except one, and I should be happy with the results. But here’s the catch: at the FTTA, tests are meant for our enjoyment.

As many trainees have shared, exams are simply an overflow of what we enjoyed of the Lord throughout the term. Our goal is not the scores, but to gain and enjoy Christ. Looking back on my midterm prep, I realized I slipped into old habits, focusing on content and relying on my soul rather than exercising my spirit. As a result, I didn’t enjoy the process as much as I should have. I hope to learn from this and, when finals come, to study in a way that truly allows me to enjoy the Lord by apprehending the Person in the Word.

“You search the Scriptures, because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is these that testify concerning Me” (John 5:39)

Regardless, here are some tidbits that I enjoyed from some (3) of the midterms:

1—Full Ministry of Christ

The full ministry of Christ is in three stages—incarnation, inclusion, and intensification. This term, we are focused on the stage of inclusion, where all that Christ has accomplished in His human living, crucifixion, and resurrection is being included and added to us through the life-giving Spirit. Here are two aspects of Christ’s work and person in resurrection that I appreciated:

• Dying as a grain of wheat (John 12:24)

  • A grain of wheat is difficult to identify because it looks the same as other grains. But after it falls into the ground, its shell is broken and wheat is produced by the life within the shell of the grain. Likewise, when the Lord was on the earth, He was a man outwardly, and people did not see His divinity from His appearance. But after He died and resurrected, His divinity became apparent as He became the firstborn Son of God (Acts 13:33). His human flesh was broken and His life flowed out to produce many grains, the believers, who received His life and nature (1 Pet. 1:3) to be His many reproduction.

• Christ is being dispensed into us!

  • Even though our body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness and He can give life to our mortal bodies (Rom. 8:10-11). Because Christ is in us as the life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45b), we have His divinity added to our humanity, and we are God-men. He is always with us and is even daily transforming us by imparting more of Himself into us to gain more ground in every part of our tripartite being.

“And if the Spirit of the One who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who indwells you” (Rom. 8:11)

2—God’s Economy

God’s economy is God’s plan to dispense Himself into us. We see this in Ephesians 3, where Paul writes that the revelation of the mystery of Christ was made known to him (3:3-4) and the prophets in spirit (3:5). The Spirit being in our spirit is how the unsearchably rich Triune God can dispense Himself into us, to be our life, life supply, and everything. Paul then announces the unsearchable riches of Christ as the gospel and makes known the economy of the mystery (3:8-9), which is God’s economy or plan to dispense Himself into us. This is the eternal purpose He made in Christ Jesus our Lord (3:11). Later on in the chapter, we see four instances of the word “that” in 3:16-19, which show the fourfold result of the dispensing of the Divine Trinity. Here, we see that (1) the indwelling Triune God can grant us strength and power through His Spirit, (2) Christ can make His home in our hearts, (3) we may be rooted and grounded in love to be full of strength to apprehend the dimensions and love of Christ, and (4) we can be filled unto all the fullness of God. These verses from Ephesians 3 alone show us a metabolic process of the Triune God’s dispensing which allows us to experience and enjoy Him!

“And to know the knowledge-surpassing love of Christ, that you may be filled unto all the fullness of God” (Eph. 3:19)

3—The Spirit

The Spirit has different aspects which are highlighted in different books in the Bible:

• Life-giving Spirit in 1 Corinthians1

• Transforming Spirit in 2 Corinthians2

• Blessing of the gospel in Galatians3

• Spirit of the Body in Ephesians4

• Bountiful supply of Jesus Christ in Philippians5

• Source and element of love in Colossians6

I particularly enjoyed the aspect of the Spirit in Galatians—the blessing of the gospel. This blessing is not for us to go to heaven or receive forgiveness of sins, but that we might receive the promise of the Spirit (Gal. 3:14), who is the ultimate consummation of the processed Triune God. This is the fulfillment of the promise made to Abraham in Genesis 12—the good land which typifies the all-inclusive Christ who would eventually be realized as the life-giving Spirit. Today, we can receive this blessing of the Spirit by simply looking away unto Jesus, and faith will rise up within us as our believing power (Heb. 12:2). To believe is to receive (John 1:12).

