Our door-knocking to save people is just the first step. In the next step we need to care for the new ones we have gained. This also requires us to be overcomers. Although our present way of carrying out the home meetings, group meetings, and district meetings is still under study, as a whole it has been settled. I believe you have experienced this one thing, that is, if you are not an overcomer, if you would not live absolutely in the spirit, put aside the world, and deny the self, it will be difficult to take care of a home meeting or a group meeting. You can still go to the meeting, but you will be cold and dead, having nothing to supply to others. At most, you can help people learn some doctrines. You must remember that the biblical way, whether for meeting, gospel preaching, or serving, requires that we be overcomers. When the Lord Jesus sent the seventy disciples two by two to visit all the cities, He told them clearly that He sent them as lambs in the midst of wolves (Luke 10:1-3). No one knew what danger awaited them. But the disciples had no excuse. They had to overcome. Since we want to follow the Lord, we must overcome in everything. To preach the gospel and to take care of home meetings and group meetings all require us to overcome. If we do not overcome, we can do nothing.
I encourage you to exert your best effort to study the Bible and to pursue the truth. But these are only tools. Basically, you must be a right person. You must have fellowship with the Lord; you must have nothing between you and the Lord. Your conscience must be without condemnation, and you must not have any offense toward man or God. You must be a person who lives in the spirit. You must be such a person now, not waiting until the future. The Bible tells us that if man wants to receive salvation, he can do it now; there is no need to wait. In the same way, if you want to overcome, you can do it now. If you want to be filled with the Spirit, you can be filled today. This is absolutely possible. Perhaps in an hour and a half you have to go to take care of a meeting, but yesterday you lost your temper with someone. You can confess right away and ask for the Lord’s forgiveness. You can pray, “O Lord, be merciful to me. I am going to the home meeting now. Fill me. You must go with me. Lord, I am a pitiful man. A person such as I can still serve You. Lord, forgive me.” After you pray and confess in this way, go to the home meeting. The Holy Spirit will surely fill you.
I heard that when you go to the home meetings, some homes welcome you very much. They invite you not only for tea but also for meals. Of course, this is very good, but you cannot depend merely on others’ welcome. Even if some homes do not welcome you but give you long faces, you still have to go. What you can do is based on the price you pay. The price you pay will determine how much you will overcome before the Lord. The price that you pay is your capital; the truth that you have learned is just your means or channel. Of course, if we have not learned the truth, even if we pay the price to be overcomers, it will not be possible for us to have the utterance because of the lack of the word. We must have the truth as the channel, and we must pay the price to dispense into people what we have experienced. As a result, what we give to others will not be merely teachings of truth, but what we have learned, experienced, and obtained from the Lord.
When you go to take care of the home meetings, someone may advise you out of a good heart, saying, “You are so young and are quite smart. Why don’t you go back to school or go abroad to get a higher degree? Or why don’t you start a business? This way of running around every day without accomplishing anything or gaining a name for yourself is too great a sacrifice.” At this time, based on your own experience, you can say to him, “Brother, thank you for your kind concern. When Mary poured out the precious ointment on the Lord Jesus, some complained, ‘Why this waste?’ Throughout the ages there have been countless people who poured out their precious lives as ointment on the Lord. To the world, this is a waste. But I am willing to waste myself for His sake!” He may not understand your word, but the Holy Spirit will work in him, and your word will be deeply impressed into him. The spirit and attitude of your speaking will be planted in him like a seed. There is no need to persuade him to consecrate or sacrifice himself. Something will have been wrought into him already.