Search
Scripture Reading: 1 Cor. 15:45b; Gal. 2:20; John 15:4; Rom. 8:2, 6, 10; Phil. 3:8-10
In the previous chapter we saw fifteen practical points concerning shepherding. Many of these points covered the things we should not do. We should not go out to contact people with the concept that we can do many things or that we know many things. We must first learn that we can do nothing. If we are truly unloaded in this way, we can go on to learn further matters. In this chapter we will consider some basic, positive items for our shepherding of others in the church.
We need to shepherd people in the way of experience. This is not simply to share our experiences with them. Rather, when we care for young ones, new ones, and weak ones, we need to know where they are in their experience. We may use the educational system to illustrate the way to help people. If a teacher knows what grades a child has completed, he can help him to advance in a proper way. In the old days in China, those who did not accept the modern educational system would learn only a few things each year in a very general way. By the time they were middle-aged, some still could not write properly. In contrast, all the children in the modern educational system could write well after only a few years. These children learned in the proper way without wasting time. Too many people in Christianity today are not on the proper way. My own mother was baptized and taught in a Christian school when she was young. Because she attended Christian meetings and learned some things there, she was able to tell her children stories from Genesis and the four Gospels. After we were saved, however, we realized that she was not yet saved. She knew many things, but she had no particular experience of salvation. This illustrates our need to help those who are under our shepherding to have definite, particular experiences of life.
We must first know whether someone is clear about the assurance of salvation. Someone may come to the church meetings, but if he is not truly saved, he is not actually in the church. Although we believe that almost everyone in our meetings is saved, some of the new ones who have come into the church life only recently may not have the assurance of salvation. If we check with them, they may say, “I believe I am saved, but I am not very sure.” Without the assurance of salvation, it is hard for anyone to go on. Salvation is our foundation, and the assurance of salvation is our motivation. If anyone does not have the assurance that he has been fully saved, it is difficult for him to go on.
If someone is clear concerning his salvation, we should go on from the assurance of salvation to another experience. Perhaps we can help him to have a particular experience of consecration. He is clear about salvation, but he may never have consecrated himself to the Lord. We should not merely pass on a little knowledge about consecration. Instead, we must pray for him, contact him, have fellowship with him, and do something to help him to fully pass through the experience of consecration. Then for eternity he can never say that he has not consecrated himself. To be saved is a particular, initial experience, and following this, people need the assurance of salvation. These are the first two experiences they need. Then we need to help them to pass through a particular, definite, specific experience of consecration. Our ability to do this depends on whether we ourselves have had this experience. After we help people in this way, we can go on to another experience. No doubt, they also need to have a definite experience of clearing their past. In actuality, the clearance of the past and consecration go together.
We must have a particular burden for the new ones. We may realize that a certain brother is very promising but that he has never consecrated himself to the Lord. Then we should not touch this matter in a shallow way. We need to touch this in the deepest way. First, we may give him our own testimony and tell him how so many saints in the past consecrated themselves to the Lord. We should contact him several times until we see that he has truly passed through this experience.
After consecration and clearance of the past, we can go on to further experiences. How far we can go with others depends on how far we have gone on. We can help others only to the extent of our own experience. In mathematics, for example, if we have learned only addition and subtraction, this is all that we can teach. If we have had adequate experiences of life, we can help people in a further way. Perhaps we can move on to the inner anointing. To help someone under our care to experience this will take a long time. We need this kind of shepherding, a shepherding according to an “educational system.”
I strongly recommend the book The Experience of Life. This book was taken from a training course given from 1953 to 1954, which was based on all the experiences of the inner life taught by the saints from the first century until today. In particular, it relied on a book by Madame Guyon entitled Life out of Death — Spiritual Torrents. Mrs. Jessie Penn-Lewis used Madame Guyon’s writing very much in her expositions. We received help from both authors, we digested what they spoke, and we added something further. Spiritual Torrents is somewhat difficult to understand, but today it is very easy to read The Experience of Life. If someone reads from it for ten minutes a day, he can finish the book in a short time. The four stages in the spiritual life mentioned by Madame Guyon are covered in this book, including nineteen experiences of life, and they are presented in a very “scientific” way. Everything related to our physical life can be known scientifically. If we care for our eating, breathing, drinking, working, and resting in a scientific way, we will be healthy. Likewise, we can know the things of the spiritual life in a scientific way. What is presented in The Experience of Life is not a mere theory, consideration, or imagination. It is based on the experiences of many seeking saints through the centuries. We should first shepherd ourselves by using this book to check our experience. Doing this will help us to know if we are in “high school,” “college,” or “graduate school” in our spiritual experience. Then we will know where we are and what our need is.
