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One of the feelings I have from my visit abroad is that the Lord has opened a door for us. Even if we do not take into account the openness in the West, but only consider the openness in Southeast Asia and Japan, we can see that a door is wide open. There are opportunities for us to go and labor. In Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, Burma, and Thailand there are at least fifty places with meetings, and every place needs saints to go and help them. They are waiting and hoping that saints from Taiwan will go and help them.
Some of the Lord’s workers want a good opportunity and a good location for their work. Hence, they often write letters to advertise their availability. If they want to labor in a place, they write and ask whether there is an opportunity to labor there. In this way they seek for an opportunity and a place to work. But the Lord has given us a wide-open door. Believers want us to help them. In contrast to workers who seek opportunities to work, the Lord does not require us to seek opportunities to work for Him. The opportunities are waiting for us and are even looking for us.
The brothers and sisters need to understand that the places abroad have a great need and are open to us. We know our true condition in Taiwan. Even though the saints abroad respect us and regard us highly, we know that we are not that high. We have to know our condition.
Nevertheless, if we compare our condition with that of other places, we see that we are able to meet the needs in some places. For example, there is a brother who was originally from Indonesia. He lived in Taipei for many years and met in the third district. However, he has returned to Indonesia and is somewhat useful there. He is able to help the local saints, particularly the young people, and his function has become manifest. Another example is that some meetings overseas depend on the saints from Taiwan. In many places brothers from Taiwan are responsible for the ministry of the word. It is as if the meetings cannot continue if the saints from Taiwan are not present. This situation proves that there is a great need in all the places.
Question: Can you fellowship more about our work being limited by what we have learned and what we are doing? Does this mean that our usefulness is not related to our spiritual learning? Should we pursue spirituality in order to be more useful to the Lord? How can we solve the problems in a place if we do not know what their problems are?
Answer: We should not use spirituality as a means to measure the usefulness of a believer in the Lord’s hand. None of the believers who are confined in their service by their spirituality have a good ending. However, every serving one must learn to live in the Lord’s presence. This is to pursue being spiritual. I do not like to use the word spiritual. Especially after my visit overseas, I am not sure what it means to be spiritual.
I do not understand the expression pursue spirituality. What does this refer to? What does it mean to be spiritual? I know what it is to be humble and to be proud, and I understand what it is to persevere and to love. Does spirituality mean that a person can be built with others? I do not understand what it is to be spiritual.
Eventually, a person who constantly seeks spirituality does not become spiritual; instead, he becomes nothing. This was the failure of the mystics. In order to be spiritual, the mystics maintained a life of privacy. They focused on their relationship with God, on learning to fellowship with God, and on living in God’s presence. They considered this to be crucial and maintained a life of privacy in order to learn these lessons. As a result, they became nothing, because they have no spiritual posterity.
Many believers who have an understanding of spiritual matters reject things from the mystics. Brother Yu Cheng-hua translated some of Madame Guyon’s books and introduced them to us. These books are still being read among us. The first book that he translated was an abridged version of her autobiography. The Chinese translation, entitled Fragrant Myrrh, was published twenty years ago in 1938. He also translated A Short and Easy Method of Prayer and a book by Brother Lawrence entitled The Practice of the Presence of God. Have these books rendered us any genuine help in the past twenty years? If we study this matter seriously, we will see that the way of the mystics has no future.
The practices of the mystics can only produce a group of special believers. Believers who may have been good material before they were “helped” by the mystics are damaged, and their progress is frustrated after they begin to follow the practices of the mystics. They turn inward and practice short and easy prayers. I know these things because I witnessed this situation. Believers who practice these things become lost in mysticism, and they are hindered and delayed. In order to avoid a conflict among us, we have not rejected the things of the mystics.
I stopped receiving the teaching of Madame Guyon in 1943. However, in order to defuse a crisis among us, I spoke according to her writings. I went along with the situation, and by the Lord’s mercy, some saints were recovered.
Several of the saints here are from Shanghai. If they consider our past, they will understand what I am saying. I went to Shanghai to defuse a crisis. One aspect of this crisis was related to the teachings of the mystics. I do not deny the need to turn to our inner man. This teaching of the mystics has its value. However, there is a danger that we will have problems if we are constantly turning inward. Therefore, instead of opposing the practice of touching an inner feeling, I turned the saints to preach the gospel and to start new meetings. This was a rescue and a release. After I was in Shanghai for more than a year, the atmosphere changed. I encouraged everyone to preach the gospel and to start new meetings instead of continually turning inward.
