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Scripture Reading: Acts 6:10; 2 Cor. 4:13; Acts 4:31; 1 Cor. 14:26; Eph. 5:19; Col. 3:16b
Our fellowship in this book may be considered as a continuation of our fellowship from the winter training of 1987, which is contained in the book entitled The Scriptural Way to Meet and to Serve for the Building Up of the Body of Christ. In this book we want to see more concerning this scriptural way.
We need to learn how to practice all kinds of meetings: the home meetings, the small group meetings, and the larger meetings of the church. In all of our meetings there should be four basic factors and elements: the word, the spirit, praying, and singing. If we handle these four elements in a proper and living way, there will be a rich display and expression of Christ in all of our meetings.
The word is the holy word revealed in the Scriptures, either the constant Word or the instant word. If we are going to be the speaking ones in our meetings, we must let the word of Christ dwell in us richly (Col. 3:16). The riches of Christ are in His word. The word of the Lord must have adequate room within us so that it may operate and minister these riches into our being. Then our speaking of the word in the meetings will be an exhibition of the riches of Christ.
When we refer to the spirit, we are following the apostle Paul to denote our spirit indwelt by and mingled with the Holy Spirit. According to the New Testament, the divine Spirit and our human spirit are mingled together as one spirit. He who is joined to the Lord, who is the Spirit, is one spirit (1 Cor. 6:17; 2 Cor. 3:17). In a regenerated person, the divine Spirit and the human spirit are no longer two separate spirits. The Spirit of the Lord and the spirit as our inward being are one spirit.
In the meetings we need to take care of our mingled spirit. We have to learn how to exercise our spirit. Whenever we touch our spirit, use our spirit, exercise our spirit, the Spirit within our spirit immediately works. The two spirits are not only joined but also mingled as one. If two substances are mingled together and we touch one of them, we surely will touch the other one. Therefore, in our daily life and in our meeting life we must learn how to handle, deal with, and exercise our spirit.
The Divine Trinity consummates in the Spirit. The Spirit, the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God, is the very consummation of the Divine Trinity. The three of the divine Godhead needed a consummation, and this consummation was taken care of by the processes through which the Triune God passed. Incarnation is a part of the consummation of the Triune God. Before the incarnation our God was “raw.” God had to pass through incarnation to be “cooked.” When groceries are cooked, they are consummated to make a meal. Before the incarnation the Triune God—the Father, the Son, and the Spirit—was there, but He had not been cooked, or consummated. Before the incarnation, was there any humanity in the Godhead? Although our God is omniscient, He did not have the experience of human life or human living. But after His incarnation the Triune God picked up humanity and passed through human living for thirty-three and a half years. Thirty-three and a half years of human living is a long process. Before the incarnation there was nothing of human living contained in the Godhead. But today the Godhead contains the riches of human living.
Another process the Triune God passed through was the wonderful death of Christ. In Adam death is a terrible term, but in Christ death is very sweet. We all have to experience the death in Christ. This death was not in the Godhead before the incarnation of the Triune God and the death of Christ, the Triune God-man. But today death is included. Death is contained in the Triune God-man. The death in Adam is fully negative, but the death in Christ is wonderfully positive. It is a dear death, a lovable death. The Triune God also passed through the processes of resurrection and ascension. He was God in the heavens before His incarnation, but He had never come down from the heavens, descended to Hades, resurrected from the dead, and ascended to the highest place in the universe. The resurrection and the ascension became a part of His experience. In the Godhead today there is the element of ascension.
Incarnation, human living, crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension are wonderful items that we should love and treasure. Do you not love incarnation? Do you not love His humanity? Do you not love His human living on this earth? He was a little babe, He was even a boy of twelve years, and He was a man of thirty-three years. Do you not love His death? Do you not treasure His resurrection? Paul wanted to know Christ and the power of His resurrection, and he was even desiring to be conformed to His death (Phil. 3:10). Do you appreciate being conformed to the death of Christ, and have you asked the Lord to conform you to His death? Instead of praying in this way, you may have prayed many religious prayers, asking the Lord to help you be holy and humble. We should tell the Lord that we want to know Him and the power of His resurrection, being conformed to His death. All these elements today are wrapped up with the Divine Trinity. As His believers, we must learn how to handle all these items of the Triune God’s process whenever we meet because these items are the very essences, or elements, of the consummation of the Triune God.
