The purpose of this training is for the full-time serving ones to learn to receive a burden. In order for you to help the small groups, you must realize the need for learning. You should not expect to accomplish something in a quick way or even to do something well in your first attempt. God creates, but man must study. To study means to learn. Whoever expects to do something well in his first attempt will not achieve success. In the story of the tortoise and the hare, the capable hare lost the race, whereas the incapable tortoise won. If we desire to succeed in anything, we must be like the tortoise; we must be patient and willing to spend time to labor persistently.
After finishing the training, you must concentrate on reading the Bible and the Life-study messages from Monday to Friday for four hours every morning. Then, depending on the arrangement in your locality, you should serve in coordination with the church in the afternoon. You must also set aside some time to review your notes from the training. Furthermore, seven hours of sleep should be sufficient. If you usually sleep eight hours and do not have time to review your notes, you can sleep for seven and a half hours and use thirty minutes to review your notes or to consider how to help your small group. This can be compared to playing basketball. Even if you receive instructions from a coach, you will not know how to play properly if you do not practice. We need time for practice.
My greatest concern when a person begins to serve the Lord is that he may become useless. “I am serving the Lord, not men” becomes a slogan that he hides behind in order to not improve himself. The denominations in Christianity have a system of examinations and promotions, but we do not have any examinations or promotions. Therefore, it is easy for full-timers to neglect to improve themselves. In today’s society, if a person is not aggressive, he will not be promoted, nor will he be able to keep his job. Since World War II the whole world has been advancing. If a person is not aggressive to learn, he will lose his job and also fall far behind as the world progresses. Hence, I encourage you to exercise your spirit and to exercise a strong will to be aggressive in your service to the Lord. You must be aggressive; otherwise, after serving full time for six months, you will be useless. Even if you do not take the way of serving full time, you need to be aggressive and seek to advance in your job; otherwise, you will be eliminated. If this is the situation in the world, we should be even more aggressive in serving the Lord.
All the young serving ones should be aggressive. There is no limit to being aggressive. Every occupation has specialized knowledge, and no one is born with this knowledge. After I had been saved for seven years, the Lord raised up a church in my hometown in 1932. It was my responsibility to release messages in the meetings since I had learned some truths. The more I spoke, the more there was a need to speak, and the more there was a need, the more I spoke. Gradually I discovered that depending on the Chinese Union Bible and the King James Version of the Bible as my only reference books was not sufficient to meet the need, because many items of the truth required the defining of doctrine. The Chinese Union Version is a smooth and elegant translation, and its language is full of rhythm; however, in some places it lacks accuracy. In order to determine whether its translation is accurate, I could not rely on English Bibles; I needed to base my judgment of the words in the Bible on the original languages.
At that time I wrote to a brother in Shanghai and requested that he go to a Christian bookstore to purchase a copy of an English-Greek interlinear Bible for me, which I received at the end of 1932. Before then I had not learned the Greek alphabet, but a copy of the New Testament in Chinese that I received from an elderly brother included an explanation of the Greek language. The first page of this explanation consisted of the Greek alphabet with a pronunciation guide in both Mandarin and English. I used this to learn the Greek alphabet in six months.
Gradually I discovered that the English translation in the English-Greek interlinear Bible does not always convey the right meaning. In every language there are often words that have more than one meaning. For this reason, I needed a Greek dictionary to understand the Greek. When Japan invaded China, the Japanese army put many Western missionaries into concentration camps and sold their books. I took the opportunity and purchased many used books, including two excellent Greek-English dictionaries. I used these books to learn Greek.
During the fifty-two years that have passed since 1932, I have done in-depth study of biblical Greek using the writings of biblical scholars throughout the centuries, even though I have not studied Greek in any school. I regularly consult Greek dictionaries and Bible concordances. One of these works, Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, is a ten-volume set by a German brother, Gerhard Kittel. This dictionary lists and explains every Greek word according to its usage in the ancient times, in the New Testament times, and in modern times. I consult this set of books the most. As a result I can cut straight the word of the truth according to the Greek language when I expound the New Testament.