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Scripture Reading: Phil. 1:20-21; 1 Cor. 14:26; Eph. 4:15-16
For anything to exist, to act, and to live, there must be a support for that thing. We have seen that the church life depends upon the church meetings. The church meetings are very crucial to the church life. In this chapter we want to fellowship concerning the support of the church meetings. The support of the church meetings is the Christian daily life — to live Christ (Phil. 1:20-21). The Christian daily life is not just a matter of good behavior or character. The Bible reveals clearly that the Christian daily life is nothing less than Christ Himself. Christ Himself should be our daily life. In China there were a number of people who practiced according to the teaching of Confucius, and their behavior and character were very commendable. However, they did not have the Christian daily life because they did not have Christ as their life and as their living. They did not have Christ as their everything in their human life. They might have had good character, but they did not have the Christian daily life.
To have good meetings, the support is not merely good character. The support must be Christ Himself lived out of us. The new way stresses the Christian meeting, and the Christian meeting needs such a support of a daily life in which Christ Himself is lived out of us. Only Christ, the living One, can capture people. When we go to visit people by knocking on their doors, we must be linked to this living Christ. We should not only live for Him or to Him but also live Him. He is our life within, and He is our living without. We need to live Him daily.
To live Him means first to take Him as our life. As regenerated persons, we should take Him as our life. Although we have a natural life, a human life, a life created by God, that life is not the divine life. The human life was created by God to contain the divine life. Genesis 1 tells us that God created man in His own image (v. 26). Genesis 2 records that God put this man in front of the tree of life, indicating that this created human being needed the divine life (vv. 7-9). When we believe into Christ, He comes into us not only to be our Savior but even the more to be our life, thus fulfilling the purpose of God. The Lord Jesus said that He was the life (John 14:6), and Paul said that Christ is our life (Col. 3:4). Thus, Paul also said that to him to live was Christ (Phil. 1:21). We must live Christ, not just live for Christ or to Christ. Christ is our life and our life supply, and Christ should be our living, our very expression.
To live Christ is the Christian daily life, and this supports the Christian meetings. If we come to a meeting without such a living, such a daily life, we come in an empty and a dead way. Without such a living we could never support the Christian meeting. Regardless of how zealous we might be, we could never impart Christ into people as their life or life supply. We must live Christ. Day after day Christ should be our living.
To have such a living we must learn to deny our self. God has no intention for us to live; His only intention is for us to take Christ into us to replace our life so that He can be our very life. This should not be just a teaching to us; this should be our daily practice. Among us in the Lord’s recovery, I have noticed through the years that not too many saints really practice denying the self and taking Christ as their life. We must deny ourselves. When we love a person, we have to love that person by denying our self and taking Christ as our love. We should let Christ love people through us. We should let Christ’s love become our love with which we love others. The Christian life is not a matter of us loving people but a matter of Christ loving people from within us. What comes out of us should not be our natural human love but Christ Himself.
When we talk to people, we must learn to deny our self and take Christ as our life to express Christ. We should not talk with people by our self. We must learn and practice to talk to people by denying our self. Not only daily but also moment by moment, we must practice to do things, to live, to act, and to have our being in Christ, with Christ, and by Christ. We should also learn how to walk by praying to Him all the time (1 Thes. 5:17). While we are going to work, we have to go by praying. The best way to pray unceasingly is to call on the name of the Lord. While you are taking the cross, you have to do it by calling as a kind of instant and unceasing prayer to the Lord. To call on the Lord’s name is to breathe in Christ (Lam. 3:55-57). Whenever you say, “O Lord Jesus,” you really breathe Christ into you.
When the Lord’s recovery came to the United States, a brother who had been a preacher turned this way. One day I called Hymns, #255 by A. B. Simpson. The chorus of this hymn says,
After we sang that hymn, this brother did not understand what A. B. Simpson was talking about, and he told me he did not like this song. A number of years later pray-reading the Word and calling on the name of the Lord Jesus came into the Lord’s recovery, and this brother practiced these things. One day I met him in another city, and he told me, “Brother Lee, to me the best hymn is #255 on breathing.”
Without breathing, we all would soon expire. Our calling on the name of the Lord is breathing and is an instant and unceasing prayer. By calling we can pray unceasingly, and by this kind of prayer we actually and spontaneously take Christ as our life. Then we do things by Him and not by ourselves. We talk to people by Him and not by ourselves. Calling on His name causes us to live Christ, to have a proper Christian daily life. If we are such persons who practice calling on the Lord daily, we will come together full of Christ, with a living, rejoicing spirit. The meeting will not be vacant, empty, or idle. Instead, the meeting will be busy, full of spiritual activities by members who live Christ daily. The meeting will be so high, so rich, so fresh, and so refreshing.
