When we all meet together, if someone merely sits quietly and does not open his mouth to testify or pray, then he will not be able to enjoy the rich supply of the Lord in the meeting. On the contrary, as long as you open your mouth in the meeting to testify, pray, or pray-read the Bible, you will be able to gain the enjoyment. If you do not open your mouth, you will have nothing, but as soon as you open your mouth, you will be supplied inwardly. When you come to the meeting, if you do nothing but come only to listen to others speak a message, what you gain will not be rich, even though your coming is better than not coming to the meeting at all. However, if you are willing to open your mouth in the meetings by praying, singing, pray-singing, pray-reading, or testifying, when you go home you will feel rich inwardly, and what you gain will be different. If I never open my mouth in the meetings that I attend, I will definitely be poor, weak, and cold. I will not have the inward watering.
Coming to the meetings is like coming to a basketball game to play and not to watch. We come not to watch the meeting but to meet. When a ball player gets onto the court, his entire being is active. Likewise, when we come to the meetings, we must use and exercise our spirit. When we come to the meetings, we are coming to worship, praise, enjoy, glorify, and exalt the Lord, so we cannot simply sit quietly. If we come to the meetings with our Bibles and hymnals, and after singing a hymn we all sit silently and no one says a word, how would you feel? I come to the meetings, and you also come to the meetings. When I come to the meetings, there are things that I should do, and when you come to the meetings, there are things that you should do. If, however, I am always the only one speaking and you are never active, then it is as if I were the only one playing in the game. The rest of you are like the other four players who do nothing but stand there, waiting for me to run over and catch the ball even when it falls right in front of you. After catching the ball, I make the play, but after everything is over, you still have not moved. This should not be our situation.
When we come to the meetings, if we do not praise or speak something to exalt the Lord or glorify Him, but we only sit there quietly, we offend the Lord. This is the condition of degraded Christianity. This is why Christianity has no way except to set up seminaries to train a group of professionals to take care of the meetings. Eventually we believers do not need to say it, for the unbelievers will say it for us: “If you have a lawsuit, find a lawyer; if you are sick, find a doctor; if you want prayer or preaching, find a pastor.” We must not have such a situation among us. Among us we should not have the “leading ones” doing the tasks of the “pastors”; this is the influence of the Nicolaitans, and it is something we absolutely must overthrow. According to the revelation of the Bible, we all are priests; we were bought by the Lord with His blood to be priests (Rev. 1:5-6). Hence, everyone is a priest in the church. It does not matter if a person is young or old; as long as he has been saved and regenerated, he is a priest of God. This is just as in a family, where the husband, the wife, and the children all fulfill their duty. The husband works to earn money to support the family; the wife takes care of the household chores and serves in all the small affairs; and the children help clean the house. Everyone in the family is actively working for the household. In the same way, we are in the church our home, and we all should be active whether we are young or old. When we come to the meetings, we should each fulfill our responsibility. This will make the meetings living. When the meetings are living, they are rich. Our body is the same. When the body is active, it is healthy.
I hope that our concept and spirit will be changed. In the meetings we must use our spirit. Whenever we use our spirit, we can do many things. I do not believe that you do not contact or experience the Lord the entire week. I believe that you have at least a little experience you can speak about. Do not tell stories or speak your history. You simply need to fellowship the point that you experienced, and it will benefit the entire meeting. Do not bemoan the fact that you can speak only one point and cannot speak a long message. Actually, every point is valuable. The water that we drink is made up of many drops of water collected together. It is too poor that we appoint a brother to give a message every Lord’s Day. Everyone has a portion, and if everyone brings out his portion, the entire meeting will be enriched. I hope that we will do our best to practice this.
The church is not made up of a group of people living in themselves. Whenever we live in ourselves, we are not the church. Only those living in spirit are the church. If there is Spirit, then there is the church; if there is no Spirit, there is no church. If we want the Spirit, we must exercise our spirit. We must learn this lesson. Whenever I speak, I wait at least one second and speak slowly. I have truly learned this secret. Sometimes if you had waited half a minute before speaking, you would not have said what you said. Some sisters very much like to go shopping. When you want to go shopping, you must learn not to make a hasty decision but wait for half a minute to return to your spirit. Once you are in your spirit, you may not go shopping. You must learn to exercise your spirit to first put your body aside and then to stop your soul, including the mind, emotion, and will, for half a minute so that you can return to your spirit and contact the Lord. When you turn to your spirit in this way, you are exercising your spirit, initiating from your spirit, and living and walking from your spirit. By doing this, you will find that your whole experience is totally different, as different as heaven is from earth. If we truly live in spirit, our living will be heavenly; but if we live in ourselves, our living will be earthly. There is a very great difference between the two.