When you go to the home meeting, you must go with a spirit of prayer. Whether anyone arrives before you at the meeting, and regardless of how many people there are in the meeting, as soon as you arrive, you should begin to pray. We have to speak in the home meetings. But the first speaking is not to man, but to God. The minute you enter the place, start praying. When all seven or eight eventually arrive, they will spontaneously pray. In this way the home meeting becomes a prayer meeting. At least for ten to fifteen minutes, everyone will enter into this kind of prayer.
Again, the key to the home meetings is in singing the hymns. We all have to learn to sing. It would be good if after this week’s home meeting, an announcement would be made for next week’s reading. There is no need to use a whole Life-study message; we may pick out just two paragraphs. Everyone would then go home and prepare themselves in the assigned portions by pray-reading and praying. Some related hymns can be selected, and one can practice singing them first at home. When you are thus prepared, you can come to the home meeting praying, singing, and speaking. When you come to a point or a sentence in the message that touches you, you can start singing. Your singing must bring everyone into the enjoyment. Still, you must learn to go along with the weaker ones. You must also learn to relate to the lowly ones. This is a key.
If you would take all the points I have just mentioned and put them into practice, your home meeting will surely be living. This will fulfill the leading the Lord has given us. There will be no leader, no chairman, and no one to give orders. There will be no more forms such as singing first, reading later, then preaching last, or anything like that. Praise the Lord that He has opened every book of the New Testament to us. How I wish that we could go over these books one by one! Do not be afraid that you will lose something by skipping over portions of the Life-study messages. Our storehouse is filled with chicken, duck, rice, and flour. You cannot swallow them all at once. All you need to do is to select a portion as a meal. Feast on that portion with ample reading, singing, praying, and testifying. This will give you the adequate satisfaction.
Brothers and sisters, you have heard so much now about the home meetings. Would you now consider the home meetings to be easy or not? If you still consider them a difficult thing to do, then I do not know what else I can say to you. We all have to dive into the home meetings. It does not matter whether we can play the ball or not. When we are watching others play, we will surely have a lot of criticisms. To us this player is bad at shooting and that one is awkward in running. But once we get onto the field, not only will our criticisms be gone; we will actually begin to enjoy the game. The same is true with everything else. In a concert, if I am one of the players, or if I have any part in the performance, I will enjoy it much more.
Although there is only one home meeting a week, there are fifty-two weeks in a year. Every week you have such an opportunity to breathe some fresh air and bask a little in the warm sun. Here you can sit down and have a cup of tea. Before the Lord, you can be refreshed, renewed, supplied, and comforted every week. Here you can share your burden with the brothers and sisters. You can all pray together, trust in the Lord together, and fellowship in the spirit together. This is truly the greatest enjoyment and the greatest blessing the Lord has ordained for His people here on earth.
Those in the world do not have the Lord. They do not have truth, or light, or the word of life. They indulge themselves in card games and dancing. But we have the Lord, we have life, and we have the Lord’s word. We live a communal life. We fellowship together, and we know how to pray. This is the greatest blessing. I hope that we can all lay hold of these few points. In this way it is easy to conduct a home meeting.