We, being many, are one body in Christ, and individually
members of one another. (Romans 12:5)
We are a part of a Body. Many of our sufferings
are not on our own account at all. Many of the sufferings of the children of God
have nothing whatever to do with their own faults or their own failing. They are
suffering in a related way, they are suffering for the Body’s sake, they are
entering into the battle; the conflict of this one great testimony. Sometimes it
is almost uncanny when the Lord has something in view in relation to His
testimony of Life, how for no reason whatever, on no account at all, we discover
that we are involved and ours is not an isolated experience. All sorts of people
all over the place are having the same kind of experience – a terrific sense of
pressure, upset, annoyance, anything to frustrate – it is happening all round,
testifying that in the spiritual realm, in the realm of the Spirit, there is a
fine, sensitive oneness which matters to the Lord, and therefore matters to the
enemy.
Do not always take your sufferings as some
controversy that the Lord has with you. That is the twist the enemy often gives.
Be open to the Lord to be checked up on anything, but do not always take it that
the things which are happening to you and causing you trouble and suffering are
due to your own failure or wrong. You are involved in something very much more
than that.