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The first step in the carrying out of the God-ordained way to meet and to serve is to exercise the New Testament priesthood of the gospel by helping people to be saved and baptized. This is to beget new believers. We may help people to be saved and baptized through visiting them in their homes by knocking on their doors. However, we should not be legal about our way. Sometimes we may help them in other ways, such as inviting them to a meeting or simply speaking to them on the street. The second step in carrying out the God-ordained way is to feed the new ones by meeting with them in their homes. These new beginners may be those who have been saved and baptized among us, or they may be other new believers whom we have met. The third step is to perfect the new believers in group meetings. After feeding the new ones for a short time, we should bring them together to form a group meeting, not just for feeding but for perfecting. This meeting is the main part of the church life, and it should include fellowship, intercession, care, shepherding, teaching, perfecting, and all the other items of the church life. The fourth step in the God-ordained way is to prophesy in the larger church meetings. These four steps for carrying out the God-ordained way to meet and to serve should not merely be something we learn. They should be our daily walk. We should take this way and walk in this way.
There are many ways to have a group meeting. When the attendants of the meeting come together, they may spontaneously begin to sing and pray. Then one brother may tell the others that one of the new sisters has become ill, and the group may pray for her. There are many things about which we can fellowship in the meeting. Someone may ask about a brother’s job situation, and the group may again pray and seek the Lord’s leading in caring for him and his family. One who is exercising to care for a group meeting will be able to know when one person has been speaking for too long about a particular matter. Then he can introduce something else into the meeting. He may offer a prayer, and his prayer will change the atmosphere of the meeting and bring it into another stage.
The teaching in the group meetings should be carried out not by a particular person but by all the attendants in that meeting. During the group meeting a brother may raise a question concerning a point from the Bible. Everyone in the group can teach the others by saying something in answer to that question. Even those who have been saved for a very short time have something to speak and can offer it in the meeting. Likewise, there are often some attendants who are able to speak something deeper in answer to the questions and some who are able to give a concluding word. Everyone has a small portion, and when everyone presents what he has, all the portions are added together to make a good teaching. Everyone can ask a question, everyone can answer, and everyone can teach. Whatever is spoken in the group meeting is heard by all the attendants, and everyone receives the help. This is the way to teach the saints in a group meeting. If the saints attend this kind of group meeting week after week for two or three years, they will be perfected.
If we practice having group meetings, we will learn the proper way to carry them out. The best way to learn is to practice. The more we practice, the more we learn. We should not say that we do not know how to cook. We should simply buy some groceries, put them into water, and place them on a stove. Then we will learn to cook. If we would practice having group meetings for several months, we will know how to meet, and we will receive the benefit. When we have learned the proper way to have group meetings, they will become indispensable.
The group meetings comprise eighty percent of the church life if we practice them properly. However, we may not know how to have group meetings in life, in spirit, and according to everyone’s current situation and need. This is because we have been accustomed to having meetings in a traditional, formal, ritualistic way. In the old way of meeting we could meet for some years and still not know the other attendants in the meeting. There might be no contact, care, or shepherding among the members. In a church with several hundred newly baptized believers, it would be impossible to have enough elders to care for them all. If such a church meets in the old way, the number of new ones will be impressive, but there will be little content of reality. However, if this church meets in a proper way, the several hundred members will be formed into groups of eight to fifteen persons. Each group will care for the persons in that group. The members of the group will come to know one another very well, and the entire church will be under a daily, mutual care. This mutual care is carried out in many ways in the group meetings.
For the sake of the group meetings, we must always be released, living, and fresh. We must not be under any bondage. Almost everyone on earth is in some kind of “shackle.” Every day we may be shackled. We may not be free persons, persons who are released, living, and fresh. As a result, we are in debt to the Lord. We owe Him praises, songs, speakings, and testimonies. If we are released persons who are living and fresh, the Spirit within us has the full freedom to move. However, many times when we come together, it seems as if we do not have the Spirit. Instead, we wait on the Spirit to come and release us. The Bible tells us that we have a human spirit (Job 32:8; Zech. 12:1) and the divine Spirit (Rom. 8:9, 11, 16). To wait for something that we already have is wrong. We have the divine Spirit in our human spirit, so we should exercise our mingled spirit. It does not matter whether or not we feel our spirit. We do not need to feel our spirit; we only need to use it.
