First Corinthians 14:31 says, “For you can all prophesy one by one.” But when I look at the way you stand up to speak, I am convinced that you all need to practice speaking in the meetings. For a child to learn to speak Chinese, he has to start at the age of one or two. Gradually he will become more proficient and by the age of eight or nine he will become very fluent in the language. When the older Chinese sisters come to America, they have to learn the English language. It is hard for them to pronounce the words, because they have never practiced speaking in English.
To speak in the meetings is absolutely a matter of practice. The reason you cannot speak is because you do not practice speaking. As long as you do not speak you will never be able to speak. Actually, when you converse with others at home, you do have a lot to say. This is especially true with the sisters. When they pick up the phone they can go on indefinitely. They can fellowship, and they can even pray on the telephone, but when they come to the meetings they can neither fellowship nor pray. You say that you come to the meetings to worship God, but if your mouths are shut it is difficult for you to be released to serve God. God wants man to speak. First Corinthians 12:3 says, “No one speaking in the Spirit of God says, Jesus is accursed; and no one can say, Lord Jesus, except in the Holy Spirit.” Therefore, in the meetings you can all say, “Lord Jesus.”
Moreover, we have a hymnal in our hand. Every hymn in this book is a message. You can use it to speak a little. Do not be so legal, waiting silently for the piano to play it through once before singing it. You can speak to one another with the songs. This will make a very good meeting. Some have complained that it is difficult to conduct a small group meeting. At least you can all pick a few hymns to sing together and to speak to each other.
In the meetings, whether we are reading the Scripture or speaking about the Lord Jesus, or whether we are proclaiming the hymns to one another, we all have to exercise our spirits. When you exercise your spirit, you are exercising your faith to make declarations in faith. If you would exercise your spirit to declare, “Dear brothers and sisters! The Lord Jesus is the Savior of mankind!” your spirit will be full of faith. If you just murmur in a limp way, “The Lord Jesus is the Savior. I am crucified with Him,” there is no spirit and there is no faith. The listeners may ask in their hearts, “What are you talking about? How can I be crucified with Christ? He was crucified two thousand years ago. How can I possibly be crucified together with Him?” It is only when your spirit comes out that your faith comes out also. Only then will power, light, life, and the gospel come out as well. Only then will your words supply and help others.
Some may say, “Brother Lee, this is your profession. You have been in this line for over fifty years. Of course you can speak.” They are right, but you have to know that this should be every Christian’s profession. We are all witnesses of the Lord. Jesus said in Acts 1:8, “But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and unto the remotest part of the earth.” I do not agree with people calling me a preacher; we are all witnesses of the Lord. We can all speak for the Lord, and we should all open our mouths to testify for the Lord.
As witnesses of the Lord, when we open our mouth we have to release our spirit. I am afraid that many people release their spirit only when they lose their temper, but when they speak about the Lord Jesus their spirit is not as strong. Why do we have to pray before we preach the gospel or give a message? Although I am very busy, every time before I come to speak I have to lay aside everything else to pray before the Lord. Our prayer is like inflating the tires of a car; before we take a long journey, we have to inflate the tires at the gas station so that we will not have a flat tire along the way. We Christians are all witnesses of the Lord. We all have to go to the Lord every day to fill ourselves up with air. We all have to learn to speak; this is the burden of this message.
In the meetings we should pay attention to mutual speaking. First Corinthians 14:26 says, “Whenever you come together, each one has a psalm, has a teaching, has a revelation, has a tongue, has an interpretation.” Here we see that it is not one or two persons speaking while others listen; rather, it is everyone having a psalm, or a teaching, or a revelation. Everyone can speak.
A brother told me that at the place where he works, he has a colleague who meets in a church with three hundred people. They also discovered that it is not so effective to have one man speaking while the rest listen. As a result, they divide the big meetings into many small groups with every small group having a leader. This practice is not according to the example set forth in the Bible. This is just to transfer the method employed in the big meetings to the small meetings. It is still one man speaking. Originally you have three hundred people listening to one person. Now you have ten small groups. What you have is thirty people listening to one man. The principle is still the same. But the Bible says that when we come together each one has a psalm, a revelation, a teaching and so forth. In other words, everyone can speak.
A strong country and a healthy society depend not so much on the masses or the communities as on strong individual families. If in a family only the mother does everything, while everyone else does nothing, when the mother gets sick, then the whole family will be in trouble. They can only go out to eat hamburgers or hot dogs. The meetings that the Bible talks about are house-to-house meetings. In these meetings everyone speaks, and everyone can cook.
For this reason we must build up meetings in the homes of the Christians. Every home must live a normal life. Every home has to prepare home cooking, and everyone can cook for others. If every home is healthy, then the community will be healthy. If the community is healthy, the country will be strong.