“Looking away unto Jesus, the Author and Perfecter of our faith” (Heb. 12:2a)

The Cheesecake7

The thought of enjoying God might seem unusual, but the Bible says clearly that we can (and should) eat God and His words.

Psalm 34:8 and 1 Peter 2:3 tell us to just taste and see that God is good. In John 6:51, the Lord says that He is the bread of life, and 1 Peter 2:2 says that the word is guileless milk for newborn babes. Because He is food to us, He can be enjoyed by us to become our nourishment and our inward element. This is the sweet and intimate relationship God desires to have with us.

“Your words were found and I ate them, and Your word became to me the gladness and joy of my heart” (Jer. 15:16)

In Jeremiah 15:16, we see a clear instruction from the Bible to eat God’s words. Of course, this is spiritually speaking, but in this way, we can receive real supply and nourishment from the Word, just as the Lord did when He starved in the wilderness for forty days. While the devil tempted Him, He said that “man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that proceeds out through the mouth of God” (Matt. 4:4).

For God to become food for us to eat, He gave Himself to us in the person of the Son through incarnation (John 1:14; 3:16). The Son is the gift that God has given us, and grace is our enjoyment of this gift (John 1:17). This can be illustrated by a simple example of us being gifted a cheesecake 🍰.

A cheesecake is like cheese in the form of a cake. In the same way, Christ (the “cake”) is the embodiment and expression of God (the “cheese”). By going through a process, the cheese has become a cake that is rich, sweet, and ready to be enjoyed. Likewise, through incarnation, God became a man and passed through a process so that He could be eaten and enjoyed by us. This is the gift that God has given us.

Cheesecake is wonderful, and when it is passed to us in a home meeting, we simply cannot resist taking a slice onto our plate. But often, as we hold the cake, we stop to analyze it, studying its layers and wondering about its ingredients, and before long, we pass it on to the next person without tasting it.

This is a picture of us in our Christian lives. We may know about the cheesecake as we see it being passed around, and we may even receive it, but we haven’t eaten it. If we don’t partake of the cheesecake, it can never become our enjoyment. God in the Son is only a gift, and He has not become grace to us yet. But once we eat, the gift becomes grace, and the cheesecake becomes our enjoyment!

So, have we eaten the cheesecake? Have we tasted it? Has it become our enjoyment? We must see this and come to the Him as the Spirit to partake of Him.

Final Thoughts

Transpo

• I have started allocating five hours of study time per week (mandatory) to transpo training. This time includes learning the pre-trip process (especially the air brake system), practicing to operate the bus through cone drills, and gaining driving experience on the road. Please join me in prayer that I would not see these times as a sacrifice, but a privilege untold to serve the trainees with the Lord as the real serving One in me.

Nuggets

• We have been freed from the Mosaic law which makes demands, but offers no supply to meet those demands

• The greatest invasion in history is that of the divine essence of God into Christ’s humanity, thereby saturating, deifying, divinizing, and sonizing it

• Our relationship with the Lord is one of union, mingling, and incorporation

• Our destiny is to gain Christ, live Christ, and magnify Christ

  • We might come close to Christ at the FTTA but not gain Him

  • “I want to have more Christ revealed in me!”

• Our human life is a life of anxiety, whereas God’s life is a life of enjoyment, rest, comfort, and satisfaction

“In nothing be anxious, but in everything, by prayer and petition with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God” (Phil. 4:6)

Hymn—“Whispers From Above“

“There are times and times again,
When my love seems far away;
The hours would stretch, the days turn gray;
All the while, I know not how,
In my darkest hour, He prays
In the saints, oh, for my sake.”

Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus1, to all the saints in Philadelphia (and wherever you are): Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.2

First, I thank my God for you all, making mention of you in my prayers, for your continual support in reading and responding to my email updates. For your love and encouragement have been a cause of joy, and I give thanks to God always for you.

