In this chapter we shall consider some practical points concerning the meetings. Many seeking believers start to meet together, but after a certain time they disband and dissolve their meeting. Why does their meeting collapse? On the one hand, many believers are disgusted with any kind of organization. They say, “We do not like to have an organization. We have to come together in the spirit.” However, they do not know how to come together in the spirit. They do not know how to exercise the spirit, how to exhibit Christ, and how to come together with the surplus of Christ. Eventually, they do not have an organization, but what they have is only emptiness. This causes their meeting to fall to pieces.
This is why we need to pay the price to exercise our spirit and labor on Christ day by day. I beg you to keep these matters in mind and put them into practice. The basic principle for Christian service is to exercise the spirit and to have Christ as our surplus to minister to others. Whether we pray, sing a hymn, give a testimony, give a message, speak in a certain tongue, or have an interpretation, it must be in the spirit with Christ as the surplus. We must learn how to exercise our spirit, and we must have the experiences of Christ. Then when we come together to meet, we will know the best and proper way to meet by exercising our spirit to exhibit Christ, ministering Christ by either a hymn, a prayer, a testimony, a message, or even a tongue. By any kind of manifestation of the Holy Spirit we must exercise our spirit to minister Christ to others. This is the proper way to have our meetings and service.
To improve any of the meetings requires three things. First we must labor on Christ. This is not a matter only of the meeting; it is a matter of our entire daily life. In these days the dear brothers and sisters truly have been helped and are practicing how to labor on Christ. This produces the riches for the meeting. In the ancient times the people of Israel came together three times a year—at the Passover, at Pentecost, and at the Feast of Tabernacles—with the surplus of the produce of the good land. This produce came from their day-by-day labor during that year. For the whole year they labored on the good land, so they had produce from the land as a rich surplus to bring for the Lord’s worship. This rich surplus became an exhibition of the rich produce of the rich land. However, this depended on their daily labor on the good land.
The good land typifies Christ. Today Christ is the good land to us, so we must labor on Him. The rain, the sunshine, the air, and the fertile soil come from the grace of God, but we need to labor to till the ground, sow the seed, and take care of the harvest. This is to cooperate with God’s grace. We need to pray and deal with many things. We need to learn how to trust in the Lord, abide in Him, fellowship with Him, and deal with Him and be dealt with by Him. This is a spiritual labor, not human struggling; it is not human effort but a spiritual coordination with the Lord.
Day by day we all must learn to live in this way. Then we will know Christ in a practical way and experience Him in our spirit, and when we come to the meetings, we will have something of Christ. We may be humble and say that we have nothing, but in actuality we will be full. We will have something, and spontaneously it will come out. This is why we all must learn how to live in Christ, walk by Christ, and experience Christ in the spirit. This is our constant labor on Christ. Then even if we do not give a testimony, we still will have the experience of Christ. When we simply open our mouth to praise and thank the Lord, we will be rich in our praise and thanks because we have something of Christ.