In the previous message, we pointed out five crucial points for our seeking in the vital groups. First, we need to seek to be blended with the other members of our vital group by having an intimate and thorough fellowship with much and thorough prayer. Second, we need to seek to be filled with the Spirit inwardly and outwardly. Third, we need to pray unceasingly by exercising our spirit to redeem the time. Fourth, we need to learn to serve and work not in our own way but in the coordinated way by giving up our freedom. Fifth, we need to pray for the dealing with our disposition, character, and peculiar traits. These five items are not like lessons which we can study and courses from which we can graduate. They are five daily necessities like our drinking, eating, breathing, sleeping, and exercise.
If we practice these things, our gatherings will be living and released. Spontaneously, we will be persons in the meeting who are releasing the Spirit in our praying, praising, singing, and speaking for the Lord. We will be enlivened and enlivening persons. We need the vital groups because of our dead and dying situation. Instead of enlivening others, we may deaden them. Our coming to the meeting may deaden the meeting. This is wrong. We should be those who enliven the meeting. Everybody should be released in the meeting. In order to be released persons, we must practice the above five items.
We need to exercise our spirit to pray unceasingly. This means that we should not waste our time. Instead, we need to fill up the gaps in our time with prayer. No one can say that they redeem and use every moment of every day. Today, generally speaking, Americans have much free time. This is why they spend time pursuing entertainment and worldly pleasures. Whenever our time is empty, we should fill it with prayer. This means that we should pray unceasingly. A person who prays unceasingly is a released person.
We have been helped in the Lord’s recovery to realize the daily spiritual practices we should have. We know how to call on the name of the Lord and how to talk to the Lord for the release of our spirit. The only need is for us to fill up our time with these practices.
Whenever we pray, we must release our spirit. I do not mean that we need to shout all the time, but when we pray in the meetings, our prayer should not be voiced in a common way. Even our voice must be exercised when we pray. Prayer means to release our spirit. If there is no release of our spirit, that is not prayer.
To pray and to praise are different. Praise requires us to be more released in our voice than prayer. In our translation of the Psalms, we use the term “ringing shout” (Psa. 71:23). According to the Bible, we people of God must be “crazy” ones who are joyfully praising Him every day (Phil. 4:4; 1 Thes. 5:16). If someone gave you a very expensive diamond as a present, you might be very excited, but we have something tremendously more valuable than this. We have Christ. Christ is so worthy and so rich. He is immeasurable, unsearchable, and untraceable. We have such a Christ, but do we have Him as our reality? We sing about how wonderful and rich Christ is, but do we really see and experience Him in such a way? Are we really crazy about Christ? We should not be old, cold, and stale, but fresh, living, young, and new in the Lord. In order to be living and vital members in the church life, we must practice the five aforementioned items all the time. Then our meetings will be filled with joyful shouting and rejoicing.
We need much preparation before we can have the impact in going out to reach people for the increase of the church. Although we may know the truth concerning the four steps of the God-ordained way, we have not properly practiced them. Few among us have properly practiced the preaching of the gospel. If we do not know how to do something, we cannot be interested in it. When a child is at the beginning stages of learning how to play the piano, it is difficult for him and he may not be that interested in it. But eventually, as he practices and learns more and more, he will become addicted to playing the piano. This shows that the more we practice, the more we learn, and the more we learn, the more we become addicted.
It seems that presently few among us have a real interest in the God-ordained way. We agree that the group meetings are eighty percent of the church life, but how many are really interested in the group meetings? We are still mostly in the old way. We have been practicing the vital groups for about ten weeks, and I am concerned that there are still some saints in your group whose full names you do not even know. This shows that we surely have not entered into a thorough and intimate fellowship with one another in order to be blended together. I hope that we would know not only the names of the ones in our particular group but also the names of the saints in all of the vital groups.
In these days I am greatly burdened for the raising up and the going on of the vital groups. We need to get ourselves prepared to go out to gain people for the increase and building up of the church. We should get ourselves prepared by making a list of our relatives and close acquaintances. Then we need to pray and ask the Lord which ones we should concentrate on first as candidates for our gospel service. The Lord will lead us. In these months we need to continually pray for them, and then we can go to contact them.
In order to carry out the Lord’s burden in the vital groups, we must be renewed persons and we must learn how to serve the Lord in every way. To learn to be a medical doctor is difficult, but to learn how to serve the Lord according to His way is much more difficult than studying medicine. I have been learning how to serve the Lord for over sixty years, and I have still not graduated.