Home meetings are the emphasis of the new way in the Lord’s recovery, and the most important thing for the home meetings is knowing how to use Life Lessons. Our problem is that when we use Life Lessons, we add too many of our own words. This is like towing an old car behind us when we drive; it distracts our concentration and causes trouble. For this reason, it is often a help not to bring our Bibles, hymnals, and tracts with us when we go to the home meetings. To bring all these is to bring the “old car” with us. A successful salesperson is trained not to show two products to the buyer at the same time. Once the customer finds out that there are more products, he will want to see them all, even if there are hundreds of them. This makes it very hard for the salesperson.
Why do we say that it is often a help not to bring our Bibles to the home meetings? It is because when we bring the Bible with us, we are tempted to use some verses which are not necessary for the lesson, and eventually we are distracted from the main theme. The chapter we read may be about calling upon the name of the Lord, but we will be tempted to read Genesis 1 about God’s creation. After listening to us for a long time, the ones in the home will be confused.
Before the introduction of the Lord’s new way, we needed to collect various materials for gospel preaching. For this purpose, the Gospel Bookroom published many gospel tracts, booklets, stories, and testimonies. However, not many people were baptized through our speaking of those stories and the testimonies quoted from classical writings. Based upon our experience, we studied this new way and discovered that what we had in the past was only like an oxcart, or at best a bicycle or rickshaw. It could not meet the present need of man’s heart. Eventually, we compiled a gospel booklet entitled The Mystery of Human Life, which covers God’s creation, man’s fall, Christ’s redemption, and God’s dispensing. Those who have used this gospel booklet can testify that there is no need to talk about other items. All we need to do is open The Mystery of Human Life and read it with people. Then they will believe and be baptized very quickly.
Warfare throughout the world today can be regarded as a competition of weapons. The focus of every nation is to develop its own weapons and then negotiate over them, hoping that their own nation will possess the best weapons in the world. Because of this, national defense takes the biggest and highest share of most nations’ budget. There is a Chinese proverb that says, “Good tools are the prerequisite for the success of a task.” This is in the same principle as modern weapons. Therefore, today when we go to knock on doors, we should not bring extra items that are not our direct weapons. Our weapon for preaching the gospel is The Mystery of Human Life, and the one for leading the home meetings is Life Lessons. We need to be familiar and well-versed in these two weapons.
We may have apprehended this principle in a superficial way, but I am afraid that when it comes to practice, our mind still contains many extra things. Life Lessons is rich in content and abounds in verses. These very verses can be our temptations when using the lessons. We can compare using the verses to scratching an itch. Sometimes before we scratch, we do not feel much itching, but once we start to scratch, we itch more. Eventually our whole body begins to itch without remedy. When we use Life Lessons, we should not “scratch the itch.” There is no need to talk about Genesis, Revelation, all four Gospels, and finally the Song of Songs. This is to scratch all the itching places; there is not enough time for that. In order to manage our time, we need to avoid this. The key for reading is simply to follow the content of the lessons. There is no need to add any explanation. In particular, we should never extend the meaning of the text or develop an understanding based on inference. We simply should read the content of the lesson with the new ones. If we come to a point we do not understand, we simply need to repeat-read, emphasize-read, vitalize-read, and pray-read. This will take care of many “itches.”
In using the lesson books, we should first make good use of the verses. For example, Genesis 1:1 says, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” We need to impart these words into people: “in the beginning,” “God,” “created,” “the heavens,” and “the earth.” Not even one hundred long messages will be able to leave as much impression on the new ones. If we first impart the verses into people, they will receive the supply, because the Word of the Lord is living and powerful.
Second, we have to impart the footnotes and explanations of the quoted verses into people. Although we cannot say that every word in the footnotes is a gold nugget, each word is at least concise, to-the-point, and pertinent. Therefore, no further explanation is required. On the contrary, once we try to explain, we will dilute the meaning. This will be like adding too much water to a bowl of beef soup until it loses all its taste. We may think that our explaining helps people to understand. Little do we realize that our explanation actually dilutes the precise meaning.
In addition, we should never add extra content to the lessons. If we read a certain chapter, we should simply read that chapter and not make references to other books or materials. We should avoid doing this. Do not be afraid to repeat-read, emphasize-read, vitalize-read, and pray-read. Rather, we should pay attention to and strengthen these things. We must be sure to study Life Lessons in our private time and become familiar with its content. In so doing, when we are in the home meetings, we can spontaneously utter words from our mouths as from the pen of a ready writer, and whatever we speak will be the word in the lessons. We need to practice until this is the case.