If you study thoroughly verses 12 and 13, you will see that the functioning of all the members of the Body of Christ is nothing but a living. And this living is composed of two kinds of elements. One is the Spirit, who is like water; the other is Christ, who is like food. The growth of the human life depends on these two elements. Food is solid, and water is liquid. Within these two elements are many rich nutrients. The nutrition in food is greater than the nutrition in water. However, food is dry. When it gets into you, without water to dissolve it, it is difficult for the nutrition in the food to saturate your cells and blood stream. We need the solid food, and we also need the liquid water. The food is Christ, and the water is the Spirit.
My body can stand upright because it is sustained by food and water. All of us grow and live by the supply of food and water. They sustain our work and activities. For our physical being to grow up healthily, we need to eat rich food and drink nutritious drinks. The Chinese who are born in America are all tall and strong. This is because the American food is exceedingly rich. American milk, American steak, American chicken, American fruits, and many other kinds of American food are eaten and constituted into their being. As a result, they are constituted with American food. But if they do not eat the riches of American food, then naturally they will be small, skinny, and unhealthy. Today many Christians are small, skinny, and bony. This is because they have not been eating Christ and drinking the Spirit. Christ and the Spirit are the two necessary constituents for the growth in life of the believers. They are also the foundation of the service of the believers.
In this message we are considering the small group meetings. We have no desire to gather the brothers and sisters together merely to have one person speak while all the rest listen. We desire to see all the saints functioning in the meetings. But if we have a few hundred or a few thousand people meeting together, how could it be possible for everyone to function? It is for this reason that the Bible mentions both the big meetings in the temple and the small meetings from house to house. This is where our difficulty lies. Suppose you have begun to meet in your home, and you have seven or eight people meeting together as a small group. The first two meetings may be very good. But by the third time you run out of content; there is no more supply. One brother may say, “I am going home” and another may say, “I am leaving.” In the end you find that you cannot carry on such meetings any longer.
This situation may be likened to a group of children growing up in America who refuse to eat hamburger or drink milk. They do not want to eat anything or drink anything. If you put five of them on a team and ask them to play ball, of course they will not have the strength to play. The reason that our small group meetings are not attractive is that we are all dry and skinny, weak and dead. We do not act like living persons. In such a condition it is all right for us to come to attend a “service” or to sit in a pew. There we may have a few who can sing professionally and who can lead us in singing. We may also have a few who are trained in praying who can lead us in prayer. Of course, there is also the preacher who will preach to us. It is easy to attend a “service” in that way. However, if six or seven of us are put together by ourselves, what should we do? Who will pray for us? Who will preach to us? In such a situation we may look at each other, or just talk to each other about many irrelevant things. In the end there is nothing more to say, and the meeting cannot be carried on any further. For this reason, we cannot talk about propagation or increase. We can only remain where we are, get by with what we have, and overlook our real needs. This is why my whole being is overloaded with this heavy burden. My hope is that in every local church we would see a total mobilization of all the members. In order to have a total mobilization, there is no other way but to have the small groups. Only in the small groups will everyone be able to function.
We must have a kind of living that is initiated from the Holy Spirit and which passes through the human spirit. In other words, we must have a living in which we walk according to the spirit. However, that is not all. Tonight the Lord has shown us the constituents of this kind of living. The first constituent is food; the second is water. The food is Christ, and the water is the Spirit. According to the Bible, Christ is in the Spirit. This is like all the nutrition in the food being in the water. From Revelation 22 we can see that the tree of life grows in the river of life (vv. 1-2). Wherever the river of life flows, there the tree of life grows. The fruit of the tree of life comes out of the two sides of the river to supply man’s need. Christ must be in the Spirit before He can be our supply.