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Scripture Reading: John 4:24
In this chapter we shall consider some practical points concerning the meetings. Many seeking believers start to meet together, but after a certain time they disband and dissolve their meeting. Why does their meeting collapse? On the one hand, many believers are disgusted with any kind of organization. They say, “We do not like to have an organization. We have to come together in the spirit.” However, they do not know how to come together in the spirit. They do not know how to exercise the spirit, how to exhibit Christ, and how to come together with the surplus of Christ. Eventually, they do not have an organization, but what they have is only emptiness. This causes their meeting to fall to pieces.
This is why we need to pay the price to exercise our spirit and labor on Christ day by day. I beg you to keep these matters in mind and put them into practice. The basic principle for Christian service is to exercise the spirit and to have Christ as our surplus to minister to others. Whether we pray, sing a hymn, give a testimony, give a message, speak in a certain tongue, or have an interpretation, it must be in the spirit with Christ as the surplus. We must learn how to exercise our spirit, and we must have the experiences of Christ. Then when we come together to meet, we will know the best and proper way to meet by exercising our spirit to exhibit Christ, ministering Christ by either a hymn, a prayer, a testimony, a message, or even a tongue. By any kind of manifestation of the Holy Spirit we must exercise our spirit to minister Christ to others. This is the proper way to have our meetings and service.
To improve any of the meetings requires three things. First, we must labor on Christ. This is not a matter only of the meeting; it is a matter of our entire daily life. In these days the dear brothers and sisters truly have been helped and are practicing how to labor on Christ. This produces the riches for the meeting. In the ancient times the people of Israel came together three times a year—at the Passover, at Pentecost, and at the Feast of Tabernacles—with the surplus of the produce of the good land. This produce came from their day-by-day labor during that year. For the whole year they labored on the good land, so they had produce from the land as a rich surplus to bring for the Lord’s worship. This rich surplus became an exhibition of the rich produce of the rich land. However, this depended on their daily labor on the good land.
The good land typifies Christ. Today Christ is the good land to us, so we must labor on Him. The rain, the sunshine, the air, and the fertile soil come from the grace of God, but we need to labor to till the ground, sow the seed, and take care of the harvest. This is to cooperate with God’s grace. We need to pray and deal with many things. We need to learn how to trust in the Lord, abide in Him, fellowship with Him, and deal with Him and be dealt with by Him. This is a spiritual labor, not human struggling; it is not human effort but a spiritual coordination with the Lord.
Day by day we all must learn to live in this way. Then we will know Christ in a practical way and experience Him in our spirit, and when we come to the meetings, we will have something of Christ. We may be humble and say that we have nothing, but in actuality we will be full. We will have something, and spontaneously it will come out. This is why we all must learn how to live in Christ, walk by Christ, and experience Christ in the spirit. This is our constant labor on Christ. Then even if we do not give a testimony, we still will have the experience of Christ. When we simply open our mouth to praise and thank the Lord, we will be rich in our praise and thanks because we have something of Christ.
Second, we need to exercise our spirit with the indwelling Holy Spirit to worship in spirit. When we exercise our spirit, the Holy Spirit cooperates and honors this. This is the true worship in spirit and in truthfulness (John 4:24). Truthfulness refers to reality, that is, to Christ who is reality. Today we worship God in spirit with Christ as the surplus that we bring to God as the reality.
Third, we must learn how to cooperate and coordinate. The only way to worship is with Christ as our experience, with the spirit as our means, our instrument, and in coordination. If we have these three—Christ, the spirit, and coordination—the meetings will be wonderful and rich, full of Christ and living. They will be very good because we will have the riches, the spirit, and the way. We must pay our full attention to these three matters. Then whenever we come together, the meetings will be very attractive and attracting. They will attract people; people will be happy and anxious to come to the meetings. On the contrary, a meeting can be very low. Some brothers do seek the Lord and like to come to the meetings, but whenever they come to the meeting, they bring it lower; we need to be delivered from meeting in this way.
We all have to labor on Christ. We all have to learn how to exercise our spirit in the meeting to be active, not inactive, and positive, not negative. We should not sit and wait. That is not the time to wait; instead, the Lord is waiting for us. We should exercise our spirit to be strong. Luke 1:80 says that John the Baptist grew and became strong in spirit. Whenever we come into the meetings, we have to be strong in spirit and active and positive. Then we will not imprison the Holy Spirit within our spirit. The Holy Spirit will be released, and the release of the Holy Spirit will bring forth the riches of Christ. We all have to learn to release our spirit and exercise our spirit. Then we will be open. We will pave the way for the Holy Spirit within us to come out.
We must also learn the technique of how to coordinate. Once a brother starts in one way, we simply follow him. If his functioning is weak, we must learn to strengthen it, and if it is low, we must learn to uplift it. I look to the Lord that we will learn these practical things. We can be assured that if we put them into practice, the meetings of the church will be enriched, living, edifying, and very attractive. People will receive the real help, and the Lord will be glorified. The Lord’s presence will be with us, and it will be easy to bring unbelievers to the Lord. This is our responsibility, and it has very much to do with the building up of the local church. A local church can be built up only through these practical matters. We all must put them into practice.
A brother may begin a meeting by ministering something concerning Christ as patience. If we know how to exercise the spirit and if we have many experiences of Christ as the surplus in our hand, we can immediately follow the brother to give a testimony of how we experienced Christ as our patience. Or perhaps we will be ready to continue his ministering by offering a prayer to praise and thank the Lord that He is our patience. This may be compared to handling the same ball in a ball game. Sometimes, however, we may have only one item of the surplus of Christ. We may have nothing to say concerning Christ as patience, but we may have something to say about Christ as our strength. After the brother ministers Christ as patience, we do not have anything with which to follow him. Yet because we feel that we must exercise our spirit to do something, we start on another line. This is to play with a different “ball.” After this, another brother may start another line; this is to play with yet another “ball.” Eventually, there will be many different lines in one meeting. That is like one team playing a game with many balls.