When Brother Nee resumed his ministry, he said to me that many of the things by Madame Guyon should not have been brought in. To repeat the mistake of the mystics produces a manufactured, or artificial, spirituality. Such spirituality often turns into personal freedom and results in spiritual laziness. For example, so-called spiritual believers can say that even if thousands of people go to hell, they must seek the inner feeling. They must also seek the inner feeling even if the churches are desolate. To turn inward is a euphemism. It is a sign of laziness and indicates that they do not have a burden. A person with a burden does not continually declare that he must turn inward to seek the inner feeling. Only a mother who does not care about her children would say that she must maintain her cleanliness at the expense of her children. A mother who is truly burdened for her children will take care of her children.
Please do not misunderstand me. It is difficult to find a brother among the workers as pure, absolute, and faithful as Brother Yu was. However, if we follow the way that he introduced, we would have no future.
Paul’s Epistles do not speak of his spirituality. Instead, they deal with the problems in the churches. Only the book of 2 Corinthians seems to speak of Paul’s personal spirituality. Hence, we must read 2 Corinthians to know Paul. The emphasis of 2 Corinthians, however, deals with the problems in the church. Paul spoke of his spiritual life to solve the problems in the church. The person of Paul was totally for the church. He spoke of his spirituality for the church.
If we spoke concerning spirituality to Paul, he might say that he knows only a few things and that he does not understand us. He knows to save sinners, to build up the church, to labor for the Lord, to learn to live in the Lord’s presence, and to enjoy the Lord. He does not know anything besides these things.
Recently, the Gospel Book Room reprinted The Spiritual Man. I was rather reluctant to agree with this suggestion. Brother Nee wrote this book, but he was later unwilling to reprint it. He did not want to reprint it, because it is about a “spiritual man.” God does not want spiritual men. Moreover, the book is too analytical and is prone to draw readers into self-analysis. This was the main reason that Brother Nee was not willing to reprint it. Brother Nee also pointed out another reason to me. The Spiritual Man does not give a vision; it merely focuses on analysis. A believer can become well versed in The Spiritual Man but have no vision. He can have knowledge concerning the flesh and the spirit and know what is of the mind, the emotion, and the will, but have no vision, no revelation, and no experience.
Hudson Taylor had a vision. One day as he walked by the seashore in England, he looked over the Atlantic Ocean and saw a great imperial state by the shore of the Pacific Ocean. This state had thousands of souls who needed to be saved. That was when he received a burden. He forgot about his own spirituality and received this one burden from the Lord. If we asked him about his spirituality, he may have said that he did not know what it is to be spiritual. He only knew that he had a heavy burden. He wanted to preach the gospel to the thousands of souls who were perishing daily. It did not matter whether he was an evangelist or whether he knew how to preach the gospel. He received a vision, a burden, that was beyond his spiritual learning, and he followed it.
Every person who wants to be useful to the Lord must learn not to trust in what he has learned but to go beyond it. Our spirituality is a small matter. As long as we receive a vision from the Lord, the vision will keep us and make us spiritual. This is genuine spirituality. The vision will keep us living in God’s presence. The vision will not let us go; it will keep us. In contrast, if we pursue spirituality but do not have a burden from God, the more we pursue, the less spiritual we will be.
When the book Fragrant Myrrh was first published, there was a group of brothers and sisters in northern China who imitated Madame Guyon. There was even a sister in Taiwan who was quite successful in imitating her. Fragrant Myrrh and A Short and Easy Method of Prayer have a particular flavor. This sister was so successful in imitating Madame Guyon that she had a particular walk and way of speaking. Whenever the saints saw her, they would say, “Here comes the ‘Fragrant Myrrh’; here comes Madame Guyon.” We have to be clear that this kind of imitated spirituality is useless. Please forgive me for saying that believers who engage in this type of spirituality have a tragic end. Mrs. Penn-Lewis, for instance, had a miserable ending, because she paid too much attention to being spiritual. This led her into spiritual warfare in her latter years, and she eventually focused on demons.
Without a commission from God, we cannot be protected. Without a vision from God, we cannot be saved. We cannot pursue spirituality without a commission and a vision from God. After following the Lord for more than thirty years, I can only say that I do not know what it is to be spiritual. Every believer who receives a burden has a glorious ending. Maybe D. L. Moody was not clear concerning the way of the church, but he was a person who received a burden. His burden was to preach the gospel. Hudson Taylor was not a gospel preacher, but he received a burden, and his end was glorious. However, the saints who paid attention to their own spirituality and desired to improve their spirituality did not have a good ending. The Lord does not honor our focusing on spirituality.
