Once we are gathered together into His name, we need to speak. In Ephesians 5:19 and in Colossians 3:16 the psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs are not mainly for singing but for speaking. In addition to singing the psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, we need to speak them. Due to our background, we do not have the habit of speaking the hymns and songs. We must pick up this habit and forget about our background, what we have learned in the past, and about our present environment. We must come back to the pure word in the Bible concerning how to meet. The New Testament reveals that the unique thing we have to do in the meeting is to speak. We need to speak with the Lord’s word, with psalms, with hymns, and with spiritual songs. We all must learn to speak.
When many Christians come together to meet, they are there to be dumb, to be silent. Many of the ones meeting together hire a speaker. They do not realize, however, that their function to speak is killed by that one speaker.
Many of us do not get ourselves prepared to come to the meeting to speak. Instead, we merely come to the meeting to sit and listen. We are not used to “bringing our mouth” to the meeting. To merely come to the meeting to hear what another person would say is wrong. When we come to the meeting, we should get ourselves prepared to speak. The reason why the situation among many Christians today is so weak, poor, low, cold, and far off is altogether due to the lack of speaking. If we all would learn to revolt against this kind of silence and speak for Christ, speak forth Christ, and speak Christ, immediately revival would come in.
When I come to a meeting for ministry and everybody is silent, this silence nearly quenches me. When everybody would not speak, it is hard for me to speak. On the other hand, if everybody speaks and I have to fight to get a chance to speak, I am stirred up. If you are the only one on a basketball team who plays, there is no encouragement for you to play and it is hard for you to play. Suppose, however, that every member of the team is playing and coordinating together. This is a revival. My burden is to stir you up to revolt against the silence in the meetings. Forget about the Christianity way of meeting. When you come to the meeting, you should be prepared to speak.
You must speak in the meeting, but you should not speak your own word. We all have to learn to speak Christ as our word, the Word of God, and to speak His word, the word as revealed in the Bible. To speak in this way we must experience Christ. The more we experience Him, the more we have to say of Him. We should not merely say something concerning Him but we must “say Him”; we must say something that is Christ Himself. We have to speak the Christ whom we have experienced in our daily life, and then we have to speak His word. Colossians 3:16 says, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly.” For the word to dwell in us richly we need to learn the word by studying the Bible.
After Jesus had been conceived in the womb of Mary, she went to visit her relative Elizabeth, and during this visit she offered a praise to God (Luke 1:46-55). Mary’s poetic praise is composed of many quotations from the Old Testament, which indicate strongly that she was very familiar with the word of the Old Testament. She probably studied the Old Testament thoroughly in order to pick up the various points and terms which composed her praise to God. This indicates that Mary was a godly woman, qualified to be a channel for the Savior’s incarnation, and that Jesus would grow up in a family which would be filled with the knowledge and love of God’s holy Word.
The tragic thing about most Christian meetings is that very few of the attendants have an adequate knowledge of God’s Word. They are not so familiar with God’s divine revelation. Even if the attendants have the inspiration, they do not have the words to express their inspiration. A person needs an adequate vocabulary to compose, utter, and express his thought. Without the proper vocabulary, it is very difficult to utter our experience.
I encourage all of you to revolt against the traditional practice of Christian meeting and come to the meeting and learn to speak. To speak, however, you must acquire the adequate vocabulary. You can acquire an adequate divine vocabulary from your experiences of Christ, from the Bible, especially from the New Testament, from the Life-study Messages, and from the notes in the Recovery Version of the New Testament. In the Life-studies and in the notes of the Recovery Version are many high, deep, and profound terms which we should learn and use. In describing the wonderful Spirit which we have received and which we now enjoy we have used seven marvelous adjectives. The New Testament clearly reveals that this Spirit is all-inclusive, processed, compound, life-giving, indwelling, sevenfold intensified, and consummated. All the ones among us who are under twenty-five years of age are in a golden time to acquire a rich spiritual vocabulary. When you are rich in vocabulary, it is easy for you to compose any sentence, any paragraph, and any article. We must spend time to increase our spiritual vocabulary. It is regretful that many of us are short of divine utterance and expression.