Sometimes a team of five members may play with more than five balls; one player plays with his ball, another plays with his, and another plays with a third ball. This is an illustration of a poor meeting. If we know how to discern, we can tell that many meetings are poor; we play with “ball” after “ball,” not like a team but like naughty boys. Each one plays his own ball, and each one even has two or three balls. This is because we are not trained, educated, or exercised.
The Lord can testify for me that I have no intention to criticize anyone, but I must say that it is hard to find a Christian meeting that is truly satisfying. Many Christian meetings are always poor. There is always a dissatisfaction within the attendants. This is not our dissatisfaction only; it is the Lord’s dissatisfaction. The Lord is not satisfied unless there is a proper meeting with a group of Christians who have many experiences of Christ, know how to exercise their spirit, and have the coordination, the best way, the best exercise, to “play ball.” The more we see this kind of meeting, the more we will be satisfied. We will not say, “This is a poor meeting. I will never come back again to see this kind of meeting.” This kind of meeting will attract people and edify them. I can testify that to be in such a meeting even once edifies people for their whole life. Such a meeting edifies and builds up.
We may illustrate the way to begin a meeting with playing basketball. All basketball players know that they need a good start. If they start wrongly, they will lose the game; it is very hard to adjust a wrong start. At the start of a meeting, someone may call Hymns, #127, which starts, “Hark! ten thousand voices crying.” This hymn may be too high, so to adjust the meeting to a lower level, another brother may call Hymns, #510, which begins, “I’ve found the One of peerless worth.” These two hymns are two different “balls.” One hymn is about the “air force,” and the other is about the “marines”; after being “in the air,” we immediately dive “under the sea.” This is frustrating.
Hymns, #127, written by J. N. Darby, is the highest of all hymns. We cannot find another hymn with such a high standard. Therefore, unless a meeting immediately starts in the third heaven, we should not use this hymn. Only once in my life, in 1943, have I been in a meeting that began in such a high way. I can never forget it. When the meeting started, it was very high. All of a sudden we began to sing, “Hark! ten thousand voices crying.” Usually, however, we need to learn not to choose such a high hymn to start the meeting. If we start the meeting with such a high hymn, we will be frustrated; we will not know what to do next. This hymn is good for a time when the meeting has been going on and on. When the meeting comes to a climax, we can use this hymn; at that time it fits.
A brother may realize that a hymn is too high, so he may have the intention to adjust the meeting and have a new start. However, he may adjust the meeting from the “air” all the way down to the “sea.” If we intend to adjust a hymn with too high a standard, we should not come down too quickly. We need to keep the meeting going in a proper way. After singing a hymn, the best way is to continue by reading, praising, and praying with paraphrases of the verses in order to digest the hymn.
To have a proper meeting is a matter of teamwork. A certain brother may know how to adjust the meeting, but he should not do too much. If he does, he will be the clergy, and the others will become the laity.
As we have seen, in a meeting we all need to learn to coordinate with others, like a team playing ball. We need to realize that we are on a team; we are not playing by ourselves. We should learn to follow others. We should always consider how the meeting has gone on; then we can simply continue on the same line. This is not always easy; it requires exercise and practice. If others are praising the Lord, we need to follow. This will protect us from practicing wrongly.
Some prayers are truly good, but they are given at the wrong time. We should not think that to have a good prayer means that we are right. We may have a good prayer but offer it in a wrong way. At certain stages of a meeting we have to follow others to pray in certain ways. Again, this is like playing ball. We may play ball very well, but it may not be the right time to play in a certain way. We all have to learn this. We have had much improvement in our Lord’s table meeting, but we still need to improve more. We still need to learn more and more.
In the Lord’s table meeting during the section for the remembrance of the Lord, a brother may offer a prayer of praise to the Father. We all realize that this is not fitting and needs to be adjusted.
Another brother may offer a prayer, saying, “Grant us Your blessing and anointing for the time to come.” This prayer indicates that the time of worship is closed, and it is now time for fellowship or other matters. After this prayer, however, three more persons may continue with worship. This indicates that the brother served “dessert” before the other “dishes” were finished; while dessert was being served, three more dishes came. On the one hand, it is good for the first brother to wait a little. On the other hand, the three brothers should not have hesitated earlier in the meeting; they should have served their dishes more quickly. If we do not serve our dish quickly before dessert comes, we had better forget our dish. If there is a hesitation, people will think that all the dishes have been served. We all must learn to do the right thing at the right time.
Hymns, #495 says, “Christ is God’s centrality / And His universality; / He is God’s delight and joy / Throughout all eternity.” This is a good hymn in itself, but the Lord’s table is a weekly remembrance of the Lord. Therefore, all the hymns and prayers offered must keep the thought of the enjoyment of the Lord. A hymn on Christ as God’s centrality and universality may be for our understanding and not for enjoyment, so it is better to use it for a message or testimony. If we read Hymns, #495, we can see that there is no thought or sense of enjoyment, and without the sense of enjoyment we do not have the realization that we are remembering the Lord. According to the understanding, it is good, but according to the sense, it does not fit the atmosphere of the Lord’s table meeting. We have many good, spiritual hymns, but they do not fit the Lord’s table meeting because they do not give the sense of the remembrance of the Lord.
After a while we will graduate from our study of the meetings, but after that we must go on to “graduate school” and even get a “Ph.D.” We must continue to learn.
