Before Noah started to build the ark, he was already walking with God – this means he was already righteous. Why did he need to still build the ark if he was already walking with God? This question also applies to all the genuine believers in Christ: since we are saved, why do we still need to be saved by working out our own salvation (Phil. 2:12)?
When we believe into the Lord, we are eternally saved from God’s condemnation and from the lake of fire, and we are saved forever! However, we daily and constantly need to be saved in God’s life – Christ is our daily and constant salvation!
Noah was saved – he was righteous, walking with God – but he needed to have a further salvation from the crooked and perverted generation he lived in.
Today all the genuine believers in Christ need to work out their own salvation by building up Christ in their experience, so that in the future they may enter into Christ as their ark (their salvation). We all need to love the Lord, talk to Him about everything, walk with Him, and live one spirit with Him so that day by day and moment by moment we would be saved in His life much more (Rom. 5:10).
We today are building what we will enter into the future in; if we don’t build up Christ in our experience day after day, we cannot abide in Him (since He’s not built up in us) or dwell in Him.
The Lord Jesus is a living Person in us, and we need to speak to Him, fellowship with Him, love Him, walk with Him, and live Him out, and He will gradually be built up in our experience as our daily and constant salvation into which we will enter in!
Building Up Christ in Our Experience Today to Enter into Him in the Future
We shouldn’t stop at being saved from God’s condemnation. Yes, we are saved, but we still need to be saved in God’s life much more. Paul encourages us to be obedient and work out our own salvation (not only when others see us but even when they don’t) with fear and trembling.
When we were regenerated, we entered into the “passage of God’s salvation”, which is a lifelong process of being saved in God’s life. Now day by day we need to build up Christ in our experience so that we may have Him as our dwelling place and our salvation from this crooked and perverted generation.
How can we abide in Christ (John 15:4) if we don’t have Him built up in our experience? How can Christ be everything to us and how can He live in us (Gal. 2:20) if we don’t work out our own salvation by daily building up Christ?
Noah could not enter into the ark if he didn’t work together with God to build up the ark for years and years. The ark wasn’t built in a few days – it took him a very long time to work out his own salvation by building the ark, and then he could enter into it together with his family.
Today we are in the passage of God’s salvation, and our going through this passage is our working out our own salvation. The more we build up Christ in our experience, the more we work out our own salvation. Eventually, the very Christ whom we are building up in our experience today will become our future salvation.
When the Lord comes it will not be a surprise to the overcoming ones that He will take them – they have built up so much Christ in their experience that it is normal for them to be raptured and be with the Lord! This is our hope and our expectation, that one day we will enter into the Christ we have built up throughout our life, and we will fully be in Christ forever!
Today we are building Christ in our experience, and this Christ will one day be our salvation – under God’s sovereignty, we will one day enter into the very Christ we have built up! Hallelujah!
How Can We Build Up Christ in Our Experience Today?
What does it mean for us to “build up Christ” in our experience? To build up Christ means to love Him, to talk to Him by calling on His name, to live Him, and to constantly fellowship with Him. In our experience we need to just love the Lord and talk to Him all the time.
When anxiety comes, when we have problems, when we feel we cannot do this or that, or when we have difficulties, we need to talk to the Lord about it. The Lord Jesus is within us: He is even face to face with us. He walks with us and lives in us, waiting for us to open to Him and talk to Him about everything.
We need to talk to the Lord all the time, giving Him our problems, our anxieties, and our difficulties, and there will be a spiritual metabolism going on in our being. As we practice speaking to the Lord constantly, we will spontaneously live Christ and build up Christ in our experience.
Those who do not know this secret consider that living Christ is a difficult and even impossible thing. Actually, all we need to do is practice speaking to Christ constantly, call on His name, and love Him to the uttermost, and spontaneously we will live Christ and build up Christ in our experience.
Check with your experience: when you enjoyed Christ by loving Him, fellowshipping with Him, and walking together with Him throughout the week (from Monday through Saturday), didn’t you have a deep sensation on the Lord’s Day that you are in Christ?
The opposite is also true: when we don’t spend time with the Lord on Monday, we don’t touch Him on Tuesday, and we don’t call on His name or talk to Him on Wednesday through Saturday, on the Lord’s Day we may feel that the Lord is not with us in our experience….We cannot enter into Christ if we don’t build Him up in our experience.
We need to love the Lord, fellowship with Him, live by Him, and walk with Him moment by moment, and He will be built up in our experience day after day. Don’t look at your failures. Don’t stop if you “forgot about the Lord” for a whole day – repent, confess, and go on enjoying Him!
Our whole life is a process, a passage, of learning to build up Christ in our experience day by day, hour by hour, and even moment by moment, by having many intimate conversations with Him, by speaking with Him constantly, by loving Him, and by living Him out.
Lord Jesus, we open to You right now. Make us those who talk to You about everything. We cast all our cares and anxieties on You. Lord, we give You our problems, our worries, our issues, our difficulties, and everything that presses us and holds us down. Lord Jesus, we just come to You with everything about ourselves and our daily life. We want to cooperate with You to build up Christ in our experience. Keep us talking to You no matter what. Keep us loving You no matter the circumstance or the place we are in. Keep us walking with You day by day until You are build up in us to the extent that we can abide in You and live You out!
References and Further Reading
- Inspiration (besides the Word of God and my Christian experience): bro. Ed Marks’ speaking in this message and portions from, The Divine Dispensing of the Divine Trinity (ch. 3), as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on the Crystallization Study of Genesis (1), week / msg 11, Noah — the Life and Work That Can Change the Age.
- Hymns on this topic:
# All my sicknesses I bring Him, / And He bears them all away; / All my fears and griefs I tell Him, / All my cares from day to day, / All my strength I draw from Jesus, / By His breath I live and move; / E’en His very mind He gives me, / And His faith, and life, and love.
# It is God’s intent and pleasure / That His Christ be wrought in me; / Nothing outwardly performing, / But His Christ my all to be.
# It’s in the Son I have begun, / It’s in the Son I’ll onward go / In Him I’ll walk, in Him I’ll talk, / In Him I’ll surely grow. / Oh Jesus now grow in me; / I want for You to be / Pleased to be in me what You want to be / And when it gets too hard feel free / To grow some more in me.
About aGodMan
