We need to begin to pray to gain the candidates for our gospel preaching. We need to make a list of our close relatives and acquaintances. Then we need to pray, “Lord, among these, who are the ones that I should take first as my candidates for Your gospel?” The Lord will lead us. We should not take more than five people on our list as our initial candidates for the Lord to gain. It may be that out of these five, three would not be available. Regardless, we have to learn how to prepare ourselves and how to prepare our candidates, the objects of our work. We need to pray for them for about two months. Then we can go out to contact them.
This kind of selection and prayer for those whom we select will give us the impact with them. It is not the best thing to knock on “cold” doors, the doors of people we do not know. We must find a way to get “warm” doors, doors of people whom we know or who have been recommended to us by others.
We need to realize that the coming out of our labor can be counted rightly only in the future. Presently, all five whom we choose as our candidates may not be available. But after three years, they all will be available due to our prayer. We do not know when the Lord will fulfill our prayer. We should just labor. The apostle Paul promised us that our labor in Christ is not in vain (1 Cor. 15:58). I believe that every minute we spend for laboring in the Lord’s service is recorded by the Lord.
According to the New Testament principle, not one person is saved directly. A person is saved through someone else or through someone else’s prayer for him. God may have chosen your cousin and decided to save him. But if you do not pray for him, no one will pray for him. Thus, God will have no way unless you pray. Your prayer will pave the way and lay the tracks on which God’s “train” can move. Prayer means a lot, so we have to pray for about two months. Then we will go out. Every day we must spend some time to get ourselves equipped, qualified, and prepared to do our duty in gaining sinners for the increase of the church.
After we choose our gospel candidates, we have to consider what book or what verses of the Bible we can use with them. This is why we need to be trained with the appropriate verses from the Scripture. Certain verses are good for one kind of person, and other verses are good for another kind of person. Then we have to be trained how to use these verses. John 3:16 is a good verse, but many do not know how to use it.
We also have to be trained in how to take care of the new ones we gain. Maybe the Lord would not give you a new one for one year. Then you will question the Lord by saying, “Lord, why wouldn’t You give me new ones?” The Lord would say, “I gave Sister So-and-so five new ones, and she cannot care for all of them. Why wouldn’t you go help her by taking care of them?” The mothers know that taking care of children properly requires much learning. We lost many new ones in the past because we were not the proper nursing mothers to take care of them. Eventually, we will come up to the point where we and the new ones under our care learn to prophesy.
I hope that we would consider this fellowship seriously. If the Lord cannot have a way with the vital groups, it will be difficult for us to go on. How many among us live according to what we have heard from the ministry? Many saints are not much in the process of being renewed, transformed, and conformed. Instead, they live and serve in the natural way. This is quite serious. We love the Lord so much, but we still keep our disposition, character, and peculiar traits. Since this is the case, there can be no real building among us. We need to receive the fellowship in these messages so that we can be renewed, transformed, and conformed to Christ’s image. I hope that this fellowship will be fully apprehended and realized by us.
One brother told me that when he opens up to the saints, he feels that he deadens them. This is because he is too much in his natural life. When you open yourself up to others and in everything you do, you need to learn to follow the inner Spirit. In your prayer and in your activities in the meetings, you do not follow the Spirit. It is just your doing.
A brother may love the Lord to the uttermost, but it is hard for the Lord to get through in him because he is so strong in his natural life, in what he is. When he prays, he prays according to what he is. When he calls a hymn in the meeting, he calls it according to what he is. This shows that there is a great need for us to deny our self. In Matthew 16:24 the Lord told us that we must deny our self. But in Luke 14:26 the Lord told us further that we must hate our self, our soul-life. We are so natural. This means that we are out of the old creation. Anything that comes out of the old creation is fleshly and offensive to the Lord.
A brother who is strong and very bold in his natural life will take over the meeting. When he hears that we need to open up to one another, he will be the first in opening up. But he opens up to the saints in his natural life. To open up is right, but you have to open by following the inner Spirit. Do not forget that God is Spirit and those who worship God must worship Him in spirit (John 4:24). You have to open to me and I have to open to you, but we all have to do this by following the Spirit. Therefore, there is much need to trust in Him.
Paul said that we should work out our salvation with fear and trembling because it is God who operates in us (Phil. 2:12-13). I have an operating One within me, so I am fearful that I may miss Him. I am trembling that I may offend Him, because He is not only with me but also operating within me. Thus, I am fearful, waiting, and on the alert, looking to Him. Paul uses the word watch, saying that we need to watch unto our prayer (Eph. 6:18). Even the matter of prayer needs the watching. Otherwise, I may pray wrongly. If I do not watch in my prayer, I may pray long prayers; I may pray prayers which are not prayers.
If we get into the revelation of the apostle Paul’s fourteen Epistles without seeing how the Triune God is the practical grace to us, we can be fully disappointed. This is because no one in himself can practice what Paul saw and taught. Who can live Christ and magnify Christ as Paul did? We can do this only by the bountiful supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ (Phil. 1:19-21a). The all-inclusive, bountiful Spirit is within us, enabling us to live and magnify Christ.