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Scripture Reading: 1 Pet. 2:2
In this chapter we will continue to fellowship concerning the second step of the God-ordained way, that is, having home meetings with the newly saved and baptized ones. If you spend some time to consider 1 Peter 2:2, you will realize that it implies more than feeding. It implies the raising up of children, which is to provide whatever they need, including feeding, that they may grow and mature. Human history has proven that the society of a nation is built up through the raising up of children in individual homes by families.
Since I came to the Lord’s recovery in 1932, I have been bothered by the small attendance in the meetings, yet I never understood the reason for this lack. For the past five years I have set myself to study this problem thoroughly. By the Lord’s mercy, I found out that the biggest reason we do not have a large number in our meetings is that we are lacking in the proper raising up of the new believers. We have had the meetings, we have had the work, and all the co-workers have been diligent and faithful in their labor, yet we have not seen much fruit. Many people have come, but very few have remained.
I have studied and even expounded John 15 for many years, yet there is one point in verse 16 that I had never seen. I had seen that the Lord has chosen and set us that we should first go forth and then bear fruit, but I had not seen the third point — “that your fruit should remain.” The Lord has not only set us to go forth and to bear fruit; He has also set us to ensure that our fruit remains. Unless the fruit remains, it is somewhat vain for us to go forth and bear fruit. In the past we went out and labored to bear fruit, yet those who remain are very few. We all have to understand that our problem, our shortage, in the past was that we did not see that to keep our fruit, to ensure that it remains, we need to carry out the work of raising up the new believers in the proper way.
On the day of Pentecost three thousand were saved (Acts 2:41). I believe that on the same day they began to have home meetings (v. 46). This was not something that was practiced in the Old Testament. This was something totally new, something of the New Testament. On the day the church came into existence, the one hundred twenty plus these three thousand believers began to meet in the homes so that the fruit would remain. It would be very difficult for three thousand newborn believers to remain healthy without being cared for in home meetings. Immediately after the delivery of a baby, the nursing mother must take care of feeding her child. However, only to feed this child is not sufficient; she must also raise this child. To raise a child is not simple or easy. There are many, many items to take care of in order to raise a child properly.
Surely Peter saw the situation on the day of Pentecost and helped in the work of caring for these newborn believers. Then in his first Epistle, he says that the newborn babes need the milk of the word, not for knowledge but for the growth in life (2:2). He exhorts the newborn babes to long for the guileless milk of the word that they may grow in life unto salvation. Here salvation does not refer to regeneration, the initial stage of salvation, but to the fact that following regeneration, we must grow in life; that is, we must be saved continuously every day. After a baby is born, it must be cared for continuously. If it is not cared for, after a few hours it may die. Therefore, its being cared for continuously is its salvation. Such a babe must be saved in every way; this is to raise up a child. Merely to feed a babe with milk is not adequate; it must also be kept clean, warm, and comfortable. All of its environment must be arranged so that it will be safe and able to grow properly. We must take this way in raising up the newborn believers.
I am very burdened concerning the new way. Nearly every day I have considered the items of God’s ordained way, and the more I considered, the more I realized that we should be trained to take care of the new ones in the same way that mothers and fathers raise their own children. The work of taking care of the new ones must be a work of raising up children. We should not bring forth children and send them to others to be raised. The little ones should be directly under their mother’s care. This makes a big difference.
The first item regarding raising up children is that you cannot care properly for too many. When you baptize someone, you are very happy, but you have to realize that this person is now your babe. You must take care of him and raise him up as your child. You are now a mother, and you have to assume the responsibilities of motherhood. This is very troublesome. Every young lady wants to get married and have children, but after she has had three children, she may weep and say, “I do not want any more children.” This is because raising up children is so difficult. Therefore, if you have too many new ones to take care of, you will not be able to do it properly.
It is good to have spiritual children, but do not have too many. In Taipei when we were experimenting with the new way, we broke this principle. We considered that the more we could baptize, the better. We baptized so many that we could not care for all of them adequately. It seems that we had only begetting ones without anyone to feed these newborn babes. Through this we learned that every believer who preaches the gospel must also care for the new ones as a mother raising up her own children. To have home meetings is the way to fulfill this responsibility.
The home meeting is for raising up the newborn believers, not only as your children but also as God’s growing children. This is the unique shortage among us and also among all of Christianity. Wherever there is a group of Christians, and among them there is the proper care for the new ones, that church will become quite large. However, this work cannot be carried out on a large scale by the church as a whole; it must be done through the individual families.