If we do not know where we are or where those whom we contact are, our fellowship with them will be very general. Of course, this is better than nothing, and for the first few contacts this may be good enough. For the long run, however, we need further learning. Then we will know where we are, and we will know where others are. We will know what we are short of, and we will be able to help others to the extent of our own experience. Then the whole church will grow. Otherwise, we will simply meet together in a general way without being clear or knowing what we are doing. Not only the service groups but also every local church with an adequate eldership must help the saints to go on in this way. At first, the church life may be only in the “sixth grade,” but after a few years we will advance to “junior high,” “high school,” and eventually “college.” At the same time, some of the new ones will still be in “junior high” and even in “nursery school.” As a whole, however, the church will be at a higher level of life. This requires us not merely to give messages week after week. Rather, we must know how to help the saints at every level, just as in America today we have all the different levels of education. Because of this, to be an elder in the proper church life is not an easy burden.
We must all see that this is the proper way of shepherding. Otherwise, we will not be clear what we are doing for the long run. We must know people’s spiritual condition. Then we will know where they are and what they need. We will realize whether or not we can afford them what they need, and we will go on to experience something further. This is what it means to shepherd people according to the experiences of life. It is a very definite and particular way. I took this way for many years. At that time, I had no desire to speak concerning other things. I was burdened only to help each one whom I contacted. I would either pray with someone, give a testimony about a particular experience, or read a portion of the Word or a few pages of a book with him. Sometimes I would ask two other brothers to come with me to help a certain person, or I would invite him to dinner for the purpose of helping him. After a few weeks like this, I could see that the new one received a particular and definite help.
We should both bring the new ones into the present flow of the church in a general way and render them the help they need in a particular way. Not all the new ones are able to enjoy whatever the church is enjoying at the present time, although they can enjoy it to some extent. Therefore, we should realize their real situation and discern their real need. Then we can minister to them what they need. The new ones are like the patients of a doctor. They do not know their real condition, but the doctor should know. Then he can determine the kind of dose or treatment they need. Sometimes patients do not understand what the doctor is prescribing to them. A good doctor does not always explain the treatment to people. He may simply give the patient a good-tasting medicine and let it work on the patient. In a general way, we should keep all the saints in the present flow of the church, but in particular, we should know what someone’s real need is. Then we can supply that particular need to each particular person.
We must always help people to come into the genuine experience of Christ. In principle, we all know this, but this is a matter of experience, not of knowing. How much we can help people depends upon how much we have experienced. If we have not experienced much of Christ, we will not be able to help others experience Him. We must all realize that today Christ is the life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45b). Certain ones advised me not to minister concerning Christ being the life-giving Spirit, saying that people will be offended and will not receive it. Nevertheless, I have received a vision from the Lord, and I must tell people that Christ today is the life-giving Spirit. This is not a mere doctrine; it is for people to experience Christ. I was in Christianity for many years, and I heard much talk concerning Christ being our life. However, not many people experience this. If we would ask what people mean by saying that Christ is life, how Christ can be our life, and where Christ is our life, almost no one will be able to answer properly.
In John 15:4 the Lord said, “Abide in Me and I in you.” Andrew Murray wrote a book entitled Abide in Christ. I read this book, and I have read portions of it several times. This book may be considered a marvelous masterpiece. However, it does not tell us the particular way to abide in Christ. Hudson Taylor also experienced abiding in Christ according to John 15, and we received help from him. Still, our own experience and practice show that without Romans 8, the way to abide in Christ is vague. Romans 8:6 says, “The mind set on the spirit is life and peace.” By this we can know who Christ is and where He is. Forty years ago I was groping for the way to experience Christ, but now we have found the “switch” in Romans 8. The way to experience Christ is to build up a habit of remaining in our spirit. We must realize that today our Christ is the life-giving Spirit, the Spirit of life, dwelling in our spirit (vv. 2, 11, 16; 2 Tim. 4:22). This Spirit of life is none other than Christ in us. Now we must have the definite particular experience of living in our spirit, which is life (Rom. 8:10). For many years I knew Galatians 2:20, which says, “It is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me.” However, I did not know how Christ could live in me. The way to experience the Christ who lives in us is by realizing that He is the life-giving Spirit and that we have a human spirit that has been regenerated and enlivened by Christ and with Christ.