I am also pleased to report that in week 7, I was preserved by the Lord’s grace and did not “crash out,” but was able to pass my CDL written test, to the praise of His name. I can now apply myself to learning to drive the bus, that I may be prepared by the December semiannual for the service of the trainees and saints.

Finally, I exhort you to strive together with me in your prayers to God, for the trainees concerning our midterms which begin this week, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ may give to us a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the full knowledge of Him.3

The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you and your spirit.4 Amen.

Paul’s Gospel5

“Brothers and sisters, did you know that Christ is in you?!!!”

This famous statement by a fellow trainee, already resonating deeply in my heart, became even more profound as I learned the significance of Paul’s gospel in the light of God’s New Testament economy this week.

“Which is not another gospel, only there are some who trouble you and desire to pervert the gospel of Christ” (Gal. 1:7)

Paul’s gospel is “not another gospel,” but a “unique gospel” that focuses on different aspects of the same gospel. The focal point of Paul’s gospel is God Himself in His Trinity becoming the processed all-inclusive Spirit to be life and everything to us for our enjoyment today and our glory in the future. This is why God has come into us.

It is unfortunate that millions of Christians have no realization that Christ is in them. This is why we need to get into Paul’s gospel, because in it we see not only the aspects of the first four gospels (kingdom6 in Matthew, service7 in Mark, forgiveness8 in Luke, and life9 in Luke), but so much more, including (but not limited to) the following:

• Justification by faith (Rom. & Gal.)

• Christ living in us (Gal. 2:20)

• Christ in us is the hope of glory (Col. 1:27)

• Christ making his home in our heart (Eph. 3:17)

• Spirit of Christ is a seal and a pledge (Eph. 1:13-14)

Receiving direct revelation from God, Paul was able to write his 14 epistles as the gospel of completion. As a slave of Christ, he preached according to this revelation, not to please men, but to please God. For this reason, Paul’s writings are essential to God’s economy and form the very heart, the center, of the New Testament revelation.

“Of which I became a minister according to the stewardship of God, which was given to me for you, to complete the word of God” (Col. 1:25)

A Kingdom of Priests

“And you shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Exo. 19:6)

God’s original intention is that all His people be priests, those who serve Him directly. This week I was impressed that even the Lord Jesus became a man and preached the gospel Himself. As believers who are children of God and organic members of the Body of Christ, we are priests with the right and burden to preach the gospel and dispense the living Christ as life to people we contact.

The life of Christ will operate and flow out of us only if the death of Christ also operates in us. For this, we need to pray and take the cross that our service could be by life, not by our natural ability. We also should to give the Lord the preeminence of our heart with our first and best love. If we love the Lord, we will feed the lamb and shepherd His sheep as genuine priests. This is how we serve as many priests in God’s holy and royal priesthood (1 Pet. 2:5, 2:9).

What pleases God is that Christ not only come into us but also live in us (Gal. 2:20) and be formed in us (Gal. 4:19), enabling us to live a life that expresses God. These are the foundational points in Paul’s basic gospel10 that should be preached so that all may receive and express Christ.

Final Thoughts

USC

I went on cold gospel! For the first time this term, my day at USC was not packed with appointments, so Mike and I had time to preach the gospel as we explored campus. Though we were repeatedly rejected and ignored at first, we endured in tribulation, persevered in prayer, and rejoiced in hope. Eventually, we ran into a student who was seeking to know the Lord. We had a 40-minute conversation full of mutual shepherding and encouragement, and he prayed to receive the Lord!

Nuggets

• The Lord’s resurrection life broke through even the greatest barrier, death

  • We can apply His life to any difficult situation we face

• We need to be saved by our self-made laws; He has done everything and simply asks us to receive

• It is a great honor that God would confide His secret with us

• “The FTTA is like a mother’s womb that determines how we live our Christian life in the world after graduation”—a fourth-term brother

Hymn—“Never Did I Dream Before”

“Day by day the world goes on,
Just as it has gone before.
Millions grasp and clutch at life,
Wond’ring if there could be more;
Such was I and would be, yet
Mercy found me out somehow;
With what gratefulness I say,
“I’m in God’s own family now.”