In society it is difficult to raise up children on a large scale. If every family raises three or four children in their home, many proper persons will eventually be produced to benefit society. Every team is a family. If you are a team of three members, you must become a family raising up the new ones as your children yet considering them as God’s children. You are simply nursing mothers doing the work of raising up these children for God.
To carry out this kind of work, you must keep certain principles. You should not leave the raising up of your children to others. Do not go out to do other things, leaving your children under others’ care. You must “stay home” and take care of your children directly by yourself. To leave your children in the care of others for even a short time may cause some damage; they may suffer and not grow so well. The work of raising up the new ones must be under your direct care.
Then you should not try to care for too many at one time. As a team of three, you should be able to take care of six to ten new ones. Once you have this many to care for, you should stop going out to baptize more and concentrate your energy, time, and attention on these six to ten. It is best to care for these new ones for about two years. For the first half year, you should render intensive care, visiting them twice each week for two months and then once each week for four months. During this period of time, to leave your children as orphans to be raised by others would cause much damage. Instead, you should fall in love with your children and be willing to sacrifice yourselves for them. Without the sacrifices of its mother, no child could be raised properly.
Based on my study and our history of nearly sixty-five years, I have found that the only way to raise up a proper church life is by begetting babes and raising them up as children. This is the way to fulfill the Lord’s commandment to go and disciple all the nations (Matt. 28:19). To disciple the nations, we must start by discipling individuals, yet we cannot go alone; we must go as a team. The best number to have in a team is three. On the one hand, to have too many on a team may allow too many opinions to come in, but on the other hand, to have only two on a team would be too few because these two may quarrel. Therefore, a third member is needed to balance them. Also, if the members are not the same age, this will help to balance the team. We all must learn how to work together as a team without any opinion. Then our team can become a family, working together year-round to raise up the Lord’s children.
In your going out to preach the gospel, it may be that you will baptize some nearly every time you go out. It is possible to become addicted to this. Every kind of addiction is harmful. If you are addicted to baptizing people, even that can be harmful. We all must learn not to baptize too many. If as a team you have already baptized eight, that is good enough; do not endeavor to baptize more. You should stop baptizing and go to “change diapers.” You must be balanced. Do not bring forth babies and then hand them over to others. That is wrong. After your team has baptized a small number, stop and form a family to do the work of raising up these new ones as God’s children. You must do everything for them continuously, day after day, week after week, and month after month. Then you will see the proper result. This is the way to build up the church life through raising up the new believers.
We all must bear our responsibility in taking care of the home meetings. However, we should not try to do this on a big scale. Each team member should have only about three new ones to take care of. It is their duty to meet continuously with these new believers in home meetings. If a nursing mother does not have a sense of duty but only does things according to her desires and likes, her babe will not grow properly and may even die. In the Lord’s work there are no vacations. You have to go out continuously, not to many homes but to those three or four homes of the ones you are caring for. You must attend to your duty like a nursing mother raising up her children. Today you are raising up not only your children but also God’s children.
The second point regarding the raising up of God’s children is that you have to raise them up with the word of God, not with your own word. You must always keep this principle. Do not speak your own word too much. You must learn to seize, or grasp, the opportunity to inject these new ones with the word of God. Feed them with the milk of the word of God. This is why I published Truth Lessons and Life Lessons. In these volumes I have collected the most suitable verses for helping the new ones. I encourage all of you who are working in the Lord’s new way to become very well acquainted with all forty-eight lessons in Life Lessons. All the subjects of these lessons were carefully selected according to my knowledge and experience to meet the needs of the new ones. Study these lessons, and learn how to use all these golden verses. It is best if you can recite all these verses, but at least you must know where they are in the Bible. Then if you cannot recite a verse, you can find it quickly. Sometimes, even if you can recite the verse, it is better to open to that verse and let the new one read it. Whatever you do, you must do it in a living way, and you should try to cover at least one definite point using the best verses.
The first thing we should inject into the new ones is that our Savior is the Spirit and that we as saved ones have a regenerated spirit. We need to spend at least three or four home meetings to impart this matter into them.
The second category of things we should impart to them must be the basic practices of the Christian life. As Christians, we should read the Bible, the Word of God. We should pray to God, which is to breathe in God. Also, we should have morning watch. Every morning we should rise up early to have a time of morning watch with the Lord. We must also teach them how to practice morning watch by reading some verses and then pray-reading these verses. You have to charge them to attend the Christian meetings. Then you also have to help them to do the same thing that you did for them, that is, to preach the gospel to others. These are the basic practices of the Christian life.