Before the resurrection of Christ the Triune God had never been consummated. After the resurrection the Lord Jesus came back to His disciples and charged them to go to disciple the nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. Why was this charge given right after His resurrection? The right time for Him to charge His disciples to baptize the new believers into the Triune God was after His resurrection, because before that moment the Triune God had not yet been completed, or consummated. In resurrection Christ, the very embodiment of the Triune God, became a life-giving Spirit. Thus, the all-inclusive, life-giving Spirit is the completion of the Triune God. The Triune God was perfect, but He was not yet completed before the resurrection of Christ. He was completed with incarnation, with human living, with the all-inclusive death of Christ, with the resurrection of Christ, and with the ascension of Christ. When the Spirit was poured out from the heavens by the ascended Christ, that Spirit was the consummation of the Triune God, the reality of the Triune God.
In the last chapter of the sixty-six books of the Bible, the Spirit is mentioned without any adjective. He is not referred to as the Holy Spirit or the Spirit of God, but as the Spirit (Rev. 22:17a). The Spirit, this unique Spirit, is the very consummation of the processed Triune God. This One says something together with another one in Revelation 22. The other one is the bride, the consummated humanity. The Spirit is the consummation of the Triune God, and the bride is the consummation of the tripartite mankind. After the processes they both have gone through, they both form a universal couple. The husband is the consummation of God, and the wife is the consummation of man. We will be the consummated mankind as the very wife to the consummated Triune God. The record of the sixty-six books of the Bible is a record of a romance. The consummated God, the Spirit, falls in love with the consummated man.
The Spirit as the consummation of the processed God is in our spirit, in our mouth, and in our heart (Rom. 8:16; 10:8), and He will never leave us. He stays with us forever. When we say, “O Lord Jesus,” or “O Father God,” immediately we touch Him. When we call “O Lord Jesus” out of a pure heart, we have a sweet feeling within. When Paul met the Lord on the road to Damascus, the Lord spoke to him, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?” (Acts 9:4). When Paul heard this, he did not understand. He said, “Who are You, Lord?” The Lord responded, “I am Jesus, whom you persecute” (v. 5). Paul did not realize that the “Me” he was persecuting was a corporate Me, comprising Jesus the Lord and all His believers. Paul thought that he was persecuting the followers of Jesus, not knowing that when he persecuted them, he persecuted Jesus, for they were one with Him by being united to Him through their faith in Him. After the apostle Paul had received the Lord, Ananias told him, “Rise up and be baptized and wash away your sins, calling on His name” (22:16). According to the Greek, calling is a participle as an adverb modifying be baptized. This indicates that while Paul was being baptized, he was calling on the name of the Lord. When we go to visit people and lead them to believe and be baptized, we must instruct them to call. We can say, “While I am putting you into this water, you have to call on the name of the Lord—O Lord Jesus! O Lord Jesus!” Romans 10:12 says that “the same Lord is Lord of all and rich to all who call upon Him.” The Lord is rich to all the ones who call on His name.
When we call upon the Lord, we receive Him as the consummation of the Triune God, and this consummation is the Spirit. Some may consider that the Spirit as the consummation of the Triune God is so marvelous that He is beyond our understanding and apprehension. Although the Spirit is so marvelous, He is as available as the air. Our physical body lives by the air. If the air were not so available to us, we would die within a short time. The air is so great, but it is so available and even so cheap. I do not spend money for air. Wherever I go, the air follows me. Wherever I go, the air is waiting for me. Air is so great, yet the greatest thing in this universe is the most normal, the most common. Today the Bible likens the consummated God, the Spirit, to air. Everything that we enjoy of the Triune God today is miraculous yet very normal. Thus, when we come to the meeting, we must know how to handle such a normal Christian experience, that is, the exercise of our spirit to contact the Spirit.
