In order for us to practice the church life according to the God-ordained way, we need to be trained. In our practice of the church life in the Lord’s recovery, we are very free. If we are too free in doing things, we are through. The proper things to be accomplished must have a definite goal with the strict control. If we each have the freedom to work according to what we feel is right, the work is finished.
In the Lord’s recovery we pay much attention to spirituality. Brother Nee and I have given hundreds of messages on this line, stressing that we should not do anything according to our way or by our energy, but by prayer and by trusting in the Lord. This is very good, but we may use prayer and trusting in the Lord as an excuse for taking the freedom to do what is right in our own eyes. We may say that because we do not feel a certain matter is of the Lord, we will not do it. Thus, we have the freedom to do what we want. In the recovery today, there is freedom everywhere.
The United States is a country of freedom, but those in the United States military service give up their freedom. When you enter into the military, they cut your hair and give you new clothes to wear. In the military, you have no choice, no preference. You have no freedom to do what you want. Those who are in the military suffer the loss of their freedom for the sake of defending the whole country. They are under a strict training. To raise up the vital groups properly, there is the need of training. We have formed these vital groups because we have no way to get through with the church in a general way.
The training meeting is not a church meeting. To a church meeting, you may come late, and no one will say anything to you, but to a training meeting, you are obligated to come on time. We should be aware of the difference between the training and the church meetings. In the training we are willing to give up our freedom so that we can be perfected to be more useful to the Lord.
In this message I would like to begin to have some practical training for the vital groups. Prayer is greatly needed. We should pray not only when we come together in our vital groups but also in our private time. We have to learn how to use our time for prayer. We might take the excuse that we are too busy, but everyone on this earth is busy. Even a beggar might tell you that he is busy. We may think that when a person loses his job, he will no longer be busy. When he loses his job, however, he may be busier.
Many things on this earth need us and demand our time. Because many things require our time, we must exercise to redeem it. We can waste time in many small things. A person may take either two minutes to comb his hair or twenty minutes. It depends upon which way he does it. Some young people may spend twenty-five minutes to comb and style their hair. This is an illustration of how we can waste our time.
We may say that we do not have the time to pray because we are too busy. But when we receive a phone call, it seems that we are no longer busy. We have much time to talk on the phone freely. Quite often, I told people that the telephone is very “sticky.” It seems that when people get on the phone, they cannot get off. If we would love prayer and consider prayer the way that we consider talking on the telephone, we would have much time to pray. It is a lie to say that we do not have the time to pray. We have the time to do many other things, but we have a kind of habitual idleness when it comes to prayer.
In order to be useful, functioning members of the Body of Christ, we must learn how to redeem our time (Eph. 5:16). Day by day, we are losing our time, so we have to redeem it. We must cut off our long conversations on the telephone. Furthermore, when we are having a time with the Lord to pray, it is best to take the phone off the hook. Our prayer time is very important, so during that time we should not accept any phone calls. In the vital groups, the first thing we need to learn is to pray. In order to redeem our time, we need to pray unceasingly (1 Thes. 5:17). If we do not pray, our groups cannot be vital.
First, we need to learn to pray. Second, we have to change our concept, the concept of thinking that people can be saved and brought into the church life in a quick way. Of course, people can be regenerated in an instant. But it is difficult to find a proper believer who has not had the adequate care. As members of the vital groups, we have to drop the thought of gaining quick and easy results.
We need the adequate time and labor to raise up the new believers. We must be prepared to spend two years to get someone saved, nourished, fed, raised up, and to some extent perfected to be one who is fully in the church life. If you can gain one sinner to the extent that he is fully in the church life as a normal member within two years, this is wonderful. We have to get ourselves prepared psychologically to take the laboring way.
We should not think that we can have an overnight “fortune” in the gospel. You may think that you are being trained to be “magicians” who can instantly bring in big results, but this concept is wrong. We are being trained to be the laboring ones. To gain someone and care for him until he is fully established in the church life is not an easy thing. We must realize that we probably will need more than two years to get a person saved, nourished, and growing up to such an extent that he would remain in the church life. You need to get yourselves prepared. Do not go out hoping that you could make an instant fortune.
When someone is saved by you, that person becomes your spiritual child, your babe. If you do not have this consideration, you will not be able to keep that person in the church life. In January of 1993, we hope to begin to go out for the preaching of the gospel. We should not expect that within 1993 we will gain one person who is solidly in the church life. I am not speaking of merely getting someone to believe in Christ and be baptized within one year. That is not very difficult. But to gain one who would remain under your care, learn the teachings of the Bible, be willing to be nourished by you, and be fully brought into the church life is not easy.
We need to gain someone whom we consider as our child. This makes a big difference. Before some sisters have children, we may wonder how they could have the ability to raise up children. But when they have children, they become different. When they have a child, they are for nothing but that child. We must take care of our new ones by considering them as our babes.
Paul told the Thessalonians that he was like a nursing mother cherishing them as his children (1 Thes. 2:7). He told the Corinthians that he was their spiritual father who had begotten them through the gospel (1 Cor. 4:15). His Epistle to Philemon shows us the way to take care of a new one. We all have to change our concept. In the Lord’s work, we should not expect quick results. Actually, in the physical realm, it takes eighteen years to take care of one child. Then that child is considered as an adult. Since it takes this long to raise up a child in the physical realm, how can we expect to raise up a child of God, a Christian, within half a year? If we want the increase and the remaining fruit, we have to realize two things: first, we need to pray for our child; then we have to take care of this child.
For the long run, it is not profitable to beget many children in a quick way. God ordained that people bear children in a slow way. God created only one man, and God told this man to be fruitful, multiply, and replenish the entire earth (Gen. 1:28). Man has filled the earth to such an extent that many people are concerned about the increasing population. Spiritually speaking, however, we are short of children because we do not practice the God-ordained way to gain the increase. We just practice something according to our way, according to our taste.
We may go out to preach the gospel and save someone. After spending some time with this new one, however, he may not have any desire to go on with the Lord. Then we may go out and get another one saved, but after three months this one moves away. These kinds of experiences may discourage us and cause us to lose our desire to gain the increase. We may want to forget about endeavoring to gain the increase because we have tried and failed. This is the reason we need the training. This training will prepare us to gain people for the increase and building up of the church. If we take the way of labor, laboring and laboring without focusing on the results, we will be very fruitful. If a brother is thirty years old today and the Lord gives him forty more years to live, he could gain fifty people as remaining fruit within these forty years. We need to labor and labor according to the way of the training.