We need to remember that our groups must be vital groups. The Bible talks about vital people. What is an overcomer? An overcomer is a vital person. Then what is it to be vital so that we can be overcomers? A vital person, an overcomer, is a praying person. You must have the real burden for the real prayer. Recently, I told some co-workers that their prayer did not come out of any burden. If we come together just to shout a few sentences, is this a burden of prayer? This is formality. It is a formal performance.
We have seen in a previous message that Brother Nee said we should not pray anything that is not real prayer. Many prayers that we pray actually are not prayers. They are repetitions of statements according to our tradition. The real burden of prayer is not a composition. When the blind man prayed to the Lord, he did not pray a composed prayer. When the Lord Jesus asked him what he wanted, the blind man said, “Lord, that I may receive my sight!” (Luke 18:41). This is real prayer out of a real burden. He was burdened to contact Jesus so that he could see, and the Lord answered his prayer. But our prayers mostly are not like this. Our prayers, even our personal prayers, are mostly a religious form and a kind of performance.
Then we may ask, “How can we be burdened for prayer?” This is a matter of the Lord’s mercy. I cannot forget the vital groups, because that is my real burden. I cannot forget the Lord’s recovery, because His recovery is my burden. I always have to pray to the Lord for His recovery. When I pray and cry, “O Lord, the recovery,” this is out of some burden. Once we begin to pray for the recovery, we realize that we cannot finish our prayer. There are many places and persons for which we have to pray. We need to be vital, and to be vital is to have the real burden for prayer. There is the need of the real prayer among us. What the vital groups should have a burden to pray is this: “Lord, the church needs the proper increase.”
Because of some rebellious ones who were among us, our number was damaged and our morale was spoiled. If we love the church, we should be desperate to pray, even to pray with fasting. Our meetings should be full of real prayers, not formal prayers. We should pray, “Lord, we just cannot go on without the proper increase, especially among the Caucasians.” This kind of prayer is the real prayer. We should not merely meet according to our schedule to fulfill a formal duty. The prayer of some among us is too traditional. There is no burden or desperation in their prayer. We need to be desperate. The going on of the vital groups to gain the increase should be a life or death matter with us. Even if we are not scheduled to meet, there should still be a burden in us to come together to pray.
I recently checked with some of the groups concerning what they were doing, but no one told me that they were praying desperately for the vital groups. Instead they told me about other activities in their groups. When I heard this, I was concerned that we were making the groups something that is not vital. The vitality is not in your doing. The vitality is in your prayer. If someone asks you what you are doing in your group, it would be wonderful to hear you say, “We just cannot live without prayer. We are desperate with the Lord. Everybody prayed. We only have the time to pray.” This is what I like to hear. You must have some vital prayer with some vital burden.
In order to have the vital groups, we ourselves need to be vital. We need to pray desperately, “Lord, we ask You, when the season comes, to give each one of us two people who are remaining fruit. Otherwise, we cannot go on.” We should pray and pray until the Lord answers our prayer. We should not be discouraged or disappointed, but have the full assurance that He will fulfill His word. This is because He told us that He has chosen us and set us to go forth to bear fruit and that our fruit should remain.
If you have this kind of prayer with a burden, every time you pray you will get the Spirit. You will get the infilling Spirit and the outpoured Spirit. Our meetings should not be an empty performance but meetings full of the Spirit. Our vital group training meeting is not a common meeting. This is a meeting for the overcomers to rescue the church from its degradation. If the vital groups fail, there is no way for the Lord to do anything.
One brother recently told me that the vital groups really work. But I wondered if this brother really knew what he meant when he said this. Whether or not the vital groups work depends upon how much prayer you offer to the Lord. Then you will have the Spirit. You will be a Spirit-filled person according to what Acts 13:52 says—“The disciples were filled...with the Holy Spirit.” If you are a person of prayer, you will be a person living, walking, and doing everything in your spirit. You will not be so loose and easily talk about others. You will be greatly limited, restricted, in your spirit.
Then you will have a real burden to produce fruit. You will contact people, and this will be very different from all your contacts in the past. If you are vital, your contacts will sense that something real is within you. Otherwise, the people whom you contact will not receive anything. If you are vital, something of life will be ministered to the ones you contact.
By this time we should have some gospel candidates in our consideration and prayers. We should have the assurance that by the end of the year, we will have one or two as remaining fruit. But this all depends upon how we spend these coming months. The season for fruit is not today but in the months to come. We have to labor. To have a human birth after conception takes nine months. To have the fruit on a vine takes about one year. These are the laws in nature according to God’s creation. Even when God became incarnated, He stayed in the human womb for nine months. He kept the law which He established in nature.
I hope that my word here will encourage us. We should be desperate for the Lord’s interests on this earth. This is our destiny. We need to aspire to be the overcomers to rescue the church from its degradation. There is no verse in the New Testament which tells us that the closer we are to the Lord’s coming, the better the church will be. There is not such a thing. On the contrary, the closer we are to the Lord’s coming, the more degraded the church will become. The victory will be with the overcomers. They will be raptured early, and they will be the ones who will consummate this age. This age will be consummated only because of the overcomers. Of course, we still need a church life. No one can be an overcomer without a church life. If you isolate yourself from the church and neglect the church, there is no way for you to be an overcomer.
The book of Judges shows us that Israel became degraded to the uttermost. But still that degraded nation of Israel kept a piece of land on which Christ could come to tread. Without the degraded nation of Israel, that piece of land would not have been there. Also, Israel produced Boaz and Ruth to bring forth Obed, who begot David’s father, Jesse (Matt. 1:5-6), and it also produced another couple, Mary and Joseph, to bring forth Christ. The church may be defeated, but God can never be defeated. He has His way. We still need the church life that can maintain us in the overcoming life, but we should not be satisfied just to be in the church. To be in the church is one thing, but to be in the church and to be an overcomer is another thing.
The vital groups need overcomers. Even the vital groups need some vital groups within them to rescue them. After a little degradation, we are no longer vital. Without prayer, without being in the Holy Spirit and your human spirit, you can never be vital. Do not think that if you attend all the vital group meetings, you are vital. Being vital depends upon whether you are vital in prayer in the Holy Spirit and in your human spirit.