A meeting in which one person speaks and everyone else listens is a big relief to all of us because it does not matter whether we quarrel at home every day. As long as we bring our Bible bag to the meeting on the Lord’s Day, our conscience will be all right because we do not need to speak. Whether we failed or overcame during the week, we will feel fine as long as we go to the meeting, because in it just one person speaks and everyone else listens. However, a meeting in which everyone speaks requires us to live an overcoming life, to fellowship with the Lord, to walk according to the spirit, to be burning in spirit, to call “O Lord Jesus” all the time, and to speak about Jesus to people every day. Only in this way will we have the word and the spirit, and only in this way will our speaking have content.
I can testify that one who calls “O Lord Jesus” from morning to evening, who walks in the spirit and according to the Spirit, who is burning in spirit, and who speaks Jesus to people will surely look forward to the meeting with anticipation, because once he comes to the meeting, he will be able to share his experience with other saints and fellowship about it. What is a Christian meeting? It is a meeting in which Christians share Christ and speak Christ. A Christian meeting is a meeting in which everyone speaks and in which the content of their speaking concerns their experiences of overcoming, enjoying Christ, and being enlightened.
If we have a small group meeting consisting of twelve people, but eleven of them lose their tempers at home or the husbands and wives condemn each other, then it will be impossible for anyone to speak because our spirits will be like flat tires. However, suppose the saints have family propagation groups at home, and everyone is revived. The husband confesses to his wife, causing her to be enlivened, and the wife also says to her husband, “I am wrong,” causing the husband to be opened. Through this kind of mutual confession and forgiving, this family will spontaneously be living. Then when they come to the small group meeting and open their mouths, people will be supplied and edified. I hope that the meetings of more than nine hundred local churches all over the globe would begin with confession in the homes. We need a revival, and we need family propagation groups and other kinds of propagation groups. The change in system is not merely for the purpose of having a change in form or a change in content. Rather, it is for the purpose of causing the dead to be raised and all the saints to be enlivened.
In the past we arranged for the co-workers to speak twice a week. Consequently, they neither ate well nor slept well during those two days. But now they have been released because they do not need to give a message on the Lord’s Day. The new way of meeting will be beneficial to both the co-workers and the saints and will be a new beginning for them. I say again that we do not want one person speaking and everyone else listening. Instead, we want everyone speaking and everyone listening. We may all say with our mouths, “Yes, this is right. We should have everyone speaking and everyone listening. It is scriptural to have mutuality.” However, even those who have been saved for many years and know the Bible do not speak in the meetings. This is a very serious matter that we all must consider.
I say again that based on our observation, the Lord has no way in Christianity. According to the statistics, the number of Christians in the various big or small denominations in the United Kingdom and the United States is diminishing. This has also been the case among us. We did not have a way to go on. When we looked into the reason, we found that it was the way of one person speaking that had killed everyone’s function. However, if everyone speaks and is revived, the church will have a way to go on.
When we went out to knock on doors recently, although we encountered a severe typhoon that caused flooding in Taipei and submerged many places, we all went out in one accord and eventually baptized about seven thousand people. Not only were entire households saved, but also around fourteen hundred home meetings were established. If only one out of ten from these seven thousand baptized ones remains, we will still have around seven hundred people. If we gain only one percent of these fourteen hundred homes, we will still have fourteen homes. This truly fills us with joy. When we went out, we endured the wind and rain and knocked on more than two hundred thousand doors in ten days. This was an unprecedented event among Christians. Moreover, we immediately established home meetings at the homes of the saved ones to teach them the truths and to speak to them from the Life Lessons. We truly saw the Lord’s blessing and the presence of the Holy Spirit.
Hence, we should be all the more watchful that our spirits would be enlivened. Not only we ourselves have to be living, but we should also enliven others. When we go to a new one’s home, we should not speak too much. Rather, we should lead him to open his mouth to pray, confess, deal with his sins, release his spirit, and exercise his spirit. For example, we may teach him to say, “It is so good to believe in Jesus.” When he first begins, he may speak only from his throat and not from his spirit, but gradually we can lead him to speak from his spirit. Then we have to lead him to pray, confess, fellowship with the Lord, and be filled with the Spirit. In this way when he comes to the meeting, he will be able to speak by faith and will have the Holy Spirit poured out upon him. According to Acts, once Peter or Paul stood up to speak, the Holy Spirit filled him outwardly.
Furthermore, we have to help them to always be in spirit to follow the spirit, walk according to the spirit, be burning in spirit, open their mouths in the meeting, and speak to people about the gospel. In this way every one of our meetings will build up the believers. They will build up the Body of Christ with the Triune God and build the Triune God into the believers so that they may be joined and knit together. This is to build up the Body of Christ. I hope that we all would receive this burden to practice this so that our spirit would be enlivened and we would daily be filled in spirit, having both the inward and the outward filling. Then we all will be living people, speaking the words of the truth in the meetings and building up others’ spirits and the Body of Christ.