I believe that among us the Lord will recover mainly four items. First, we must learn to experience Christ in the spirit in a living way. This is the basic matter, the foundation. We must know Christ not in mere teachings nor in the gifts, but in life-the inner life and our daily life in the spirit. Second, we must realize the proper ground of the oneness of the Body. We must always keep the oneness and not do anything in a divisive way. Wherever we go and wherever we are, we keep the unique ground of oneness. In this way we can fulfill God’s eternal purpose, coming together to have a local expression of the very Christ whom we experience. Third, whenever we come together on the ground of the local church, we need to have the living, rich, adequate functioning in the meetings to express Christ. In order to express Christ in the church meetings, the saints must exhibit the riches of Christ. Fourth, we must have the outreach of the gospel through our daily living. These four items-to know Christ as our life, to come together as a local expression to exhibit Christ, to have a rich functioning in our meetings, and to reach out to others to bring them into the Lord’s testimony-are the main items in the recovery of the Lord’s testimony.
We must realize that the preaching of the gospel is not a kind of movement among us. This is a part of our daily living. Therefore, we all have to live for this and work and labor for this day by day. In order to help us, we sometimes need to have a gospel preaching meeting, but we do not trust very much in the gospel meeting. This is just a small part of our gospel preaching. The main part of gospel preaching is our daily living. Even if we do not have a gospel preaching meeting, after one or two months we still will baptize some new ones. This is normal.
We must not follow the way of today’s Christianity to have a campaign and then baptize people. That is not normal. The normal way is that we in this city simply live in, with, and by Christ. We come together to express Christ and serve Christ one to another. Then we have a testimony to the unbelievers, and some of them are brought in. Without any kind of gospel preaching meeting, new converts are baptized into the Body again and again. This is the normal preaching of the church. I do not mean that we never need a gospel preaching meeting, but I stress the normal way because the traditional way of preaching cannot have a long life. We cannot have a healthy, long life by taking medicine. We can live a long and healthy life only by taking normal, proper food. Our preaching can endure only by the normal way.
The proper preaching of the gospel first depends on our testimony. If we brothers and sisters do not have the proper testimony in our daily living, our preaching will be poor. It will never be prevailing because we will not be able to gain the ground with people. If we all live in Christ and have a real testimony in our daily living, we will gain the ground in our neighborhood, office, and school and among our relatives. This testimony paves the way and gains the ground for the gospel. Then once we have the ground through our living testimony in our daily life, we have to work. First we have the life; then we have to work based on the life. In any kind of orchard, there must be life. The growing of the plants is something of life. However, we also need to work, the more the better.
Two brothers may work together with some sisters, coming together to pray, fellowship, and determine what main steps are needed to take care of the new ones. The first step may be to determine whether they have believed in the Lord Jesus with repentance and confession. We should pray for a person specifically with this in view, and after that we can go to contact him. If we find that he has not truly believed, we have to do something to help him to believe. Also, if we find that he did not have a real repentance and confession, we must explain what it means to repent and confess and help him to know how to repent and confess. This requires that we know how to work, just as carpenters learn how to make furniture out of raw materials. Otherwise, we will do things only in a very general way. This is a lifelong business, a business for the long run, and we must all learn how to do it. Second, we may need to know if the new ones are clear about salvation. As a third step we should know if they are ready and willing to be baptized, and then we should know if they are clear about the church life. If we coordinate in this way, we will help each other mutually.
Each step should be carried out within a deadline of one week. Then after three or four weeks of contacting people in this way, we will be clear about their condition. We should be flexible, though; this is simply an illustration with principles. However, we still should be legal about some things. Every day, for example, we have to sleep once and take at least three meals. If we are not a little legal, we cannot have a proper living. Therefore, we are all under the training, and we are learning. We all have to learn not only to preach the gospel but to be built up ourselves. Therefore, we need much coordination. From the past we have learned that to have the adequate coordination, there is the need of certain brothers to bear responsibility to assign something to others. It is by this coordination that the work will go on and on. This requires much exercise and that we be trained through our practice.
To do all this is not too much. This is something we have to work on. Do not forget that, on the one hand, to preach the gospel is to travail, to give new birth to persons. To this end we need to labor. On the other hand, to preach the gospel is to disciple people, to make people disciples of the Lord. To carry out this kind of education requires that we work in a certain way. We trust in the work of the Holy Spirit; there is no doubt about this. However, the principle today is that without human cooperation, even the Holy Spirit cannot do much. The Spirit’s work needs and depends on our cooperation. The more cooperation we render to the Spirit, the more work the Spirit will do, and the better cooperation we render to the Spirit, the better work the Spirit will do. We need to render an adequate and better coordination with the Holy Spirit.
Sometimes after contacting someone we may encounter certain problems. There may be some problems that are hard to deal with, and we may be unable to solve them. Then in coordination we may determine which brothers can handle this matter. Some brothers may have experience and be able to help this kind of person. We may even feel that one brother is not adequate, so we can assign two brothers to deal with the problems. It is in this way that the whole “machine” will work. This is the way for many brothers to coordinate. It is the proper way to save time and work efficiently. Whether the “machine” will keep going or will stop, however, depends on how we run it.
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