From 1969 to 1972 in Elden hall in Los Angeles, the saints practiced calling on the name of the Lord on the way to the meetings and in the meetings, but after 1972 that practice began to disappear. Today we often come to the meeting in a quiet way, and we are even quiet in the meeting. We come into the meeting so quietly because we are used to this. Why would we not call audibly on the name of the Lord? When we were home, were we that silent? Outside of the meeting hall we may be very talkative and loud, but the meeting hall is a place that silences people. Do we need to wait for someone to speak something, to call a hymn, to name a verse, or to read to us in the meeting? After so many years in the Lord’s recovery, many of us still need a leading one to stand up and tell us to read the Scriptures. This shows that speaking in the meetings has not been built up as a habit in our spirit.
Why are we Christians today so weak? Why are our meetings so dead and even so deadening? It is because we are too silent. Is our God a dumb God? When Paul talks about the Christian meeting in 1 Corinthians 14:26, he begins from chapter 12. In his opening word of this chapter Paul points out that our God is not a dumb God. Today we do not worship the dumb idols, but we worship a speaking God (vv. 2-3). Our God is a speaking God. God has spoken, and God is still speaking (Heb. 1:1-2). Therefore, we must be the speaking people. We must learn to speak.
Our Christian heritage today is in two things—the Word and the Spirit. We have the Word without and the Spirit within, and these two are one. The Word is the Spirit, and the Spirit is the Word. When I have the Word in my hands, it is the Word outside of me, but when I pray-read the Word, it gets into me and becomes the Spirit. When I speak the Spirit out to you, the Spirit becomes the word, and when you receive this word into you, it becomes the Spirit. As I am speaking the word, you are receiving the Spirit. But the strangest thing is this—we are supposed to be the speaking people of the speaking God, yet we do not speak. We need to learn how to handle the Word and the Spirit. My intention and my burden is that the saints would learn how to speak forth Christ properly, to speak in the Spirit and with the Spirit.
Prayer is another basic factor and element in our meetings. We have to learn to pray. The word and the Spirit must issue in our praying. In our meetings there should be many prayers. Many of our prayers, however, are too formal, too religious, and too legal. We may pray merely to fulfill our church responsibility. Before a certain brother was appointed as an elder, he may hardly have prayed in the church meetings. After he was appointed to be an elder, however, he came to the front row and began to pray. That is not a genuine prayer but a fulfilling of duty as an elder. We need to forget about that kind of formal, official, duty-fulfilling prayer. I have known some saints in the past who have criticized others for praying three or four times in the meeting. These ones were critical, yet they themselves did not pray at all in the meeting. Actually, our church meetings need to be full of spontaneous and living prayers. We offer too many religious, duty-fulfilling prayers. Our prayers are not that spontaneous, real, genuine, or true. They are not that much in our spirit. We should not plan what to pray ahead of time. Our prayers should come out of us spontaneously, like the way that we breathe. Our meetings are dead because we are short of these living, spontaneous prayers.
Singing is another basic factor and element in our meetings. Both speaking and singing are the issue of the infilling of our spirit. If we are filled in our spirit, something will flow out of us in speaking and singing. In Ephesians 5:18-19 Paul tells us to “be filled in spirit, speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and psalming with your heart to the Lord.” Colossians 3:16, a sister verse to Ephesians 5:19, says, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to God.” The issue of our allowing the word to fill us is speaking and singing. Psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs are more for speaking than for singing. In our present practice we mostly sing the hymns. We have not built up a habit of speaking the hymns to one another. We must learn to speak the hymns. Some of us fall into formality with our singing. Others sing crazily. But where is the real singing with the spirit and with the mind (1 Cor. 14:15)? We must exercise our regenerated spirit with our renewed mind in singing to the Lord. Our meetings are short of the word, the spirit, praying, and singing.
The speaking in our meetings should be with the Spirit (Acts 6:10). To speak with the Spirit is to exercise our spirit. When we exercise our spirit, the Spirit is present. We do not need to wait for the Spirit to descend upon us because the Spirit is in our spirit, in our mouth, and in our heart. According to Romans 10:8, the Spirit as the word is even in the mouth and the heart of an unbeliever as he hears the gospel being preached. If an unbeliever is going to receive the Lord, to retain Him, he has to say, “O Lord Jesus.” Once he calls on the Lord, the Lord as the Spirit comes into his spirit and will never leave him. We need to speak with the Spirit by exercising our spirit.
