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Scripture Reading: 1 Thes. 5:17; Acts 4:31; Eph. 6:18; 1 Cor. 14:15; Col. 3:16; Eph. 5:19
As we have seen, the first two factors for the Christian meetings are the mingled spirit and the word. In this chapter we want to see two more factors: praying and singing. The home meetings need much prayer and much singing. If we are really filled and saturated with the Spirit and the word, we will be persons praying unceasingly and singing all the time. Praying and singing come out of our being filled with the Spirit and saturated with the word. We must be men of the Spirit and of the word. Then spontaneously we will be praying and singing persons. These four factors are present in our experience to some extent, but that extent is not so high. We take care of the Spirit, but not that much. We learn the word, but not as much as we should. We may pray every day, but we do not pray unceasingly. We may sing and praise, but we do not sing and praise all the time.
Our daily living needs to be saturated with the Spirit, the word, prayer, and singing so that we can be strong, living, new, and fresh to take care of the home meetings. The home meetings always need people who are fresh, living, excited, and even exciting. We need to be an exciting factor in the meetings to make the others excited. Only the four factors of the mingled spirit, the word, praying, and singing can constitute us into such a person. We need to fan into flame the gift of God, which is in us (2 Tim. 1:6).
We must learn to pray all the time. We need to call on the name of the Lord throughout the day and talk to the Lord. We can talk to the Lord by using short sentences as part of our unceasing prayer. We can pray, “O Lord Jesus, be with me,” or “O Lord Jesus, help me.” At least we need to keep a praying spirit all the time. During every occupation we can pray, and we have to pray. This prayer will make us men of God. Prayer is the very means through which we contact God.
God created us in a marvelous way. He created us with two ears for us to listen. He created us with two eyes for us to see. We need to eat, so God created us with a mouth. We need to speak, so God created us with a tongue and with vocal cords. We need to digest our food, so God created us with a stomach. We need to breathe, so God created us with lungs. God created everything with a purpose. He created us with a spirit for us to pray. Even unbelievers will pray at certain times, especially when they are in distress or trouble. The Chinese may say, “O heaven help me!” This is their prayer. The Lord Jesus used heaven as a symbol of the highest authority, the almighty God (Luke 15:18). At certain times, unbelievers will pray, “O God, help me!” We do have a praying organ within us, and we do have a praying intent, a praying desire, within us. Many of us can testify that the most enjoyable time is the time of prayer.
We fallen human beings like to talk more than pray. We may say that we do not have time to pray, but we may have much time to talk on the telephone. To some people the telephone is like sticky fly paper. When some people touch the phone, they get stuck to it. Many Americans cannot live without the telephone. The telephone is like breathing to them. They may not have time to do anything, but they always have time to talk on the phone. Too much talk on the telephone will kill your prayer life. When we come together with some saints, it is better to pray and reduce our talk. We all like to talk, but we need to turn our talk to prayer. Too much talk kills, but praying enlivens. When we pray for only five minutes, we get enlivened and we become powerful.
Whenever I go to speak, I must prepare myself by prayer. The secret of giving a proper message is the first sentence of that message. If the first sentence is uttered properly, the entire message will be right. The way to have the first sentence uttered properly is by the preparation of prayer. I must pray before the message. Likewise, when we go to the homes, we must pray first. Many of the saints who have gone out to visit people by knocking on their doors can testify concerning the power of prayer. Sometimes during their visiting, the doors would not open to them, so they stopped to pray. After their prayer the first door opened to them, and the ones there were baptized. Prayer can maneuver, direct, and control the environment. We have to be praying persons.
We need to be those who pray before the meeting. To pray before the meeting we must be a praying person who prays unceasingly (1 Thes. 5:17). We need to pray unceasingly by calling on the name of the Lord. According to Acts 4:31, we also need to pray in the meeting: “When they had so besought, the place in which they were gathered was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak the word of God with boldness.” In the meetings it is good to call on the Lord’s name, pray-read the Word, and pray the verses of the hymns. But we also need longer prayers and shorter prayers in our meetings. We need all kinds of divine, living expressions. We need singing, shouting, repeating, calling, and proper long or short prayers.
To pray at the beginning and at the end of the meeting may stir up, strengthen, and enrich the meeting. The more prayer there is in the meeting, the better. We may pray at the beginning and at the end of the meeting, but we should not make this something legal or formal. During the meeting, proper prayer may also render help to the meeting. We do not pray during the meeting often, but a proper prayer during the meeting may be very helpful. When we pray in this way, we should have the assurance that our flesh is not involved. In public prayer it is possible for us to make a show in our flesh (Matt. 6:5-6). This has to be condemned. We must be fully in the spirit in a pure motive without any intention to express or glorify ourselves. Our prayer in the meeting should not be formal, nor should it always be by certain persons. In certain localities I saw that only one or two brothers would pray. In every meeting all the saints knew that these two would pray. We have to charge the saints to pray and lead them into prayer in the meeting.
We should always pray by exercising the spirit (Eph. 6:18; 1 Cor. 14:15a). Exercising the spirit means not waiting for the Spirit’s inspiration but taking the initiative by pushing our spirit to pray. Whenever we pray, we should turn to our spirit, exercising the depths of our being.
Our home meetings should be filled with singing. Singing comes out of being filled with grace (Col. 3:16c). When we have an inner realization of God’s grace, this realization will stir up our being to sing. Singing also comes out of being filled with the word (v. 16a). When we are filled with the word, the Spirit bubbles from within us in lauding melodies. When the word of Christ fills us up from within, we will spontaneously flow out in singing. Our singing will be in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs. Psalms are long poems, hymns are shorter ones, and spiritual songs are the shortest. We also need to sing by exercising the spirit (1 Cor. 14:15b). We should not merely sing in our happiness. We should sing joyfully in our spirit. Our singing must come out from our spirit. In praying, in singing, in reading the word, and in touching the Spirit, the secret is to exercise our spirit.
