Excerpt from "Release of the Spirit - The Breaking of the Outward Man" by Watchman Nee

From Chapter VI "Brokenness and Discipline"

Publisher New Wine Ministries, UK. First British edition 1968

Copyright. Copied with permission

 

 

We must also be led by God to such a place that we dare not trust our own judgment.  God will allow us to make mistake after mistake until we realise that this will be our pattern for the future too.  We truly need the grace of the Lord.  Frequently the Lord permits us to reap serious consequences from our own judgments.

 

Finally you will be so stricken by your failures that you will say, "I fear my own judgment as I fear hell fire.  Lord, I am prone to mistakes.  Unless Thou art merciful to me, unless Thou dost support me, unless Thou dost restrain me with Thy hand, I will be wrong again."  This is the beginning of the destruction of the outward man: when you dare no longer to trust yourself.  Your opinions usually come easily until you have been dealt with repeatedly by God and have suffered many failures.  Then you yield and say:  "God, I dare not think.  I dare not decide."  This is the discipline of the Holy Spirit:  when all kinds of things and all sorts of people are pressing from all directions.

 

Do not think there will be any slackening of this lesson!  Very often the supply of the Word may be lacking or another means of grace may be insufficient, yet this special means of grace - the discipline of the Holy Spirit - is ever with us.  You may say you have no opportunity to hear and be supplied by the Word, yet this can never be true of the discipline of the Holy Spirit.  Daily He is arranging ample opportunities for you to learn.

 

Once you yield yourself to God, this discipline will meet your need to a far greater extent that that of the Word.  It is not just for the learned, the clever, the gifted; no, it is the way for every child of God.  The supply of the Word, the grace of prayer, the fellowship of the believers - none of these can substitute for the discipline of the Holy Spirit.  This is because you need not only to be built up; you need also to be destroyed, to be delivered of all the many things in your life that cannot be brought over into eternity.

 

The Cross in Operation

 

The Cross is more than a doctrine;  it must be put into practice.  Do not think that the way to humility is to be constantly reminding ourselves not to be proud.  We must be stricken again and again - even if it means twenty times - until we are surrendered and proud no more.  Let us never assume this comes about merely by following the teaching of a certain brother.  No, it is because our pride has been broken through God's dealing.

 

Through the operation of the Cross, we shall learn to depend upon the grace of God, not on our memory .  .  .

 

 

Watchman Nee

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In Christ

Abigail, NZ