There is no limit to this experience. Even when he was older, the apostle Paul still longed to know more of Christ (Phil. 3:8-10). To know Christ and the power of His resurrection is without limitation. More than thirty years ago I received help from a certain elderly sister. When I went to visit her, she testified that something serious had happened to her and that when she went to the Lord to inquire about it, the Lord spoke, “To know Him and the power of His resurrection” (v. 10). The next time I visited her, she testified that something even more serious had happened, but when she went to the Lord to inquire about it, He again spoke the same thing. I received much help and was built up by her testimony. Because she herself had received the experience of Christ as resurrection power, she knew that I was short of it. This was her way of shepherding me. To experience Christ in this way is a great thing.
On the one hand, I am very happy with what the Lord is doing today, but at the same time my heart is aching over the present situation. There are thousands of Christians who know almost nothing about how to experience Christ. They know how to be excited, sing, and praise in a general, emotional, and religious way, but when we try to fellowship with them, we realize that they have little actual experience of Christ. This is the poverty of today’s Christianity. We ourselves must not think that we are rich. Whether or not we are rich depends upon how much experience of Christ we have. This is a great need today. We all need to learn the real experience of Christ. Then we will have something solid and rich with which to supply those who are under our care. Otherwise, we are only carrying out a religious work to bring people to the meetings and the service without much of Christ. This is merely a religion, something godly without the presence of Christ, who is the life-giving Spirit in our spirit. This is a great matter that requires our continual exercise.
The experience of Christ is for the church. Satan is subtle. He may allow us to care for the experience of life, but he would not allow us to properly care for the church. Many times we are foolish in the way we present the church to people. In serving food, we need to know the right time to serve a certain kind of dish. However, most of us do not know whether the church is the main dish, an appetizer, or the dessert. We often flow like the tide. When we are at “high tide,” we damage people by making the church to be everything, but once we realize what we have done, we are at “low tide” and stay away from the matter of the church. God’s economy is altogether for the church, but in his subtlety Satan has been and still is deceiving the saints concerning the church. Now we must be clear about the church, and we must know how to fight the battle for the church. With some of the dear ones, we should not speak concerning the church too quickly, but with others, now is the time to tell them about the church. We need to be the good doctors, knowing the right time to administer the dose. To minister concerning the church to the people under our care is not easy. Even if we are able to help people in the experience of Christ as life, if we cannot bring them into the proper church life, we are still short of God’s economy.
Brother Watchman Nee fought this battle for years. I observed him for twenty years, from 1932 to the time he was arrested in 1952. In those twenty years he did not receive even one invitation from a denomination. This is because he was absolutely for the church. Today the subtle enemy is doing his best to allow Christians to use Brother Nee’s books on life while hiding what he said about the church. Brother Nee pointed out to us that God’s light was with us in those days simply because we were on God’s way. If we had been off of God’s way, we would have lost the right angle to see the light. The light comes from the direction of God’s way. Many denominational leaders asked, “Why does that ‘little flock’ always receive light? When they open to any page of the Bible, light comes out. Why did we not see the light first instead of receiving it from them?” Brother Nee’s secret was that he was on the Lord’s way and direction. However, although he always had the light, he suffered persecution. If Brother Nee were here today in the United States, he would be the biggest target of opposition. Many of his appraisers would turn into opposers.
We are here not for any other testimony; we are here for the testimony of the church. This is a real battle. How much we are able to minister to people concerning the church life depends on how much we have experienced. We need to know the reality, ground, history, and destiny of the church. All these require us to learn and to have a certain amount of experience.
We must all know how to build up the church. We should not be too proud and think that only we can build up others, nor should we be too humble and think that only others can build us up. We need to be built up, and we need to build up others. The genuine building up of the church includes several items. First, to build up the church we must help people to function. This is a great need, because without functioning there is no building up. In Christianity there is not much real building; there is mainly organization. We need to help people to function so that they may be built up. If someone never takes the opportunity to function in the church life, he can never be built into the church. He needs us to build him up in his function. This is a part of our shepherding.
