To preach the gospel is to practice the New Testament priesthood for the saving of sinners that they may become the members of the Body of Christ (Rom. 15:16; 1 Pet. 2:5, 9). We all are priests, but we may not be clear that the New Testament priesthood is to offer sinners to God. Without preaching the gospel, we could not gain sinners, and we would have no sacrifices to offer to God. Sinners are redeemed by receiving our preaching. When they are redeemed, they become acceptable sacrifices to God. In the Old Testament, all the priests offered sacrifices to God, and all those sacrifices typify Christ. Today in the New Testament, we offer the members of Christ to God. By receiving our preaching, the sinners become members of Christ, whom we offer as sacrifices to God.
If a person has been saved for a long time without having brought one person to the Lord, this is poor. This means that he is a priest without any sacrifices offered to God. Right after being saved, we should realize that we are New Testament priests who need to offer New Testament sacrifices to God. The New Testament sacrifices are the saved, redeemed sinners, who have become the members of Christ. Christ wants to have more members that He may be increased and enlarged. We need to preach the gospel in an organic way as the priests of the gospel.
The practice of traditional Christianity is not organic. Christianity teaches people to be so-called professional teachers and preachers. Many of them preach by their art. This is similar to making artificial flowers. Many false Christians can be produced by an artificial work. We should not do an artificial work. We should not go to serve the Lord with our art. Instead, we should go with the living Christ, the organic Christ, the Christ who is the Spirit. When we are filled with Christ as the Spirit, anyone who touches us will be enlivened because we will sow Christ into them.
To sow Christ into others needs much prayer. Even when we do pray, however, we may pray in an inadequate way. In order to preach the gospel effectively, we should take down the names of our relatives, cousins, in-laws, and acquaintances. We may have twenty-five cousins and in-laws. We should not pray in a general way for them by saying, “Lord, save my cousins and my in-laws.” The Lord needs to hear a definite name from us. We should pray, “Lord, in these three months, to whom should I go to enliven?” The Lord will lead us. We should not take too many names. We can concentrate on two or three, and we can pray for them day and night. Sometimes we may have to fast and pray for them with tears.
All mothers know the labor and toil involved in delivering a child. In order to bring forth spiritual children, we have to labor by praying and fasting with tears. Maybe after one month of praying, we would go to see someone. Our going should not be a kind of following our own thought. Our going must be a following of the Spirit. The Spirit will give us the right time to go. If we go two days too early, our cousin may not have an ear to hear us. But two days later something may happen to him. God will do something to sovereignly prepare him to be a good listener. Then we can say a few words to sow Christ as the seed into him. This is the organic way we need to learn.
Today we must have a turn from our skill, our art, to life. The way to turn is to pray, call on the Lord’s name, and confess our sins, our defects, and even all the mistakes we have made toward our relatives, neighbors, and all the ones whom we know and may have offended. We need to make a thorough restitution that we may enjoy the Lord as the life-giving Spirit. Then we can practice the New Testament priesthood by going to people to minister Christ.
We need to sow Christ into people, not just occasionally, but regularly according to a schedule. We need to make a schedule, giving the Lord at least three hours once a week for contacting sinners. We do not necessarily need to knock on “cold” doors, on the doors of people whom we do not know. We have relatives, neighbors, colleagues, classmates, and friends. We can even ask the brothers to recommend their acquaintances and make arrangements to meet them two weeks in advance. During those two weeks we need to pray every day. This is organic, not something religious. I have been speaking about the God-ordained way for about seven years, and I still have not yet seen a proper start in this way.
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