Second, we need to exercise our spirit with the indwelling Holy Spirit to worship in spirit. When we exercise our spirit, the Holy Spirit cooperates and honors this. This is the true worship in spirit and in truthfulness (John 4:24). Truthfulness refers to reality, that is, to Christ who is reality. Today we worship God in spirit with Christ as the surplus that we bring to God as the reality.
Third, we must learn how to cooperate and coordinate. The only way to worship is with Christ as our experience, with the spirit as our means, our instrument, and in coordination. If we have these three—Christ, the spirit, and coordination—the meetings will be wonderful and rich, full of Christ and living. They will be very good because we will have the riches, the spirit, and the way. We must pay our full attention to these three matters. Then whenever we come together, the meetings will be very attractive and attracting. They will attract people; people will be happy and anxious to come to the meetings. On the contrary, a meeting can be very low. Some brothers do seek the Lord and like to come to the meetings, but whenever they come to the meeting, they bring it lower; we need to be delivered from meeting in this way.
We all have to labor on Christ. We all have to learn how to exercise our spirit in the meeting to be active, not inactive, and positive, not negative. We should not sit and wait. That is not the time to wait; that is the time the Lord is waiting for us. We should exercise our spirit to be strong. Luke 1:80 says that John the Baptist grew and became strong in spirit. Whenever we come into the meetings we have to be strong in spirit and active and positive. Then we will not imprison the Holy Spirit within our spirit. The Holy Spirit will be released, and the release of the Holy Spirit will bring forth the riches of Christ. We all have to learn to release our spirit and exercise our spirit. Then we will be open. We will pave the way for the Holy Spirit within us to come out.
We must also learn the technique of how to coordinate. Once a brother starts in one way, we simply follow him. If his functioning is weak, we must learn to strengthen it, and if it is low, we must learn to uplift it. I look to the Lord that we will learn these practical things. We can be assured that if we put them into practice, the meetings of the church will be enriched, living, edifying, and very attractive. People will receive the real help, and the Lord will be glorified. The Lord’s presence will be with us, and it will be easy to bring unbelievers to the Lord. This is our responsibility, and it has very much to do with the building up of the local church. A local church can be built up only through these practical matters. We all must put them into practice.
A brother may begin a meeting by ministering something concerning Christ as patience. If we know how to exercise the spirit and if we have many experiences of Christ as the surplus in our hand, we can immediately follow the brother to give a testimony of how we experienced Christ as our patience. Or perhaps we will be ready to continue his ministering by offering a prayer to praise and thank the Lord that He is our patience. This may be compared to handling the same ball in a ball game. Sometimes, however, we may have only one item of the surplus of Christ. We may have nothing to say concerning Christ as patience, but we may have something to say about Christ as our strength. After the brother ministers Christ as patience, we do not have anything with which to follow him. Yet because we feel that we must exercise our spirit to do something, we start on another line. This is to play with a different “ball.” After this, another brother may start another line; this is to play with yet another “ball.” Eventually there will be many different lines in one meeting. That is like one team playing a game with many balls.
Sometimes a team of five members may play with more than five balls; one player plays with his ball, another plays with his, and another plays with a third ball. This is an illustration of a poor meeting. If we know how to discern, we can tell that many meetings are poor; we play with “ball” after “ball,” not like a team but like naughty boys. Each one plays his own ball, and each one even has two or three balls. This is because we are not trained, educated, or exercised.
The Lord can testify for me that I have no intention to criticize anyone, but I must say that it is hard to find a Christian meeting that is truly satisfying. Many Christian meetings are always poor. There is always a dissatisfaction within the attendants. This is not our dissatisfaction only; it is the Lord’s dissatisfaction. The Lord is not satisfied unless there is a proper meeting with a group of Christians who know how to exercise their spirit, have many experiences of Christ, and have the technique, the best way, the best exercise, to “play ball.” The more we see this kind of meeting, the more we will be satisfied. We will not say, “This is a poor ‘game.’ I will never come back again to see this kind of ‘game.’” This kind of meeting will attract people and edify them. I can testify that to be in such a meeting even once edifies people for their whole life. Such a meeting edifies and builds up.