In the preaching of the gospel, we need to get people convicted and subdued. The ones who get saved should have the sensation and realization that they are sinful and need the Lord’s forgiveness. When an unbeliever prays with sincerity, “Oh, Lord, I am sinful,” this means he is being touched by the Lord. The way to be vitalized is to be stirred up in the first love for the Lord through repenting prayers.

I have a burden to help the saints become vital. Now we need to be brought into the genuine practice of the vital groups. In order to be vitalized, we need to be like the athletes who are in the Olympics. If we want to know what desperation is, we should consider these athletes. Their dedication and endeavoring are a good display of desperation. The Christian life is a life of martyrdom. Paul knew that he was going to be martyred (2 Tim. 4:6). The Lord Jesus told us that anyone who would come after Him must deny himself and take up his cross to lose his soul-life (Matt. 16:24-25). This is much different from the “sugar-coated gospel” preached in today’s Christianity. From my Christian experience I can say that the only real enjoyment for a Christian is not physical. It is absolutely spiritual. Physically speaking, every step, every aspect, of the Christian life is a sacrifice.

When the Lord sent me to this country, I passed on many messages on the deeper truths, telling people how to enjoy Christ. At the beginning they were happy. Gradually and eventually, however, they lost their enjoyment mainly because they would not pay the high price. The Lord told the Laodiceans that they were lukewarm and that He was about to spew them out of His mouth. Then He told them that they had to pay the price to buy the gold, the white garments, and the eyesalve (Rev. 3:15-18). Buying requires the paying of a price. In today’s Christianity where can you hear a message saying that you have to buy? Dear saints, if we are going to be vitalized, we do have to pay a price.

If you would analyze your start of the vital group, I believe you would be convinced that you have not started yet. You may have never had a genuine repentance. A genuine repentance means that you are under a kind of constant condemnation to such an extent that you realize you are nothing but a constitution of sin, transgressions, trespasses, mistakes, wrongdoings, and offenses. When you make a thorough confession, you will realize that you are a constitution of the flesh, the old man, the natural man, the world, and Satan. You will find out that the more you confess, the more you have to confess. It will seem that the dirt can never be cleared away. A thorough confession may take two weeks.

If you do not have such a repentance and confession with tears, how can your companion be led into being vitalized? We must have a genuine start of the vital groups. Dear saints, have you ever made a thorough confession before God? Just to go to the Lord for five minutes to tell Him, “Lord, I am sinful; I repent,” might be a kind of repentance, but that is not a thorough repentance.

Psalm 51 is a psalm of David’s repentance and confession of his indulging sin. He was rebuked by Nathan the prophet for what he had done, and he made his confession. By reading that psalm you can see that his repentance and confession actually have no end. You should not believe that Psalm 51 has finished, or completed, David’s repentance and confession. The real confession, the real repentance, according to my experience, has no ending. We are a heap of sin. Our constitution is sin. How then could we finish our confession?

We may confess our sins and then be mean to someone right after our confession. How could we be holy? How could we be righteous? But when we repent and confess-the more thoroughly the better-we receive mercy and grace. We should not think that we can finish our confession. The whole Christian life, on the negative side, is a life of confession. Every day and every moment we have to confess. Whenever we open up our mouth to pray, we should not say a word before confessing. After our confession, we are still sinful. Because we are living in a dirty world, medical doctors tell us that we should wash our hands frequently to avoid getting sick. In the same way, we need to confess frequently day by day. We need to have such a thorough repentance and confession.
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