Second, we must be proficient in the word of the Lord. Being proficient implies not only being experienced but also being familiar with and skilled in a certain thing. The word of the Lord is the word of life. Not only should we understand it, but we also need to enter into it. When we enter into the word of the Lord and experience this word, we will be proficient in the word. For this purpose, we need to read more of the Bible and the spiritual publications. The more we read the word of the Lord, the more we will experience the Lord’s word and the more proficient and skillful we will be. Then when we go to perfect a home meeting, the element of the Lord’s word will come out whenever we open our mouth. The Lord’s word is the expression of the Lord. The coming out of the element of the Lord’s word is the Lord in us being expressed through our speaking. This is not our own speaking but the spontaneous flow of the Lord’s word.
We may illustrate this with a person’s education. If a person has graduated only from elementary school, his manner of speaking will give him away. If he has graduated from high school, his manner of speaking will certainly be different. If he continues his studies through college, his speaking will be even more different. Such a person will have been educated for many years and saturated with the words of his learning throughout these years. Moreover, he will have continually practiced these words and become familiar with them. As a result, he will be skillful and proficient in these words. A person simply needs to open his mouth to speak, and others will know the kind of education he has received. Those who are not educated scold others in a certain way, while those who are educated scold others in a different way. A person cannot pretend; one person’s constitution is not the same as another’s.
We must be continually exercised in the word of the Lord. In Hebrews 5:13 Paul mentions the word of righteousness, and in Hebrews 6:5 he speaks of the good word. The good word is the word of grace. The word of the Lord in the New Testament is of two categories: the good word, that is, the word of grace, and the word of righteousness. The good word, the word of grace, is easy to understand. According to Hebrews, it refers to the word of the Lord’s earthly ministry, which is recorded in the four Gospels. Today most Christians treasure only the word in the four Gospels. The word in the four Gospels is truly good, but it is only the good word, the word of grace, and is still not the word of righteousness. When Paul wrote Hebrews, he spoke about the word of the Lord’s heavenly ministry, which is excellent, deep, and mysterious; this is the word of righteousness. When we go to perfect a home meeting, we need to be familiar with these two kinds of word.
To apply for a good job in any field today generally requires a person to be at least a college graduate. If a person has not graduated from college, it is usually not easy for him to find a good job because his practical knowledge is not adequate. He must pass through certain courses in order to be fitted for his job. At the same time, his mind will become skillful. In this way, regardless of the circumstances he is put into, whatever he does will be done well. Sixty years ago we might have looked down on an electrician who digs through walls, pulls cables, and repairs wires. Not everyone may realize that in America a person needs to graduate at least from high school and then receive specialized training for two years to do this work, because this job is technically and scientifically specialized. Likewise, some people may think that serving the Lord is an easy matter. Little do they know that serving the Lord requires us to be skillful in all things.
Everyone who has the heart to love and serve the Lord must spend time in His word. When I first started to serve the Lord, I spent more than half my time each day in studying the word of the Lord. I spent more than half of each day to study, search, record, and copy the word, and this became a great help to me in my later days. Therefore, apart from the necessary time for working, eating, sleeping, and exercising, the remainder of our time should be spent diligently reading the Bible and the spiritual publications. If we want to be skillful in this aspect, we need to exercise ourselves. This is not the work of a day, nor the work of a year; it is the work of a lifetime. Whenever we have time, we need to seize the opportunity to study the Bible. We have to read through the Bible at least once in a year. In addition, we should read all of our spiritual publications once. We must be ones who are equipped with the truth. Then when we go out, we will spontaneously have the strength to perfect others.
Third, when we go to perfect a home meeting, we must be burning in spirit. Being burning in spirit is the morale among us. If a brother and a sister in the training get married, for example, we will all be joyful. However, we need to consider practically whether it is appropriate for trainees to get married during the term of training. Will this affect the morale? The training is to ignite and fan the flame within us. We are fanning every day. Just when the fire is fanned into flame, a marriage may be “cold water” poured on us, and our morale will diminish. Then when we go door-knocking, we may have no power because we are not burning in spirit.
We hope that all the trainees will delay their marriage plans until their training is over so that they can consecrate all their time for the training and the morale of the training will not be affected. In the age of the judges in the Old Testament, there were more than thirty thousand who heard the trumpets of Gideon and came to join the army, but God said there were too many, and He tested them by the way they drank water. Those who knelt down to drink the water, God rejected. Instead, God accepted those who remained ready to fight as they lapped the water. He needed that kind of people. Although there were only three hundred of these, they were able to fight (Judg. 7:2-7). This was their morale. When we go to perfect a home meeting, we must have such a morale.
When many newly saved young people see the trainees serving full time while they are so young, they have the same desire within them. This is the morale that compels others to be the same way. The traditional work of preaching in Christianity has no effect because it does not have any morale. Those who become preachers think that to take up a career of preaching is simply to bring a few people to the Sunday service; if they can do this, their mission is fulfilled. There is no morale in this practice. Today we who serve the Lord are not only volunteer soldiers but also desperate fighters who serve at the risk of our lives. In this way the morale is generated among us.
However, this kind of morale cannot be pretended. If we are not this kind of people, when we go to perfect a home meeting, we will not have much impact. However, if we are this kind of people, when we go to perfect a home meeting, every member of the family will be perfected. A certain elderly grandmother who had worshipped Buddha for her whole life never expected that her granddaughter would believe in the Lord and be saved. Although she loved this granddaughter, it was not easy for such an elderly person to leave the idols she worshipped. This granddaughter had a fiancé who was burning in spirit, and he talked to the grandmother about believing in the Lord. After a short while she also believed in the Lord and was baptized in the bathtub in her home. Then right away she burned all her idols which she had worshipped for decades. This demonstrates our morale. When we go to someone’s home to perfect the meeting there, we need to have this kind of morale by which others can see that we belong to Jesus, that for us to live is Jesus, and that all we think and everything within us is nothing but Jesus. Once we have such a morale, even though we may not speak much, others will be benefitted. This is the morale we need to have.