When we are filled in spirit, full of the Spirit, the four major factors for our meetings—the word, the Spirit, singing, and praying—will all become useful. These four major factors are related to the Spirit. Without the Spirit, the word is dead. Without the Spirit, the singing and the praying are also dead. All of our singing should overflow from the spirit and be sung from the spirit. We should sing by being filled with the Spirit:
Hallelujah! Hallelujah!
I have passed the riven veil,
Here the glories never fail,
Hallelujah! Hallelujah!
I am living in the presence of the King.
(Hymns, #551, chorus)
At any rate, we must be living persons, filled with the Holy Spirit, in order to be qualified to have Christian meetings. Due to the degraded system of meeting, Christianity has caused all the Sunday-goers to become either dead or sick or paralyzed in their spirit. If they are asked to speak, they do not have any words to say. If they are asked to praise, they feel that it would be as hard as going to heaven. Some brothers and sisters among us are also like this. When they come to the meeting, if they are asked to function according to 1 Corinthians 14:26, “Each one has a psalm, has a teaching, has a revelation,” it would be impossible.
For this reason, I said to you two months ago that the first thing each one of you should do when you wake up in the morning is to call: “O Lord Jesus!” The second thing is that you should open the Bible to have fellowship with the Lord using two verses. You should get yourself enlivened through reading and then live Christ in the spirit all day long. In the evening, you may either have a home meeting with your own family members, or have a small group meeting with the neighboring brothers and sisters, or attend a district meeting or a meeting at the hall; in any case, your spirit should be living. This makes it necessary for us to have a basic revival—to be living persons and to live a life that is living. Not only should we have fellowship with the Lord and have home meetings, but we also need to develop to the point where we have small group meetings, and then, even further, propagation groups. Only in this way can the church have the spreading and increase. This is the kind of meeting the Lord is after, as revealed in the Bible, and it is what we should have.
I remember that the meetings in Elden Hall of Los Angeles during 1969 and 1970 were just like this. The brothers and sisters regularly enjoyed the Lord in the homes all day long and sang hymns. They would sing on their way to the meeting, and everyone was living. Whoever came to the meeting could open his mouth and function. That kind of meeting was fully delivered from the habit of one man preaching and the others listening. Instead, everyone functioned, helping one another and edifying one another. This is my hope toward you. I hope that you all can receive this fellowship.
A message given by Brother Witness Lee in Taipei on October 8,1987.