When I was young, by the Lord’s mercy I came in contact with Brother Watchman Nee, and under the Lord’s sovereignty I was put under his hand. On the one hand, he did not merely teach me, but on the other hand, he taught me very much. Once in 1933 the church in Shanghai was to have a gospel preaching meeting. The responsible ones thought that Brother Nee would prepare to give the message. When they contacted him, however, he said, “Ask Brother Lee to do it.” Then those responsible ones came to me and put me into the position of having to give a message for the gospel. When I asked where Brother Nee would be, they said, “He is probably busy. Perhaps he will be out of the city. Now you must do it.” Of course, I did give the message. Eventually, though, I found out that behind the platform that I stood on, there was a small back door, and throughout my whole message Brother Nee was standing there listening to me. I can never forget that. It was the first time I received the light concerning John 16. Concerning the Spirit of reality, verse 8 says, “When He comes, He will convict the world concerning sin and concerning righteousness and concerning judgment.” The Spirit convicts concerning three things. He convicts concerning sin because we are in Adam, concerning righteousness because we need to be transferred into Christ, and concerning judgment because if we are still in Adam and not willing to be transferred into Christ, we will be judged with Satan.
Two or three weeks later, as Brother Nee and I were sitting in his living room, he said, “Brother Lee, it was a real light that to be convicted of sin means that someone is in Adam, of righteousness that he needs to be in Christ, and of judgment that he follows Satan.” I did not know from where he had heard this. Eventually I was told that he was at the back door listening to the entire message. It was at that time that he encouraged me, saying, “Brother, you have to go out to teach people according to your understanding of the Bible.”
At about that time, around eight of us under thirty years old were all learners. We had no intention to do anything but to stay there day by day to learn. Brother Nee always gave the messages. One Lord’s Day morning we all came to the breakfast happy that we were about to hear Brother Nee speak another message. Since we were learners, we just wanted to hear him. The meeting started at 10:00. That morning, a brother who helped with the cooking came to me at about 9:30 or 9:40 with a small slip of paper from Brother Nee. It said, “Please give the message this morning.” After he delivered the note, the brother disappeared, so I did not know what to do. Before this time, however, I had had much contact with Brother Nee in which he had spontaneously given me help and instructions on the ministry of life, and through this I had received something. When that note came, therefore, I did have something to minister. As I was standing there to give a message, I was on the test. Brother Nee did not come to the meeting, but I knew that in the afternoon he would come to certain older ones to ask the full story about what I had ministered. Later, perhaps after two or three weeks, we were together in a car, and as he was driving, he spoke with me, referring to my message.
On another occasion when I was asked to give a message on the Lord’s Day, I spoke in a strong and detailed way on how to abide in the Lord. I was very burdened, and I thought that I had given a good message. Again, Brother Nee was not there. After a certain number of days, he told one of the elder sisters who lived close to me, “Please say to Brother Lee that if we are in Christ, there is no need for us to learn how to be in Him.” Later, when I went to sit with these elder sisters, one said, “Brother Lee, Brother Nee asked me to tell you one thing. If we are in Christ, there is no need for us to learn how to be in Christ.” This truly opened my eyes. I am in the United States, so there is no need for me to learn how to be in the United States. In the same way, we do not need to learn how to abide in Christ but rather to realize that we are in Him already. These stories illustrate Brother Nee’s way of perfecting the members.
We all must learn the lesson not to replace others but always to produce and perfect them. In addition, we must have the growth of life. Then we will know how to minister life to others. Raising up others has many problems, but those are the lessons we have to learn. We have to learn to perfect others in many ways, including how to help them to study the Word, to contact people, and to visit people. Then the whole church will be functioning.