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Scripture Reading: Isa. 45:11
We have much to learn and practice concerning the preaching of the gospel. We will first consider the way to invite people to be saved. Some may say that this is very simple; it requires no training, and we know it already. Yes, we may know something about it, but there is a better technique for our practice.
First of all, we must trust in the Lord. We cannot do anything independent from the Lord. When we prepare to invite people, we must have adequate prayer about it. We need to pray to seek the Lord’s mind concerning whom we contact. Then we must pray for the persons whom we feel the Lord is leading us to invite. We must remember them, bringing their names to the Lord day and night. We need to pray in a prevailing way. Isaiah 45:11 says, “Thus says Jehovah, / The Holy One of Israel and the One who formed him, / Ask Me about the things to come concerning My sons, / And concerning the work of My hands, command Me.” In this verse the Lord gives us the ground to command Him. In a sense, He says, “I am your Servant. Give Me the order.” We must learn to pray in this way, saying, “Lord, while I am here remaining with You and looking to You, I tell You that You have to do something.”
There is the mysterious principle of faith in the universe. Faith honors the Lord, so the Lord always honors faith. To not have a living, prevailing, and powerful faith means that either we depend on ourselves or that we have an evil heart of unbelief. However, if we would not trust in and depend on ourselves, and if we believe, we will have the living faith to claim something, to command the Lord to do something. To command the Lord to do something means that we do not trust in ourselves and that we believe; the Lord will honor this faith. We need to pray in this way. All kinds of doubts come from the enemy. We must learn to believe and exercise a living faith.
Learn to pray for your contact with people, and learn to see how the Lord answers your prayer. Tell the Lord, “Lord, I need to see that You have saved at least one person I have prayed for.” Tell this to Him definitely, challenging Him a little. Then you will see that He will come in. We can even say, “Lord, while I am praying here, at this very minute, You must work in the heart of the person for whom I am praying. I am waiting to hear a testimony from him that something happened within him at this very day, hour, and minute.” Learn to prove the Lord, not as the people of Israel did in the wilderness with an evil heart of unbelief, but with a believing heart. If we have the living faith in prayer, we will have an impact in preaching. When we come to our friend, we will have the impact because we have prayed. Since we have commanded the Lord, we come to him with impact and assurance to tell him that he must be saved. This is the way to invite people. Luke 14:23 says that a master told his slaves not merely to invite but to compel people to come to his great dinner. Some versions translate compel as “force” or “constrain.” We have to compel, force, press, and constrain people to come.
Before a meeting for preaching the gospel, we must find the way to contact the person or persons for whom we have been praying, either by phone or face to face, and on the day before the preaching, we should confirm that he is coming. Then on the morning of the preaching, we should fast. This is not something legal, but I believe it will please the Lord. If we mean business, we will not break our fast in the morning; we will keep our fast in order to pray. When Brother Watchman Nee was young and still in college, he fasted for all three meals on Saturday. He practiced this for over a year in order to pray, study the Word, and remain with the Lord. Then on the Lord’s Day he went to preach. His preaching was powerful with a real impact.
If we mean business with the Lord, He will mean business with us also, and we will have the impact. However, if we are indifferent with our preaching, the Lord will also be indifferent. The Lord can never work something out through lukewarm people; we must be cold or hot to the uttermost. We need to be “boiling” to the point that we “burn” people. How can we be boiling? It is by prayer and, if possible, though not in a legal way, by fasting. We should be burdened to fast and pray on the morning of our preaching. We may pray, “Lord, the persons I have named before You so many times must be saved today. That is why I am here fasting. I have no interest in eating; I am already filled by this burden. I am full of Your work, so I have no interest and no capacity for eating.” If we do this, we will see the impact and the answers to our prayers. If we pray and fast, then our day of preaching will be a day for crossing a boundary line. Before the day of Pentecost the disciples prayed for ten days. They did not do anything in those ten days but pray. We can see the impact of their preaching.
After fasting and praying, before the meeting we should go to bring the persons we have prayed for. It is better to go to them; we should not trust them to come or merely believe their promise to come. Many times our friends give us a promise in a polite way, but after the meeting they apologize and give an excuse for why they did not come. Rather, we should go to them to bring them and accompany them. Compel them to be saved. This is our regular duty and responsibility. From this time, if the Lord wills, we should do this every month until He comes. Every month we should preach the gospel.