Many saints come to the meeting, yet they do not exercise their spirit. Thus, it is hard to tell if they have a regenerated spirit. I was once with Brother Nee when some co-workers asked him why a certain brother never exercised his spirit although he had been with us for over thirty years. When Brother Nee responded to this question, he jokingly said, “This person might be saved but not regenerated.” Brother Nee meant that this person belonged to the Lord, but it seemed that he was not regenerated because his spirit still remained in a deadened situation. In the church meetings I have noticed that many persons like to be gentlemen. They think that when they exercise their spirit, they will be crazy men. They do not like to be crazy, but instead they like to be proper gentlemen. Others may shout, call on the name of the Lord, and sing in the meetings, but these ones never exercise their spirit. If all the attendants in our meeting were like this, that meeting would be a graveyard, a cemetery. Years ago I told the saints that the most quiet and calm place is Forest Lawn Cemetery in Los Angeles. Sometimes the Christian meetings are like a cemetery.
To prevent our meetings from being dead, we must learn to pick up the four basic factors for our Christian meetings. We should be mingled with the Spirit, soaked and saturated with the living word, and we should be praying and singing. Then we will be equipped, qualified, and completed to be the proper visitors to knock on people’s doors and set up home meetings. We will be a good example to the new ones in their home meetings. The children always like to follow, to copy, and to learn from their parents. When we go to the meetings, we must be a living person and a living example of one who loves the word, who is always filled with the Spirit, and who is singing and praying. Then our presence will be a great help and a great factor to strengthen and enrich the meeting.
As people who love the Lord, we must live according to God’s ordained way to practice His New Testament economy. We need to take care of our living and then spend the rest of our time to visit people by knocking on their doors in prayer in order to get them baptized and to set up home meetings. Two saints bringing in twelve new ones a year would result in an increase of twenty-four. Twenty-four new ones can compose a proper local church. Every year a new church could be produced by our taking the Lord’s new way. After we go out to visit others and baptize them, we must endeavor to take care of them through the home meetings. We need to be like the nursing mothers who cherish their own children (1 Thes. 2:7). If the churches are faithful to the Lord’s new way, many new churches can be raised up within a short amount of time. We who go to take care of the home meetings to establish them and build them into local churches must be persons filled with the Spirit, soaked in the word, praying unceasingly, and singing all the time. Then we will be happy in the Lord, crazy with the enjoyment of Christ, and the doors of the homes that we visit will open to us.
If some doors will not open to us, we need to go and visit them again. In Taipei some homes were visited four or five times. When the saints visited one home for the fifth time, the host of this house told them that he admired their endurance and that he was ready to be baptized. A number of genuine believers were produced by our going to them again and again with long-suffering. When we go to visit others in a proper way, the Holy Spirit goes out with us. He goes in our going because He has been waiting for us to go for years. In the book of Isaiah the Lord exclaimed, “Whom shall I send? Who will go for Us?” (6:8). We all need to respond in the same way that Isaiah did: “Here am I; send me” (v. 8).
We do not invite people to the gospel, but we bring the gospel to people. To visit others is to follow God’s pattern. When Adam fell, God immediately came to visit him, and asked Adam, “Where are you?” (Gen. 3:9). God was not sitting on the throne asking Adam to come to Him. God did not invite Adam to come to Him to hear the gospel. Instead, God brought the gospel to Adam. Eventually, God became a man to come down to the earth to visit people. He came down from heaven to save sinners (1 Tim. 1:15), He visited Zaccheus (Luke 19:1-10), He visited the Samaritan woman (John 4:3-42), He sent the twelve disciples to visit people (Matt. 10:5-8, 11-13), and He sent the seventy to visit people (Luke 10:1-6). He told the seventy that He was sending them as lambs in the midst of wolves (v. 3), but in the midst of these wolves were sons of peace (v. 6). By our visiting people, we will discover who the sons of peace are. Then these sons of peace will be regenerated and eventually transformed. They will be the members of Christ to form His Body in order to accomplish God’s eternal economy.
Christianity has missed God’s ordained way. In Christendom big halls, cathedrals, and chapels are built to invite people to come to hear the gospel. But today the Lord has shown us that all the members of the church should be visitors going out to bring the gospel to people. We have to go to visit people and send meetings to their homes. If we ask people to come to our meeting hall, the majority will not come. But we can take our meetings to the homes. We can carry out the burden to provide these homes with “food to go.” We do not need to ask them to come to buy our food and eat our food. We need to send food to their homes.
In the Lord’s new way we must do these two things: go to visit people and go to establish and care for home meetings. If we are going to do this, we must be persons one with the mingling Spirit, soaked in the living word, praying unceasingly, and singing all the time. We have published a four-volume series entitled Life Lessons for the nourishment of the new believers in their homes. At the end of each lesson there is a hymn. We need to sing these hymns and songs in the home meetings to stir up the spirits of the attendants. We should practice singing all the time (Eph. 5:19). Singing encourages people and makes them fresh and living. Today on this earth there are many burdens and much discouragement. When we go to the homes of the new believers in the evening, our singing of the songs in the Life Lessons will stir them up and encourage them. We must learn to be praying persons and singing persons. If we are such persons, our home meetings will be very fresh, new, living, and enlivening.