We Christians are the people of a speaking God. In the New Testament, God speaks in the principle of incarnation. He does not speak only by Himself; He speaks through our speaking. If we speak, He speaks in our speaking. If we do not speak, we stop His speaking. Therefore, we must exercise our spirit whenever we come together. When we turn on a light switch, the electricity operates. In the same way, when we exercise our spirit by crying, “O Lord Jesus!” we have the sensation that the Holy Spirit is moving within us. This is because as Christians we have a regenerated, enlivened, and strengthened human spirit that has been mingled with the divine Spirit. The Spirit never leaves our spirit. He remains in our spirit and is mingled with it at all times. Therefore, we are able to exercise our spirit at any time and in any place. The problem is that many times we do not exercise our spirit. Because we do not move, the Spirit has no way to move. He becomes shackled by us. When we exercise our spirit to testify in the meetings, we shake off the shackles.
A number of years ago, when I would give messages, I often would not use an outline for my speaking. When it was time to speak, I would simply walk up to the podium. I did not have any verses prepared, but when it was time for the Scripture reading, the verses I needed for my message would come to me. Likewise, when I would begin to speak, the message itself would come to me. If we exercise our spirit, the Spirit within us rises up, because the Spirit is one with our spirit. No one can separate the two. The Spirit has been put into our spirit to be the very essence of our spiritual being. Thus, we do not need to wait for the Spirit, because the Spirit is our very essence. We simply need to use our mingled spirit.
We need to be trained and even disciplined to meet in a released, living, and fresh way. Many times our meetings are dead, cold, old, poor, and low because we are still shackled. For this reason it is difficult to have group meetings. The group meetings need at least one person who is released, living, fresh, and unshackled. If such a person meets with a group for two or three weeks, the entire group will be affected by him. All the attendants in that group meeting will become the same as he is. In that group meeting the new believers all will be released, living, and refreshed because from the day they first became Christians they participated in released, living, and refreshing meetings. They will not know any other way to meet. Without shouting, praising, and saying, “O Lord! Amen!” they would not consider that they have been to a meeting. However, many of us are not this way. For many years we have been molded to be what we are today, always coming to the meetings in the same way. If this is our habit, it will be very difficult to have proper group meetings.
To have group meetings in the old way is easy. According to the old way, the elders divide the church into several groups and appoint a leader for each group. If they have difficulty finding a leader among all the attendants in a certain group, they may either combine groups or appoint a brother from a different area to join that group. However, even these leaders may be examples of deadness to the new ones. They may call a hymn in a dead way and lead the reading of some lessons in a dead way. Group meetings conducted in this way are meetings with no spirit, no release, no livingness, and no freshness.
We must be released, living, and refreshed persons. Then we should forget about all formality and ritual and exercise our spirit to testify, sing, praise, shout, speak, pray for others, and care for others. The group meetings depend on our daily living. We must live a life that is released, living, and refreshing, and we need to keep a constant fellowship with the Lord all day long. We must be persons living in the Lord’s presence and spending time daily with the Lord to study His Word. In this way we will spontaneously have an accumulation of Christ in our daily life. This accumulation will become our spiritual riches, our spiritual “capital,” to “spend” in the meetings. We will be released, living, and refreshing, and we will have the riches of Christ as a deposit. Then, when we come to the group meetings, we will be released. We will speak, and we will have a content of Christ with which to speak. If we are such persons, we will be very “contagious” and will “infect” others. What we do in the meetings will not be a performance. It will be the issue of what we are and the spontaneous way that we live and behave. We will be able to shout, praise, sing, and speak in a living way. This is the way to have the proper church life.
If we are such living persons, it will be easy for us to release sinners. We may not be released but may be shackled when we go to knock on people’s doors. If this is the case, the people may open their doors to us, but what we say will not be releasing. What comes out of our mind will not release people; rather, it will bind them. However, if we are released persons, we can speak the same words, but the spirit in our speaking will be different. When we speak, our word will release people, and it will stir up the interest of those to whom we speak. Today many Christians are seeking spiritual power from on high. However, the real power is in our being released persons. A released, living, and refreshing Christian lives in the spirit, and when he uses his spirit, the Holy Spirit comes out. It is easy for such persons to help people to be saved and, after they are saved, to spend time with them to feed them. We must all learn to live such a life and be such persons. If we all become such persons, after a short time the entire church will be revived. This kind of revival will be a real, constant, and continuous revival.
