Watchman Nee was a missionary to China who was born and raised in China.
The basis of his teaching involved “the living of a crucified life and the resurrected life for the church life”. Now that is sort of a mouthful, but it is church talk for what is the content of How to be a Child of God.
The essential message is that when you prayed to accept Christ, you exchanged lives with him and you He came into you and you went into Him. When He came into your being, you received what He had which was mainly His eternal life, a forever life in the past as well as the future.
By that means, you were able to immediately go back 2000 years to the time and place where he was and be crucified with Him. At that time and place, you became one with Christ and your identity with Him was established forever.
Remember, you have not died a physical death as you still have your earth suit on, but the old self died and you are now being reborn as a child of God.
The old self had to die before the new self could be born or reborn as we say. In Romans 6, it goes on to say that if we are now one with Christ, Him in us and us in Him, and if we were crucified with Him, then we are still there. He died and we died. Later He was buried and we were buried. He ascended to heaven and we ascended with Him.
Now He sits at the right hand of the Father in heaven and so do we, as we are In Christ. Ephesians 2.6.
Our job is to understand and appropriate that truth. If we can do that, we can understand and live the abundant life God intended for us while we are here and still wearing our earth suits.
At the beginning of How to be a Child of God, I have included a Forward message quote from Watchman Nee as he had stated in his book, The Normal Christian Life.
“In fact, a full presentation of Christ and His Cross is made to us at the very outset, we may well step into a great deal of experience from the first day of our Christian life, even though the full explanation of most of it may only follow later.”
His point is that if you can internalize this truth and accept that the Living God is within you and start to understand your identity in Christ then maturity as a Christian comes much quicker and less Christian or Biblical counselors will be needed as you grow in you walk with Christ.
This is the message of the cross as found in How to be a Child of God.
It is written in simple prose with larger type and beautiful and colorful illustrations. Every page is explained biblically through scripture references that are expanded in the NLT version.
Check it out at: howtobeachildofgod.comPrison Ministry
David Howell
Prison Evangelism, Inc.
510 Bering Drive
Suite 300
Houston, Texas 77057
713-623-0690
www.prisonevangelism.com