Beginning this morning we will have five days of training meetings on service. Every brother and sister in the church has a part. It is not only the elders and co-workers who serve, but every brother and sister in the church is a serving one.
Before the meeting you received the outline for this message. In the outline there are Scripture verses. Before I came downstairs, I told a few of the co-workers not to tell you how to read the verses because I wanted to see how you would do it. I watched carefully. Your prayers were quite good, but you prayed without stopping. I had no choice, so I asked someone to write two verses on the blackboard. Then he said, “Let us pray-read.” After he said this, you began to pray-read. You should know that time is limited in a training; therefore, after you have prayed a little while, you should begin to pray-read.
Whenever we gather together, we enter into the Lord’s name. We have been called out of everything to be gathered together. The Spirit is within us, and the Word of the Lord is in our hands; therefore, we can read and we can pray. We do not have a pastor, and even though we have elders, they are not elders in the meetings. In the meetings, everyone is equal. We have many co-workers, but they are not co-workers in the meetings. Their work is to preach the gospel on the campuses, to lead people to be saved, to hold special meetings, and to take care of the saints in the church.
When the church gathers together, we all have the Word of the Lord, and we also have the Spirit of the Lord. We can use our eyes to read the Lord’s Word, our mind to understand the Lord’s Word, and our spirit to pray over and receive the Lord’s Word. We all can do these things, just as everyone can breathe, drink, eat, and speak. We all are living people, not robots. The God whom we serve is also living. We are not serving dumb idols. When we come to the meetings, we desire to overturn the way of practice in Christianity, which stifles the functioning of the members of the Body of Christ. For several decades we have been trying to overturn this way, but sometimes the more we tried the more we fell back into it. When I came back to Taiwan in October 1984, I could not tolerate the situation any longer; I made up my mind to overturn all the things related to the old way. However, this morning these things are still with us. My reason for mentioning this to you is to ask you to overturn these old things.
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