The fellowship in this book is not for the purpose of giving us more doctrine and teachings. What we are fellowshipping is altogether for us to practice. From today we all should exercise to practice the New Testament economy. I have noticed that even during our trainings, the trainees were in the heavens as they were listening to the messages. But in between the meetings they became “people under the earth.” They were no longer people in the heavens. This shows us that we must practice to live Christ not only in the ministry meetings but also in our daily life. A husband should talk to his wife by Christ, and a wife should talk to her husband by Christ. We should talk by taking Christ. In our talking to our spouse we should live Christ. We need to mean business to really take Him as our life and live Him. Then we will be the right persons to come to the meetings, and with such a daily life we will become a strong support. Even if only five saints out of one hundred meeting together would be persons who exercise to take Christ as their life and live Him, that meeting would be very fresh and very refreshing.
The Christian daily life is for the church life. We Christians live Christ as our daily life for the church testimony. The church as Christ’s Body is Christ Himself (1 Cor. 12:12). Anyone’s body is himself. If we do not have a body, we do not have an expression. Our body is our being’s expression. As the members of the Body of Christ, the church, we should live Christ. If we do not live Christ, we are His members in name but not in practicality. The matter of living Christ has not been taken into our practice. Even many elders do not practice to live Christ. Many elders practice behaving. They try not to make a mistake. They try not to be wrong and always to be right. They are always correcting themselves. Humanly speaking, this is very good, but there is no Christ in their behavior.
Many of our church meetings are cold, old, poor, and dead because many of the saints are behaving believers. They behave well, but they do not live Christ as their daily life. Thus, among them there is no real church life. The church is just a name with them, and the church life is just a term with them. Many of the saints try to do the right things, and many of the leading ones in the local churches practice behaving instead of living Christ as the reality of their daily life. Many leading ones are afraid of doing anything wrong or of making a mistake. They feel that as long as they are right and correct, everything is okay. But we need to realize that good behavior in itself is not okay. If all of us are merely good people who behave well, the church becomes a social club. In the church life we should practice Christ, not behavior. Christ must be our life, our essence, our being, our living, our existing, and our everything. We should practice Christ all the time. Christ can never be wrong. He is always good. But the point in living Christ is not to be right but to express Christ. What we should express is not a certain kind of behavior or character. For the proper church life we need to express Christ Himself. The proper church life depends upon the church meeting in a living way with everyone living Christ.
The church meetings are the exhibitions of the Christian daily life. Whenever we come together, we have an exhibition. We do not come together to exhibit our ability, our wisdom, our behavior, our goodness, or our morality. We come together to exhibit Christ. If we do not live Christ daily, we have no Christ to exhibit in the church meetings. In 1961 when I was in Taipei, I wrote the hymn that says, “Let us exhibit Christ.” A few years later this hymn was translated into English (Hymns, #864), and it helped many of the saints. But the saints did not receive the help from this hymn to live Christ in their daily life (see stanzas 2 and 3). It mostly helped them to practice living Christ in the meetings. Formerly, they stood up in the meetings to say something to express their goodness, their kindness, their humility, or their patience. Then they learned to speak something of Christ and not of themselves, in the meetings. Thus, the meetings changed, yet that change could not last long. For the long run, if we do not experience Christ daily, we will have nothing to say of Christ. If we do not live Christ in our daily life, we will become empty. Then we will only be able to repeat old stories in the church meetings. If we only exercise when we come together to meet, there may be a little expression of Christ in the church meeting but no expression of Christ in our daily life. We may be good people without much of Christ in our daily living. Thus, when we come to the meeting, we are still poor in the experience of Christ.
Now that we are going to set up home meetings with new believers, we must be persons living Christ all day. What we are we minister to people, and what we live we minister to people. We must preach what we live and teach what we are by having Christ. Otherwise, we are just actors. An actor is one who does not live in the way that he acts in the theater. We should not be actors in the church meetings. Whatever we do must be the same as what we live in our daily life. In our daily life we live Christ, so we come to the meeting and still exhibit Christ. Then the meeting is a genuine exhibition of Christ.