The next matters we should cover with them are all the different items of God’s salvation. God’s salvation is all-inclusive, and within God’s salvation there are many different items. There are the washing away of our sins, the forgiving of our sins, redemption, reconciliation, justification, regeneration, and so forth. All these matters are covered in the forty-eight lessons in Life Lessons. You have to take care of all these matters, and to do so will require many weeks.
If you cover these three categories properly, the ones who are under your care will be raised up very well. Spontaneously, they will grow and become steadfast. The home meeting is like kindergarten, and the group meeting is like elementary school. In later messages we will have much fellowship on the group meeting.
Question: Recently, before we went to a home meeting, we had some fellowship and felt that we should cover the matter of calling upon the name of the Lord in a solid and thorough way. So we got into footnote 1 in the Recovery Version on this matter in Acts 2:21, and we also got into the Life-study of Romans where this matter is covered in detail (Message 23). When we went to the home meeting, six members of the family attended. We began by singing some songs about calling upon the name of the Lord, but we could tell by the singing that they were not entering into this matter. We went on to share with them the importance of calling upon the name of the Lord, not only for our salvation but also for us to participate in all of the Lord’s riches after we are saved. We got into verse after verse, and after each verse we tried to encourage them to practice, saying something like, “Let’s practice calling on the Lord right now. Lord Jesus!” But we could tell that, for some reason, they simply did not want to call on the Lord. This grieved us because we really wanted them to touch the Lord. So we continued to share, going through the Old Testament and then the New Testament, showing them all the verses related to calling on the Lord. In the end we felt like we had given a message to some people who did not want to know about calling on the Lord. We spoke the Word of God and not our own word, but we also felt that the meeting was a failure. Our aim was to bring them into the matter of contacting their spirit, but we did not accomplish this. Would you make some comments concerning this case?
Answer: First, what you taught was not suitable for the home meeting. The home meeting is the kindergarten, but you were teaching something in graduate school. Do not have home meetings on such a high level. Do not forget that in the home meetings, you are taking care of babes; you are feeding the newborn babes with baby food. You used the Word of God, but you used too many verses. In most cases three or four verses is enough. When you feed these little babes, you cannot feed them too much. You should always keep them a little hungry. If you overfeed them, they will lose their appetite.
Second, you must feed babes something with a good flavor, something sweet to make them happy. If the food you offer them is sweet to the taste, they will eat. The first thing you have to learn is how to make people feel pleasant. Do not forget that nourishing must go along with cherishing. You have to cherish them first.
The best way to bring the new ones into calling on the name of the Lord is by singing. You can simply take the lead to sing. Everyone, both young and old, likes singing. Do not explain that much to them; explaining is often sour, not sweet. Singing is very sweet. You must be like a nursing mother, making your little ones feel pleasant by giving them something sweet. It is better if you do not need to use the hymnal. You must learn some short, simple songs and choruses that are easy to sing. You may need to sing a chorus quite a few times. The first time you sing it, the new ones may be surprised. The second time, they may listen and begin to enjoy it. Then the third time you sing it, they may begin to join you.
The principle is this: if you are going to help the newborn babes, you must always try to make them happy, to make them feel good. Then they will take what you give them.
Question: We have been visiting a ninety-two-year-old woman and her daughter. We told them that we would like to come and read the Bible with them. We have gone back to do this several times. On one of these occasions, we sang a song for them and taught them how to sing it. Then we read a chapter from the Gospel of John, exercising a little as we read, and fellowshipped a few things related to that portion of the Word. Every time we visit them, they seem to enjoy our time together, especially the singing, and sometimes we are able to impart something of the Word through our reading of the Bible and fellowship. One time we were able to meet some of her grandchildren, so we thought that their home might be the key to the whole family. What are your feelings concerning this case?
Answer: We all must consider what our purpose is in going out to visit people. We are laboring for the increase of the church. For people to be saved and baptized is easy, but for them to become practical, living members in the church life is difficult. Our burden is not only to get people saved and baptized; our purpose is to gain the proper increase for the church life. Therefore, when you go to visit a new one, you must exercise the Lord’s discernment to know whether or not this one could be brought into the church life easily. If it would be hard for this one to be brought into the church life, we should help him to be saved and baptized but then go out to labor on others. In this way we will find the best sons of peace for the church life.