Some say that it is too much to expect one hundred persons to be brought in. In the sense of unbelief, I agree with this. However, if we will all fast for one meal a day until the meeting for preaching the gospel, two hundred people may be saved. This depends not only on the Lord but very much on us and how we cooperate with the Lord. If we do not believe, and we all say, “Oh, that is impossible; let us forget about that and go to sleep,” then not one person will be saved through us. This depends on how we cooperate with the Lord, with the church, and with one another.
If we have this practice in the preaching of the gospel, our life will be much improved. We will grow. For many years we may not have had much growth in life, but if we preach the gospel in this way, we will see the growth in life. Then the church will be increased both in quantity and in quality. The number of members is the quantity, and the growth of life is the quality. In the churches in the past, we learned the secret. For a long time many taught, preached, and built up, but there was no improvement. There was no result, and the brothers and sisters became tired of all those things. However, if we seek the Lord’s mind, He will impress upon us that we have to do the work of preaching; we must burden the brothers and sisters with the preaching of the gospel. Simply by preaching the gospel, the church will be revived. By preaching, the church comes into life. It truly helps.
In order to do the work of inviting people in an effective way, we have to care for the matters above. We need to command the Lord, contact people, and pray and fast; then on the day of preaching we have to go to bring people, spending what we have to, even at a cost.
If possible, after the preaching we should also have lunch with the friend we invited. Many brothers and sisters were saved through this kind of lunch. During a preaching meeting the unbelievers are worked on, but sometimes the work is not finished. It is by having lunch with them that they will be saved. We need more time with them. We should not invite them the next day; we should do it right away after the meeting. When we start to cook something, we should finish cooking it. We should not allow it to remain raw and finish cooking it the next day. We will never finish in this way. We should do these things continuously in one day. If we say that the person for whom we are burdened should be saved on a definite day, the Lord will honor us. Do not be sloppy or indifferent; be diligent and compelling. In other things we have to be more patient to wait on the Lord, but in preaching we should not be as patient. We should tell the Lord, “Lord, I do not have the time to wait. You must do this for me quickly.” Learn to do this, and try it. I am not speaking something I have not seen. Twenty years ago I did much preaching work, not only from the podium but also by invitations and visitations.
If we do not have an adequate hall to meet in, the meeting for preaching may be crowded. We need to learn how to seat ourselves properly. We should give the seats to our friends, but we need at least one brother or sister to accompany two new ones. If there are one hundred unbelievers in the meeting, there should be fifty brothers and sisters with them. This makes a big difference. If the room is full of unbelievers, and all the brothers and sisters stand outside, leaving only one to give the message, the one who speaks will be stripped by the enemy. When a brother stands to speak, the other brothers should sit in the front or stand up with him. On the day of Pentecost, Peter stood up, and the eleven stood with him (Acts 2:14). When the brother says, “Friends, you have to believe in Jesus,” the other brothers can say Amen. This gives him weight; weight is added to the word. If a brother speaks and at least five or six stand with him, we will see the impact.
We have learned this lesson in casting out demons. The more brothers and sisters we have with us, the more impact we have. When I would go to cast out demons, I dared not do it by myself. I always brought as many brothers and sisters as possible to be with me. Then I was encouraged and strengthened, and I had the impact.
We need some brothers to accompany the speaker, and we also need many brothers and sisters to be present in the seats. Then there will be the impact. When a brother speaks, the brothers standing with him say Amen, and the rest of the congregation also can say Amen. This subdues the unbelievers, and it chases away the false, lying, and cheating spirit in their hearts. This can be compared to a ball game in which a team has more impact if more supporters attend the game.
We also need to learn to watch the unbelievers. If we see four unbelievers together, we have to make an adjustment by sitting with them to accompany them. In the process of the meeting, we can help them in prayer, singing, and the speaking. The preaching work is a real fight. We can help the speaking by cooperating with the speaker and by watching the unbelievers. There is a secret here. We may realize that a person is very inspired and moved by the Spirit. Then we can pray inwardly, “Lord, give him the secret to believing and being saved.” If we pray like this, many times we will see that the person’s face changes. At other times we may realize that a person is stubborn, shaking his head in disagreement. Then we need to pray silently and inwardly, “Lord, bind the strong man, the rebellious one.” By praying, we control the situation. This is the preaching of the church. Everyone is like the muscles of the body. Not only does the mouth speak, but every part of the body exercises. Then we will see the impact. In this way we should take our seat properly to help the preaching.