I would like to say something further. I hope that this fellowship will be of help to all of us. No one who serves the Lord should be limited by what he has learned and by what he can do. When called by the Lord, Moses said, “I am not a man of words,...for I am slow of speech and slow of tongue” (Exo. 4:10). God does not call us because we are capable, and He does not call us when we are capable. Rather, the Lord calls us when we are not capable. The Lord does not care whether we are capable. He asks only whether we are willing. The question is not whether we can do something but whether we have a burden. The flame of fire burned within the thornbush (3:2). It is not a matter of whether we can do something but of whether the Lord is burning within. It does not depend on our ability but on whether we let the Lord burn us.
When Jeremiah was called by the Lord, he said that he was a youth and did not know how to speak (Jer. 1:6). He admitted that he was a young person and doubted his ability to bear the ministry. However, the Lord replied, “Do not say, I am a youth; / For everywhere I send you, you shall go; / And everything I command you, you shall speak” (v. 7). In other words, the ministry depended on the Lord, not on Jeremiah.
A believer who desires to receive God’s calling must be delivered from himself and deny himself. He must be delivered from his capability, from what he has learned, from what he can do, and from what he has done. He must be delivered from these matters and deny them. The Lord’s commission does not depend on what a person is. A person may say that he can serve in coordination because he is capable, spiritual, has a supply of life, and is eloquent. He may also say that since he has learned all the matters related to service and coordination, and he is familiar with all the matters related to the building up of the church, he is full of confidence to go and do the Lord’s work. We must realize that as long as we are the source, we are useless to God.
It is an offense to the Lord to say that we cannot solve the problems in a place if we do not know what they are. The Lord does not want us to solve people’s problems. He never asks us to know the problems of others. We do not learn lessons in order to solve problems. When the Lord sends us, He wants us to go with a vision. We should know the vision, not others’ problems. We do not need to know how to solve problems; we should know only how to pass on the vision that we have received to others and to speak of what God wants. We should never have the intention to help the saints solve their problems when we go out.
Question: How can we be sure that the Lord has called us?
Answer: We must always receive a vision. When I went to Shanghai in 1946, there was already an unresolved problem there that began in 1942. When I was there, everyone who had a problem came to see me. Because I did not know the history of the problem, I had an advantage. Even though I was open in my attitude toward the saints, I could say that I did not understand the problem. Whoever came to me could speak of his problems, but I did not hear anything.
I did not go to Shanghai to solve the problems. I did not understand the problems. I was not concerned with who was the source or whether it was a matter of someone being dishonest or crafty. I knew only that I went to Shanghai with the burden and the vision that God is the tree of life and that God desires to build up the church so that the church will rise up and serve Him. I did not know anything else. I did not want to know whether the saints had a problem with this or that brother. I knew only that God is the tree of life.
One day a brother told me that I was very clever because I pushed all the problems aside and did not touch them. He felt that I was carefree and unperturbed even though some problems were very serious. It seemed as if I did not have any problems and that I was transcendent. I replied that I was not clever. I was not sent by the Lord to Shanghai to take care of the problems. If God could not take care of the problems, how could I solve them? I knew only that God sent me to help the saints see that He wants to be man’s life and that man must live in Him. I had to show the saints that God wants to build up His church in every locality so that the church will rise up to serve Him. This is the only thing that I knew. I was not being clever.
I hope the brothers understand why I said this. We should look at the situation in Shanghai between 1946 and 1948. If we had pursued spirituality, we would eventually have had nothing. However, if we had a vision and a commission, there would have been genuine spiritual building. Hence, we should not think that we are going out to supply the saints, solve their problems, and help them. This way will not work. Instead, we need to receive a vision and a commission.
The believers who know God realize that we do not carry the commission but that the commission carries us. We do not uphold the vision; the vision upholds us. If we receive a vision, we will not be concerned about problems when we go forth. We will know only that God has entrusted us with a commission. This is the greatest power. This is something that cannot be subdued. We will be able to subdue others, but they will not be able to subdue us. This is similar to what God said in Jeremiah 1:19: “They will fight against you, but they will not prevail against you.”
We must be broad when we touch different matters. It is not that we are broad in ourselves; we need God to enlarge us. We should not be trapped in certain feelings and seek spirituality. Neither should we seek what kind of work we should do nor how to solve people’s problems and meet their needs. The Lord has shown us mercy and has opened our eyes to see a genuine vision. The need abroad is not to supply individual needs or solve problems. The great and genuine need is the need of this age. If the Lord has mercy on us, some of us will receive this vision, and the Lord’s presence will be with us.
We should not be proud. We must be persons who are broad because of the vision that we receive from the Lord. We must have faith. In order to receive a commission from the Lord, we must have faith in the spiritual supply, not only in material offerings. We must believe in God’s commission, believe that God is with us, believe in the vision God gives us, and believe that God will uphold us with His authority and His power. We must have faith in this.
