Furthermore, we need to let the truth, the words given to us by the Lord in the Bible, sanctify us (John 17:17). The Lord’s own word tells us that the truth can sanctify us. To translate sanctify as make holy, as in the Chinese Union Version, is too poor. Separated is a better translation, but the best translation is sanctified. The Lord’s word not only renews us but also sanctifies us.
In which part does His word sanctify us? First of all, it sanctifies our concepts and our viewpoints. The reason why a person has opinions is that he has his viewpoints and perspectives, and because of his points of view, he has opinions. The first things that the Lord’s words deal with are our viewpoints and perspectives. A person’s views come from many sources. First, some views are innate. Second, they come from family education. Third, they come from formal education, and then they are cultivated from our social environment and background. Moreover, our habits, the influence of our friends, our experiences of life, and other matters all make up our particular viewpoints.
Not only does a young person in his twenties have his viewpoints, but even children who are only seven or eight years old have their viewpoints. Sometimes children even surprise and anger adults by trying to adjust them. This shows us how many concepts a person has. What can change a person’s concepts? There is no other way but the truth. Once the truth enters into a person, it operates within him and transforms him. When the truth operates in someone and transforms him, it becomes life. Ultimately, truth and life are one as the Lord Himself. When we pursue life, grow in life, experience restrictions, and are regulated by the law of the Lord within us, and at the same time we study the Bible, pursue the truth, and are enlightened by it, the concepts within us are unconsciously and completely changed.
The most noticeable result of the change in our concepts is the oneness among the saints in the church. When unbelievers come to the church meetings, they marvel and say, “This is truly an international church with all kinds of people: black, white, yellow, brown, and red. It is incredible and amazing that you can gather these five kinds of people together.” They do not realize that this is not achieved by human effort. Our ability to be together is all due to the truth. All those who are saved have the life of the Lord, and the life within us requires us to love our brothers. However, what truly causes us to be blended as one is the truth. The truth works within us, the various kinds of people, and sanctifies our concepts. It sanctifies us to the point that we do not have our own feeling. We can no longer tell who is white, who is black, and who is brown. We all have become one new man.
It is the life and the sanctification by the truth that make us weighty. When we go to visit people, it does not matter whether we sit or stand, speak or remain silent. As long as we are there, people should find that we are weighty. This is a great perfecting to the home meetings. I hope that we all will pay attention to this. In addition, we have to labor. To start a home meeting and to establish it requires much labor. This cannot be achieved merely by going there for one week, two weeks, or three weeks. It requires a genuine and steadfast labor.
To labor is not simply to prepare a prayer or a message from Life Lessons. It is a preparation in many respects. In addition, we need to grasp the time and opportunity and not waste any time loosely. We should not speak excessively. However, this does not mean that we do not exchange a few words of greeting, wishing someone good health, and answering those who speak to us. The point is that when we wish someone good health, answer him, and exchange words of greeting, we need to be under a limitation and restriction. We are “driving a car,” and the steering wheel is in our hands. Therefore, we should not go slowly. Rather, we should make every effort to grasp the time. Whatever we speak to others should leave them with the impression that it was spoken seriously. Do not let others despise us. If someone brings up a certain matter, we should not answer it in a casual way but always answer it with assurance. Our spoken words must carry weight and value. All this requires practice.
To go to the home meetings once a week is a sowing; we are sowing ourselves into them. We let them observe our expression, listen to our voice, and grasp the main points of our speaking. In this way we will surely be effective. In less than half a year what we have deposited in them will be established.
We need to learn one other thing. After we knock on doors, bring people to salvation, and have meetings with them for a certain time, we should bring them to knock on doors with us. To perfect them in this way is marvelous. At the same time we also need to lead them to learn how to baptize people, and after baptizing people, how to make appointments with them for home meetings. All this requires us to spend much effort to lead them slowly and perfect them step by step. We should not merely learn a technique or know how to stir up the atmosphere. Concerning all these things, we need to have the knowledge and practice and keep building upon them.
We should not merely be stirred up while being short of weight, the element of life, the constitution of the truth, and even the proper laboring. We may illustrate proper laboring by sewing. If we give a length of fabric to a skilled tailor, it may take him only two hours to make a garment. However, if we give it to a man who does not know how to make clothes, he may work hard on it for half a day, not finish the garment, and even ruin the fabric; then, all his labor will be in vain. It should not be that we work hard on the home meetings, yet they eventually come to nothing. Therefore, we must determine that we need not only to learn and to practice in a common way; we also must practice from learning and learn from practicing.
We all know when a piece of fabric is given to us, we should not cut it in any way that we please. In the same principle, when we go to have a home meeting, we should not regard it as a light matter, thinking that it is not difficult to have a home meeting and that everyone knows how to knock on doors and open his mouth to speak. Rather, we need to learn to do these things in coordination. It is best to form a team of three persons, each of whom is a “team leader.” Then they all work and learn in coordination. A Chinese saying declares, “If three of us advance together, at least one of the other two is able to be my teacher.” The meaning of the Chinese word teacher indicates that regardless of who the person is, there is always something for us to learn from him. It is not that I am a master and have no more need to learn. Rather, even though others are younger, there is still something I can learn from them. If we go to labor, we should labor in this way. Whether we are young or old, when we go to have a home meeting, we need to learn from one another and study together, lest we labor in vain.
When practicing to have home meetings, we often face the problem of people not welcoming us. When we go the first time, they may give us a warm face, but the second time we go, they may give us a frowning face. Then the third time, they simply may tell us that we need not come anymore. Nevertheless, we have learned endurance from the Lord. Even if people tell us not to go to their house, we still strengthen ourselves to go again. It is true that to break through barriers is difficult, but if we do not give up visiting them, the door eventually will be open to us, and there will be a way for us to go on. We all have this kind of experience. However, we should study the reasons why they do not want to receive us. Whenever we go out to practice home meetings and are rejected, we should analyze and study the reasons so that we may find a way to adjust the situation.
As we are taking the new way, we study while we practice and proceed, and we are prepared to make any adjustments. At the present time we have not defined the way to have a meeting. We have no definite form for either home meetings or big meetings held in the meeting hall. On the one hand, this is because we do not want to see the situation of the old way reappear, and we do not want to follow any practice according to fallen Christianity. On the other hand, we are willing to seek the Lord’s new leading, and according to what the Bible has shown us, to experiment bit by bit and practice while learning. Therefore, concerning the matter of how small the home meeting should be and how big the big meeting should be, we are willing to do our best to study further. This is a critical moment. We are willing to have a thorough study concerning all these things so that we may have a guiding principle to go on in the future.
(A message given on May 5, 1987 in Taipei, Taiwan)