Once we contact sinners and make them the members of Christ, they become young babes in Christ. We have to feed these newborn believers in Christ.
Our feeding the babes will cause them to grow. Then they will become the saints who need the perfecting.
Eventually, we have to help these perfected saints learn how to prophesy, how to speak for God. Prophesying in the church meetings builds up the churches for the building up of the Body of Christ. If only a few speak in the meetings of the church, the Body of Christ cannot be built up.
We must try our best to perfect and to build up all the saints to prophesy, to speak for the Lord. The more speakers there are in the church meetings, the better it is. This kind of speaking edifies the saints locally and builds up the Body of Christ universally. First, we need to exercise ourselves to speak for the Lord. If we will speak for the Lord every week, we will build ourselves up and we will grow. Then we will become living members not only of one local church but also of the universal Body of Christ.
With all the four steps of the God-ordained way mentioned above, we need to pay the price. However, to overcome is not just to overcome all the obstacles and frustrations to carry out the practices of the God-ordained way. We still need to overcome the degradation of today’s church.
Today the Lord has moved through the Adamic race, through the Abrahamic race, and through the church. Eventually they failed the Lord, but He would not give up. In the book of Revelation, He calls for the overcomers to carry out His move on the earth for the accomplishment of His eternal economy. The Bible reveals that the overcomers are a success for the Lord.
First, in Revelation 12 there are the dead overcomers signified by the man-child born of the universal bright woman. All of those in that corporate man-child overcome Satan by the blood of the Lamb, by the word of their testimony, and by not loving their soul-life unto death (v. 11). Second, there are the living overcomers, the 144,000 raptured to the third heaven to stand with the Lord on Mount Zion (Rev. 14:1). They follow Christ wherever He goes (v. 4). They are the overcomers living up to the time before the tribulation. Besides these two groups of overcomers, there is another group who will overcome Antichrist, his idol, and the idolatrous number of his name (Rev. 15:2). These overcomers all will be martyred, but they will overcome Antichrist. The book of Revelation shows that the Lord has a way to accomplish His economy through His overcomers.
Being in the local churches makes it easier for us to be overcomers, but this does not mean that as long as we are in the local churches, we are the overcomers. No church is an overcoming church. But we have to remain in this non-overcoming church to be the overcomers. We should not expect the local church to be an overcoming church. Of course, we all like to see that the church is going on well and improving, but not all the members of a family are the strong ones. Still, in every family there should be a number of strong ones. Not all the citizens of the United States can be soldiers who go to war, but the stronger ones can. We should not excuse ourselves by saying that others in the church are not overcoming. This is wrong. We still have to be overcoming.
In Revelation 2 and 3 the Lord rebuked the churches. He even told those in Laodicea that He would spew them out of His mouth (3:16). Still the Lord says to them, “He who overcomes, to him I will give to sit with Me on My throne, as I also overcame and sat with My Father on His throne” (v. 21). Regardless of the condition of a local church, as long as it is set up on the proper ground of oneness, it is still the church. The ground of the church is the deciding factor as to whether that is a local church or not. If it is, we have to remain there, but we should not remain there in a routine way. We have to be vital.
Now we need to consider how we can be vital. First, we must have a time to contact the Lord. Then we will be enlightened by Him to see all our defects, mistakes, wrongdoings, shortcomings, trespasses, and transgressions. We should make a thorough confession to the Lord to have a thorough forgiveness and a thorough clearance of all these negative things before Him.
Then you should ask the Lord to give you a companion with whom you can labor in the gospel. You should not say that you do not have the time. Everybody is busy. You have to redeem and budget your time. You should reserve two hours every week for contacting sinners by many ways. Then you can get some saved and baptized to be your spiritual babes. You have to feed them, perfect them, and build them up to prophesy. You must pay the price to take the biblical way, the God-ordained way in the New Testament, not depending on the elders or co-workers but on yourself.
Perhaps many in your locality are merely living a routine church life. All of these routine church life people are defeated ones. They are not overcoming. But you have to rise up to pick up the way to be vital. Then you will be a vital person in your local church to produce and build up a vital group. The Lord will then gain some overcomers in your locality, and there will be a way for the Lord to accomplish His eternal economy.
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