The attendants of a home meeting are all small potatoes. Therefore, we cannot expect them to have a very high content. But I would like to say that the most healthy food is the ordinary home cooking. If we eat a big feast every day, our life expectancy will not be long. Our home meeting should not be a feast, but it should be ordinary cooking. We hope that the home meetings will supply to us the ordinary home cooking. The problem today is that the home meetings only offer dessert, with no ordinary home cooking. It is not good to eat too much dessert. Too many sweets easily cause an excess of stomach acid. If one wants to be healthy, he has to eat food with less grease, sugar, and salt. If one takes care of these few things, the entire family will be healthy. A few months ago, when we just began to promote the home meetings, the testimonies we heard were as pleasant as eating ice cream. Brothers and sisters who had not been to a meeting for thirty years returned. How encouraging it was to hear testimonies like this. At that time, I worried that if the home meetings would not eat the ordinary home cooking, one day even the ice cream would be gone.
We have spent three evenings here to change our concept and to understand the real situation. Do not set your hope on the big meetings. This way is a dead end. Big meetings are all like skating on the ice. On the day that Peter preached the gospel, three thousand skated in. Then Paul preached the gospel everywhere, full of power, and many people skated in. But this cannot keep people. Today, degraded Christianity emphasizes big meetings and sets up seminaries to train preachers. But what the Bible shows us is planting (1 Cor. 3:6). The church is raising up small potatoes. We must change our concept. If we cannot prepare a big feast, that is all right. But we have to do some ordinary home cooking. If we are willing, many of us can prepare an ordinary home-cooked meal. Brothers and sisters, all of us love the Lord, and all of us hope that the church would be built up. Therefore, I believe you are all willing to receive this leading of the Lord.
Today on five continents there are more than six hundred churches. Every church has its eyes on the church in Taipei, because Taipei was the origination of the overseas churches. Therefore, the church in Taipei must be built up. We all must come back to the Bible, to pay attention to the building up of the home meetings according to the revelation and principle of the Bible, and to nurture the several thousand brothers and sisters in Taipei in the home meetings. Every home gathering is like a garden. Let us go and nurture the green and tender trees. We will surely succeed! Brothers and sisters, for the going on of the home meetings, let us bear the burden together. The home meeting is just like a family with eight or ten members. In such a family, one person alone does not prepare the meal, but everyone must cook. Even if you do not know how to cook, you have to go shopping and prepare meals at home that the whole family may eat and be healthy.
How can we uplift and strengthen the content of the home meetings? And how can we enrich the content of the home meetings? We have to learn to use the Lord’s Word skillfully. Christians who go to the Sunday morning service also read the Bible. But there is a great difference between reading the Bible in a living way and reading it in a dead way. You may read a Bible verse in a dead way, reading only the black and white letters, or you can read the same verse in a living and rich way. But this is not to say that we only spend time to read the Bible for the purpose of having the supply for the home meetings. Rather, we all need to pay attention to our personal reading of the Bible. If we want the home meetings to be strong, then we ourselves must be strong. If we ourselves are not strong, the home meetings will not be strong either. Because you are those who attend the home meetings, when you come together, you are the home group. If each of you is not strong, does not know how to read the Bible, and does not know how to read the Bible in a living way, how could the home meeting be strong? Therefore, if you are not strong, the home meeting will not be strong. In order for a Christian to be strong, he must live a normal Christian life. Your Bible reading must be living. Every day you must pray, fellowship with the Lord, walk by the Spirit, and live Christ. If you have this kind of living, you will be living not only when you come to the home meeting but even when you are at home.