We need to exercise our whole being. First, of course, we exercise our spirit, and then we exercise our soul, our understanding, to watch people. If we learn to do this, we can even read their faces, and by their faces we can read their heart. There is no need to contact them after the meeting to know if they have been saved; we will know already. In this way, we need to help the unbelievers in prayer, in the hymns, and by watching them.
After the message we have a short time to close the meeting by singing hymns or a chorus and by asking people to make a decision for the Lord. Then right away after that, the brothers and sisters have to contact two or three, or at least one person, to care for them. Before contacting them, we have watched them and noticed what kind of reaction they had. Based on this, we can contact them. This is a very important time; it is the time to reap the harvest, the time to deliver the child. In the travail of childbirth there is a certain time, the very point of time, at which to have the delivery. We all must learn to be the midwives. In the work after the gospel meeting, every one of us must be a good midwife, knowing how to deliver the child. Pray for this.
Concerning the work we do after the meeting, there are a few points to which we must pay our full attention. First, we should not talk too much, and we must not talk with vain words. Before we contact people, we will have watched them and noticed what kind of reaction they have had. Based on this, we can speak with them about the message. We must learn to talk in a brief way to “close the deal,” just like a salesman. If we talk too much, there will be no deal. Our purpose is not to talk. Some brothers use the time after the meeting just to talk about everything from Genesis to Revelation, from the moon to the sun, and from the ancestors to the modern generation. They have much to say, but eventually they do not make the deal.
We need to close the deal in a brief way by helping people to pray. After we speak with someone for two or three minutes, five or six at the most, we have to influence him to pray. We must learn the secret of how to help people to pray. Many times people will say that they do not know how to pray, so we can ask them to follow us in prayer. We can say, “I will pray something, and then you follow me; say the same thing from your heart.” In a simple way we have to help people to confess their sins, recognize that the Lord Jesus is the Son of God, the very Savior and Redeemer, and receive and accept the Lord Jesus personally as their Savior. We should also help them to realize that by Christ’s redeeming death, by the cross of Christ, their sins have been forgiven. We need to pray with them in a very brief, effective, and definite way. The Lord honors this kind of prayer. After this kind of prayer many persons have a change in their life, and the Holy Spirit becomes real and living to them. By this kind of prayer the Holy Spirit truly touches the hearts and spirits of people.
After the prayer it is very good to give people one or two verses from the Scriptures according to their situation, the verses which are best suited to each case respectively. For some people John 3:16 is good, and for others Romans 6:23 is good. We should give one or two verses as a confirmation and help them to grasp or be grasped by the verses. A living word from the Bible is a confirmation to a new believer, a proof of his salvation in a brief way.
After the prayer we should also have a friendly talk with the person. Ask him how and with whom he came, and take down his name and address. However, we should do this in a flexible, spontaneous way, not in a legal way. If the person he came with has his name and address already, there is no need for us to get it.
Before the meeting for preaching, we should have another time for visitation. Then the brothers and sisters can turn in dated sheets of paper with the name and address of their friends and some remarks about them, such as whether or not they have been saved. Then by those sheets we will know how many have been influenced by our preaching and what we must do in the meeting. If ten or twenty have already been saved, then on the next Lord’s Day we should have a baptism for them. Do not think this is too fast; there is no need to wait. The Scriptures say that people should be baptized as soon as they believe (Mark 16:16; Acts 2:38, 41; 8:36-38; 22:16). Believing is only half a step; believing and being baptized are the whole step of being saved. We do not believe in water baptism in a superstitious way, as some do. However, we do believe that there is something particular in baptism. In the past I saw sick people who were healed after their baptism, and some experienced the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. There are many cases like this. Baptism is not a form or a superstition; rather, we believe it is necessary because the Lord commanded it. After the preaching we should have a baptism, the earlier the better.
There may be a number of new ones who are not clear about salvation and baptism, so we must follow up with them within a few weeks. Then when they are clear, we will have another baptism. There will be many things to do until we bring all these people into the church life, and the brothers and sisters can care for them as new members. Our work must be completed by their being brought into the church life; otherwise, we must care for them some more. If one of our friends is not saved in the preaching, then we have to care for him in a second meeting for preaching in the following month.