Three weeks have flown by and I have just completed my sixth week at the Training. Entering week 7, I find myself both eager1 and somewhat uncertain to see what it will bring. Apparently, this week is considered the “crash out” week, when people’s true selves begin to show. By this point, the initial energy and enthusiasm have worn off, and everyone has moved beyond the initial “feel-out” stage, settling into their new lives as the challenges of the Training become more apparent.

For me, the biggest challenge so far has been learning to overflow my enjoyment during class. This month, I have moved from being content just to receive the dispensing to desiring to share my enjoyment and overflow it to others. While I have had no problem speaking at the Lord’s Day prophesying meeting in LA, I have found it difficult and intimidating to share during the Training classes, perhaps because of the more serious atmosphere and, possibly, the suits.

A companion of mine was facing the same challenge and hadn’t spoken yet, so we set a goal together to share during week 6. During the last class on Saturday, when it was time to share and overflow, we kept looking back and forth at each other, silently supporting one another, and finally, we stood up together…

The sharing went really well, and I felt a sense of relief after getting past that hump. It was heartening when fellow trainees told me they were encouraged by my sharing and motivated me to share more. I hope this experience will help me “crash out” in a positive way, opening the floodgates for my enjoyment to flow out more freely.

Ordinary Days

The Training has been anything but ordinary. Even the “worst” class is spectacular. If the Training ended today, I will probably never have a morning like I had today, enjoying the Lord with other lovers of Christ who have paid a price. But because of the extraordinary nature of the FTTA, sometimes I have an expectation to get something very anointing in every class and study time, focusing on getting a certain feeling from the Lord. Or sometimes I don't prophesy or pray because I think my portion is too ordinary or not special enough.

But a speaking brother reminded us that our paying of a price should not be coupled with an expectation of having a spectacular time each day when we receive the divine dispensing. The price we paid is to gain Christ, and we should learn to be satisfied with ordinary days that are filled with regular and normal practices in the church life.

This is what I have been learning—how to enjoy ordinary days in the most extraordinary place. So far, I have found these tips, which are not only applicable at the Training but also in our private time with the Lord, to be quite useful:

1. Don’t trust our feelings

   • Christ is making His home in our hearts through faith, not feelings

2. Be quiet and calm

   • God does not come in a wind, earthquake, or fire, but as a gentle, quiet, voice2

3. Receive daily

   • “Lord, give us today our daily bread” (Matt. 6:11)

There is no omakase or fresh catch in God’s economy. The children of Israel ate manna every day for 40 years. This is our Christian life—receiving the daily bread and living the ordinary days. Can we be satisfied with this?3

A Divine & Mystical Law School4

Here are some short enjoyments I had from the past few weeks:

• The Lord is the centrality and universality of God’s economy

• “Lord, meet me in your Word!”

• It is the greatest miracle that we can receive the life of God

  • The highest suffering of a Christian is to not by the divine life

• “Lord, I just ask you, whatever you had to do to Paul, do it to me in my situation”

• The only solution is Christ and His Cross

• “Lord, establish your throne in my heart, I like to give you the first place5 in every part of my tripartite being”

I have also really enjoyed this song from the new “a master of dreams” album:

Hymn—“The Path of the Righteous”

“Lord, we love You and Your appearing!
Make us those who bring You back.
Lord, increase in us for Your coming
’Til the morning star rises in our hearts.”

Final Thoughts

USC

Mike and I are still having recurring appointments with our gospel contacts. Some have received the Lord, and we started reading some booklets and even the Word with them!

Greek

We quickly moved from learning the alphabet to learning verb endings and memorizing vocab. It was a significant jump and I was quite confused when doing an exercise to identify certain verbs in 1 John, but I got 100 on my first vocab quiz! Greek is the real character training and I feel like its already been paying off.

Transpo

I joined the transportation team to drive the shuttles! I did it mainly to get off the other services but also because I like driving. The CDL written test is this Thursday and it is much harder than the regular class C test. Our team has been grinding and even sacrificed some study blocks these past few weeks to prepare for the test, but it will all be worth it. Hopefully I pass on Thursday!