When you come to the new believers to meet with them as a person full of Christ, spontaneously whatever you say, pray, or sing expresses Christ. Even your smile will express Christ and give people the impression that you are a man of Christ. You will be found by the new believers in Christ. Paul said that he was seeking to be found in Christ (Phil. 3:9), and we need to be found by others in Christ. To be found in Christ is not a matter of outward behavior. You may try to behave like a person in Christ, but this resembles a monkey behaving like a man. It is not genuine. We must live Christ every moment in every small detail. Then Christ will be constituted into our being to be our spiritual constitution. People will find us in Christ in whatever we say or do. Our being such persons will help the new believers to have living home meetings. To hold a home meeting is not a matter of just bringing techniques to the new ones, of teaching them how to call a hymn, sing a hymn, read the Bible, or give a testimony. The home meeting is to exhibit what we are in our daily life. We must live Christ in our daily life. We must be men in Christ, men always found by people in Christ. Then our meeting will be full of Christ. Only Christ is the living One, and only He can make a meeting alive, full of life. We must stress living Christ and practice to live Christ.
Our going out to visit people by knocking on their doors is a wonderful, proven practice. I received letters from some saints, however, who told me that they knocked on doors for a long time without getting any baptized. Surely such a person would be thoroughly disappointed and say that door-knocking does not work. But door-knocking does work, and it has been proven for over two years in Taipei. Others have said that to visit people by knocking on their doors will work only in Taiwan and not anywhere else. The statistics of our going out to visit others in the 1987 summer training here in Anaheim, however, prove that the rate of increase here is about the same as, and even higher than, in Taipei. Our success depends upon whether or not we have been trained in the Lord’s new way. Door-knocking works, but you may not have been trained. You may not be successful because you have not practiced strictly what the training has discovered in the recent past. Those who have been trained to visit people, to baptize them, and to establish home meetings can testify that the trained way works. The churches in the United States need the training.
When we get into the training and practice it strictly, we will be addicted to visiting others. If you baptize three new ones in one evening, you will be “crazy.” The first baptism makes you happy, the second one will shock you, and the third one will make you crazy with enjoyment. Then you will look forward to going out again. In the training meetings in Taipei a number of saints testified that they became addicted to door-knocking and could not wait for another evening to go out. When you get into the enjoyment of door-knocking, door-knocking is more prevailing. Door-knocking does not work with you when you are so dead and cold. However, when you are crazy with enjoyment in a proper way, every home that you visit is touched by you. It is not the doors that we knock on that make a difference but the person who knocks on them. When you pray for fifteen minutes with your team before going out and become happy in the Lord and crazy in the enjoyment of Christ, the doors that you knock on will open to you. Not only will the doors open, but also the people behind these doors will have open hearts to believe and open mouths to call on the name of the Lord and to pray and will be ready to be baptized.
Many times when the saints went out to preach the gospel, a person believed within five minutes, and within another five minutes he was baptized. These were saved in a living way. We do not baptize people in a cold, silent, and dead way. The ones whom we baptize get baptized calling on the name of the Lord in a living way (Acts 22:16). Sometimes in Taipei while the saints were preaching to the husband, the wife went into the bathroom to prepare the water for baptism although she had not yet believed. Baptism is an expression of the miracle of faith. Faith brings Christ into us. To ask a new believer to wait for a certain day to be baptized is wrong and unscriptural. The Bible tells us to believe and be baptized, not to believe and wait for a certain period of time until the church has a baptism. There is not such a record in the book of Acts. If we want to be prevailing persons in visiting people, we must be crazy with the enjoyment of Christ and happy in the Lord. If we are crazy in such a way, doors will be opened, hearts will be opened, mouths will be opened, and people will receive the Lord and be baptized. It is a miracle to save a person. No good philosophy or ethical teaching can save people in this way. When we Christians become crazy in Christ, we can do miracles. Thus, we have to live Christ every day. The more we live Him, the more we are crazy in Him.
The church meetings promote, strengthen, improve, and enrich the Christian daily life. If Christ is making you crazy, that is, if you are living Christ every day and coming to the meeting with Christ and full of Christ, you will have a good meeting. This good meeting will promote, strengthen, improve, and enrich your Christian daily life.
Eventually, the Christian daily life and the church meetings become a cycle for the Christians’ growth with Christ for the building up of the Body of Christ (1 Cor. 14:26; Eph. 4:15-16). We go out to knock on doors to get people baptized and set up meetings in their homes not merely to save them or release the truth to them. Our burden is to regenerate them to be the members of Christ, and eventually through the home meetings, they all will be built up as the living Body of Christ. We need to build up the Body of Christ according to the God-ordained way to carry out the New Testament economy. The fellowship in this chapter needs to be brought into our practice so that we have a church-supporting daily life, which is Christ living in us and lived out of us.