For the building up of the church, we also need the proper daily gospel preaching. This is why we must emphasize this matter. This should not be something that we merely give messages about. It must be something that we all get into, and we must build up others in this. This is the responsibility not only of the elders but of all of us. We all need to be built up in the daily gospel life. Then we can build up others in this way. This is a difficult job, but it is crucial to the building up of the church.
In the past, certain Christian groups had a certain amount of spirituality, but due to their lack of a gospel-preaching life, many of those groups came to nothing. They became like old people without children. Even in the human life, it makes a great difference whether we have children, especially as we grow older. In order to have a proper life, we all need children. In the church life we need a daily addition of new believers. If one new believer were added to the church each day, we would all be very living. On the other hand, if not one new believer is added to the church in six months, the whole church life will decline. This would indicate that we are wrong, and in this condition it will be impossible to have a proper church life. Whether we have new ones is a test to our church life, indicating clearly whether we are hot or cold. We need a gospel-preaching daily life. This does not mean that we should do nothing but zealously preach the gospel day and night. Instead, we simply need to help the saints to be built up in their daily gospel preaching.
We also need to help the ones under our care to learn how to take care of others. Even if they were only recently saved, they can still care for others. Everyone in the church life is a caretaker. We are all doing the work of shepherding. We do not need one person to “pastor” the church; the church shepherds itself. To build up people to care for others is a great work.
We must also help people to know the church. To build people up in the foregoing four ways — to function, to have a daily gospel-preaching life, to shepherd others, and to know the church — requires us to have much exercise.
Because we are lacking in the proper building up, many sisters do not use their time well. The sisters in the church should have carried out certain things, but they have not. This is because they do not know how to shepherd people in the experience of life. Even after a long time, someone under the care of the sisters may receive only a general help but nothing in a particular way. A few years ago the one being cared for may not have had certain particular experiences, but today she may still not have had them. The only difference is that now she has learned something in a merely doctrinal way. The ones caring for her have passed on only knowledge to her.
Many times we have charged the saints not to come together to gossip but to speak concerning spiritual things or pray. We thank the Lord that many dear ones have taken this word. However, if we do not know how to shepherd people in the experiences of life, we will not have much to speak of when we come together. At first we can say, “Let us pray-read something,” but after doing this a few times, it will not be very prevailing. If we stay on the line of the experiences of life, we will never be short of anything to speak of. We will be like proper school teachers, knowing what “grade” people are in and what we should give them. Otherwise, after contacting one another day after day, we will still remain the same.
The fellowship in this chapter should give us an impression of what our real need is. This is why in the proper church life we need to spend some time to have a training, not simply church meetings. Because the church meetings are too general, it is difficult to carry out a particular training in the meetings. The elders need to pick up the responsibility to build up the saints in the foregoing four basic items — the stages of the experience of life, the enjoyment of Christ, the testimony of the church, and the building up of the church. I hope that the elders will bring this matter to the Lord and take time to consider how to keep the church on this line. Otherwise, we will be like today’s Christianity.
No shepherding can be prevailing if we do not have a love for people, an interest in them, a burden for them, and adequate prayer. Love, interest, burden, and prayer are the essential, basic elements of proper shepherding. Most of us were born with no interest in people. We do not like people, and we do not wish to be bothered by them, invited by them, or visited by them. We would rather live on top of a mountain. This is our natural tendency. However, if we keep this kind of disposition, we will be finished with the building. We need to love the new ones as the Lord loves them, be interested in them, and take care of them. Then we must have a burden for them and adequate prayer. In addition, the fifteen practical points concerning shepherding in the previous chapter are very useful. We need to be patient, know how to deal with people, and know what to say and what not to say. We should know how to be positive yet not too quick, not for our sake but for the ones who are under our care. Our basic need, however, is love, interest, burden, and prayer. If we would practice all these things, the church will grow in a proper way and be built up under the hands of all the saints, not only the elders or those with a special ministry. Everyone in the service groups in the church life must build up the church. There is no need to depend wholly upon the elders. Sometimes the elders cannot do the job adequately; therefore, we must all take up some part of the work of shepherding. Then the church will receive the benefit. Although it would be better to have a training on these matters all year round, what we have shared here should still give an impression of what we need to practice for the normal way of fruit-bearing and shepherding for the building up of the church.
