The most important thing to learn for the home meetings is how to use Life Lessons. One of the characteristics of the four volumes of Life Lessons is that all the titles of the lessons are printed on the cover so readers will understand what the book is about at a single glance. For example, the first volume covers from lesson one, “Knowing That You Are Saved,” to lesson twelve, “Knowing the Church.” From this table of contents we can quickly see that the first volume is for helping the newly baptized ones to know that they are saved all the way to their knowing the church. The first lesson of the second volume is “Knowing the Sects,” and the last lesson is “The Offering of Material Riches.” The first volume covers from salvation to the church, while the second covers from sects to mammon. The first volume talks about knowing that you are saved, having the life of the Lord, knowing the church, and living a life in the church. All these are positive. However, on the negative side there are several “demons” that need to be dealt with. The first one is sects, and the last one is mammon. Thus, the second volume covers the teaching from sects to mammon. All of these matters are negative.
In the third volume, we have the positive side again. The first lesson is “Transferred into Christ,” on being transferred from all the negative things into Christ. Being transferred into Christ is not being buried; it is a matter of living in Christ. The last lesson is “Raptured to Meet the Lord.” Being transferred into Christ is being saved, while being raptured to meet the Lord is the end of our journey of following the Lord. These twelve lessons cover the things from our being saved to the end of our journey. This is the content of the third volume.
The fourth volume begins with “The Way to Enjoy God’s Salvation,” that is, how to enjoy God’s full salvation. Then lesson by lesson it speaks of the full salvation of God: the first stage of sanctification, the forgiveness of sins, the cleansing away of sins, propitiation, reconciliation, the second stage of sanctification, and justification. These are the aspects of redemption. Then there are also the aspects of life: regeneration, renewing, the third stage of sanctification, transformation, maturity, conformation, and the last item is glorification. In other words, all four volumes of Life Lessons range from knowing that we are saved to the obtaining of glory. Therefore, once the matters in all the forty-eight chapters are wrought into us, we will enter into glory. These forty-eight chapters clearly tell Christians all the matters from their being saved to entering into glory.
In addition to the above, we also need to practice our way of speaking. For example, when we go to a home meeting, we may want to tell the new ones, “Do you know what the first volume of Life Lessons covers? Let me tell you. It starts from knowing that you are saved and goes to knowing the church.” Although this is not wrong, this way of speaking is like that of a student reciting for an examination. When we go to the home meetings, we should not speak in the way of giving high school lessons. We should bring people deeper and try our best to avoid the kind of questions and answers that students give. We should bear this in mind and abandon an “academic” atmosphere. University professors have their own way of teaching, which is different from the way the elementary teachers teach. We should not be elementary. We need to speak as if we were not quoting from Life Lessons. We should simply tell people that after knowing that they are saved, they should be in the church.
This kind of exercise may be too difficult for some people, but if it were not difficult, there would be no need for the full-timers to exercise and to learn. All the full-timers are college graduates. They have been in school for well over a decade. Today they are still receiving training here, but the content of this training is not chemistry, science, astronomy, geography, or history. It is door-knocking and home meetings. Many things we know without having learned them, but other things we may have been taught for over a year without knowing them. Therefore, we need a first term, a second term, a third term, and a fourth term in our training.
Basketball players know that even though there is only one ball, there are many different ways of playing. When I was young, I often watched basketball games, particularly those between the Chinese and the foreigners, because they played in many different ways. Some passed the ball by bouncing it on the floor, while some threw the ball high into the air. No matter how tall their opponents were, they had their own various techniques for winning the game. We must learn how to use Life Lessons until we can use the lessons skillfully. In this way, every time we have a home meeting, we will be able to reap a harvest.
We should obtain at least one copy of Life Lessons and study the lessons thoroughly. We should be able to memorize and speak from each of the forty-eight lessons. Then we will be so familiar with the content that when we go to the home meeting, we will not necessarily need to start with the first lesson. It will be like playing basketball. A player may not always pass the ball in the same direction. By playing differently each time, he can catch everyone off guard and throw the ball into the net. To do this, however, the players need to exercise to become skillful. We may find these few points easy to understand but difficult to practice. A coach has to teach his players the basic movements until they are not only familiar with them but can also exercise to become truly skillful players. If we are like this, then we will be successful when we go to the home meeting.
In addition to compiling Life Lessons, we are also preparing to compile further messages on life, comprising two hundred forty topics, not in the format of lessons but of messages. There will be twenty volumes, each with twelve short messages. We cannot yet say that we know the topics for all the messages, but we already have the first ones. If the Lord wills, we will publish the first and possibly the second volume in the coming year. Since we all are busy putting out literature, none of us can live a life of leisure. To be sure, if we live a life of leisure, we will not be able to accomplish anything.
We should not think that full-timers lead a very comfortable life. History tells us that the ones who truly serve the Lord with their full time do not live comfortably. I hope that no one among us will quit after hearing this. The journey ahead is long, but we believe that we will have a prosperous future. Many of us have gone on in this way and passed through this kind of day. We all can testify that although we are busy and tired, we are full of joy and peace inwardly.