According to our study and observation, we feel that we still need to prepare a set of materials for the perfecting of the home meetings. This set of materials will be specifically for the new believers in the first year of their Christian life. It should be not only concise but also practical. We hope to help the new ones to get into Life Lessons immediately after they are baptized. We believe that they will be perfected in many ways by the supply in these materials, and they will be helped to receive the various truths in the Bible.
On the one hand, a person who serves the Lord should have outward activities and work, but on the other hand, he should never forget that all work must come from the inner life. Without life, all work is empty and vain. Only life is the content and reality of our work. Therefore, we must work for God and bear fruit, while on the other hand, we must be witnesses of the Lord’s life. Apparently, to be a witness does not have much to do with life, but in actuality to be a witness is to bear witness for life. Being a witness is not a work but a testimony of life.
As we all know, the Gospels speak of a person, Jesus Christ. After passing through death and resurrection, this person wrought Himself into those who believed into Him. Those whom we see at the end of the Gospels, the ones who followed the Lord Jesus for three and a half years, were the ones into whom the Lord entered after His death and resurrection. The end of the Gospel of John tells us that the Lord Jesus, after passing through death and resurrection, came into the midst of these disciples. No one can understand the way He came. At that time the disciples were in a room with closed doors and windows, yet He entered with a resurrected body. He was able to do this only because He was the Spirit. However, we should not say that He was only the Spirit, because He came also with a resurrected body. He entered into the closed room with a resurrected body, came into the midst of the disciples, and breathed into them, saying, “Receive the Holy Spirit” (20:22). From that day on, He breathed Himself into them. In this way He and the disciples became one. This is a wonderful matter.
From its beginning, the Gospel of John tells us that the Lord Jesus is God, He is the Word of God, and He became flesh and lived on this earth. After this He went to the cross to be crucified, and He was resurrected. In His resurrection He became the wonderful One. We can say that this wonderful One is God, but He is also a man. We can say that He is a man, but He has a body not of the old creation but of the new creation and of resurrection. We cannot clearly explain how He was able to come in and out of a room with the doors and windows shut. He could show His body to the disciples, yet He was a Spirit. This is indeed wonderful. We cannot understand this with our human mentality. There are many things in the universe that we do not understand and cannot explain to others. Among them the most wonderful thing is the resurrected Jesus. We cannot say that He is not physical, because He has a body which the disciples could touch, with the mark of the nails and the wound from the spear in His side. He was physical and could be touched, yet He freely went in and out of a room that was closed, and He even breathed Himself into those who believed into Him. These things are difficult for anyone to understand, yet they are recorded in the Bible.
These wonderful things happened at the end of the Gospel of John. After that, the book of Acts begins. Acts records how the Christ who passed through death and resurrection and entered into the disciples lived and moved with the disciples for a period of forty days. Sometimes He was hidden, and sometimes He appeared to them. He came and left, left and came again. In reality, however, He did not come and leave. Rather, He appeared and hid Himself, then hid Himself and appeared again. He was omnipresent. Sometimes He appeared, but sometimes He was hidden. He appeared in the upper room, and He also appeared outside the room. However, after people saw Him in His appearing, He became hidden again. This was to prove that this Christ who died and resurrected had already entered into His disciples in His resurrection. He was already in the disciples, but from the disciples’ point of view, He was sometimes visible and sometimes invisible; sometimes they could feel Him, but other times they could not feel anything. He was indeed a wonderful One, for He is the Spirit and the reality.
Today the Lord is the same to us. This is hard for us to explain, but it is a fact that He is in us. Sometimes we sense His coming, and sometimes we sense His leaving. Sometimes we feel that He is here, and sometimes we feel that He is not here. This is our inner story, and we all have this experience.