Our preaching of the gospel is not merely to get people saved and baptized. Our preaching of the gospel is for the building up of the Body of Christ. Therefore, we must seek out the proper persons who would not be so difficult for us to gain for the church life. In visiting people, we must have the discernment to realize which ones would be very hard to bring into the church life. To spend so much time to labor on such an old sister, even if she could be brought into the church life, is not wise. We have to save our time. To spend this much time in hope of gaining her family is also unwise. There are too many other homes and families on which we can spend our time.
Learn to be wise and not waste your time. You have a fishing pond with thousands of fish. There are thousands of homes to which you can go. In going out to save and baptize people, you must labor with discernment. After two weeks your team may have baptized fifteen. Then you have to consider which of these fifteen are proper persons whom you could bring into the church life easily. You must spend most of your time on these promising ones. Out of these fifteen, you may select six. You should not abandon the other nine but go to visit them perhaps once every two weeks to keep in contact. However, you must spend most of your time on the promising ones.
We all have to be trained to labor with discernment. We are like farmers with too many pieces of land to farm. Therefore, we must select the most productive piece of land on which to work. If we have only five pieces of land, we have no choice; we must labor on them all. If there are only three families in our city, we have to knock on these doors. But there are hundreds of families in our city, so we must go with discernment. We should also discern which communities are the best to work in and which kind of people are the best to labor on. This does not mean that we despise a certain kind of people or that we do not believe that all sinners need God’s salvation. We are going out to gain proper people for the church life that the Body of Christ could be built up. Our commission from the Lord is not only to save sinners but also to build up the church life in the Lord’s recovery as a testimony. Therefore, we must save our time to work on the most promising ones that we could gain the proper increase for the church.
Question: We are taking care of a family, and the wife is very sad because her husband has an alcohol problem. Recently, she spoke to me about this problem, and I shared with her that she is now a new person because she has Christ in her and that our problems can be overcome. Then I tried to help her to know how to receive more of the Lord so that her problems would not bother her so much, but she did not understand very well. I tried to explain in a different way and read her some verses. At the end we prayed together, and in our prayer we prayed for her husband and for her further receiving of the Lord. How should we go on with this one?
Answer: When we go out to visit people, we always have to exercise our God-given discernment. Even if this one is very good, her environment is hard, full of problems. It is hard for our work to overcome all these problems. There are too many people with too many problems. If we try to solve everyone’s problems, our time will be wasted and our work will be finished. You can work on this kind of person for your whole life, and nearly nothing may come out for the practical building up of the Body of Christ. It is better to go out to visit new homes to gain more new ones. Eventually, we will find some who are very good for the church life.
It is worthwhile to sacrifice everything to work in His recovery for the building up of the Body of Christ as God’s testimony today, but we must labor wisely; we must discern the different people. America is a melting pot with all kinds of people. Some are people of problems. If we go to them, we are jumping into a pit full of problems. Therefore, we have to have some discernment concerning what community we should work in and which neighborhoods we should visit. We should make our choices wisely.
When people raise up problems, you have to consider what particular point you should strike in order to feed them. In this case, the one point you may want to strike is that she has a spirit and that she can exercise this spirit to contact the Lord, to breathe the Lord in for her enjoyment. You must leave all the problems aside. However, do not ignore or reject her problems completely. You could say, “Only the Lord can take care of all our problems. You can pray concerning this.” This is the best way to put aside the unnecessary matters. Then you may say, “I would like to help you to do something. Every day you can exercise your spirit to pray to the Lord. In your prayer you can remind Him of all these problems, but please do not be bothered by these problems. If you are bothered by them, this will kill your prayer life. Learn how to exercise your spirit to call on the name of the Lord.” Simply stress this one point, and ask her to practice this matter by praying with you. In this one point you can help her, but you should leave all the problems untouched. The enemy is always crouching, waiting for a chance to spoil our work. He does this by bringing up all kinds of problems to make the whole situation muddy or cloudy. We have to choose one point in order to render some help, forgetting all the problems.
Question: If a team of three has nine to twelve new ones to care for, should each member go out alone to care for three or four, or should all three go together to visit each of these?
Answer: Every week your team should come together to fellowship concerning all these new ones. By this you can know their situations and consider which of them may not be that promising and which of them may need some urgent care. Based on your fellowship, you can decide which member or members should visit which new ones that week. You all must work together in this way.