We also need to speak by our spirit mingled with the Spirit (2 Cor. 4:13a and footnote 2, Recovery Version). According to 2 Corinthians 4:13, our mingled spirit by which we speak is a spirit of faith. Both Henry Alford and M. R. Vincent indicate in their writings that the spirit here is not merely the Holy Spirit but our spirit mingled with the Holy Spirit. When we speak the word of the Lord by our spirit, we surely will have faith. We need to speak in faith. When we speak in faith, we will speak with boldness (Acts 4:31). Boldness is a kind of assurance, and the assurance comes from our faith. Without faith we do not have any assurance, and our boldness is gone. If we have faith, we have the assurance; then we have the boldness. These four items—the Spirit, our spirit, faith, and boldness—are needed for our speaking.
Some saints have been in the Lord’s recovery for many years, but they have never had any change in the meeting. It seems that they will never change because they have not only made up their mind but also their disposition not to change. When they do speak, there is no mingled spirit, no faith, no assurance, and no boldness. Whether or not these saints would have a change depends on themselves. Have you ever shouted in a joyful way in the meetings? Perhaps you want to keep the status of a “lady” or a “gentleman.” In the church, however, we are brothers and sisters. Brothers and sisters should be “crazy ones,” ones who are excited in the spirit about their Lord whom they love.
Whatever we speak in the meetings must be with Christ and the church as the center. Our speaking should not be centered on doctrines, such as foot-washing or head covering. We need to take Christ, the Head, with His Body, the church, as the very center of our speaking. Regardless of what word we speak, the center must be Christ with the church.
The first thing, according to my study of the New Testament, that we Christians should speak in our meetings is stated in 1 Corinthians 14:26, which says, “Whenever you come together, each one has a psalm.” A psalm is long and very cultured. A psalm cannot be spoken or sung in a wild, coarse, or rough way. A psalm such as Psalm 119, composed of one hundred seventy-six verses, would have to be spoken or sung in a very cultured way. When I read 1 Corinthians 14:26 in the past, I only understood that a psalm was for psalming, for singing. But the psalm mentioned in 1 Corinthians 14:26 is not merely for singing in the meetings but for speaking. According to Ephesians 5:19, when you are filled in your spirit, you speak in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs. Psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs are poems. Psalms are the longest, hymns are shorter, and spiritual songs are the shortest. Colossians 3:16 tells us that psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs are even for teaching and admonishing. These three verses—1 Corinthians 14:26, Ephesians 5:19, and Colossians 3:16—are printed in our New Testament in black and white. We may have read them a number of times, but have we ever paid any attention to the speaking of psalms?
In today’s Christian meetings, we mostly use the New Testament. But when Paul wrote 1 Corinthians 14:26, there was no New Testament as we know it. What they had was mostly the Old Testament. In the ancient times, the time of the first apostles, although the Christians did not have the New Testament, they had many new psalms, hymns, and songs written according to the apostles’ teaching. First Timothy 3:16 was probably a quotation of a short song that was very popular in the apostles’ time. When they met together, they used these psalms, hymns, and songs very much. Some teachers would say that psalms also refer to the old psalms in the Old Testament. I do not disagree with this, but I believe they used more psalms, hymns, and songs written according to the apostles’ teaching for the purpose of meeting. I am very thankful to God that we have a New Testament and a hymnal. Our hymnal is very good for speaking.
We need to learn to speak the stanzas of the hymns in our hymnal. Hymns, #539, “O Lord, Thou art the Spirit,” is an excellent hymn for speaking to one another. I enjoy singing this hymn, but we also must learn to speak it. The first two words of this hymn—O Lord—will stir up the meeting. Suppose a young brother comes into a meeting in which everybody is silent and says, “O Lord! Let’s turn to #539.” Do not call the number first, but say “O Lord” first. If we are apt to do this, when I say “O Lord,” you will say, “Thou art in me as life.” Learn to speak a complete sentence, a complete clause, or a complete expression. A brother may stand up and say, “Brothers and sisters, listen. The Lord is in me as life.” Then someone else or everyone together could say, “And everything to me.” Then some sisters may say together, “Me too!” Speaking the hymns to one another is not the same as reading them. When we speak the hymns to one another, we will taste and see the riches of Christ in them. Sometimes you have to explain a little as you are speaking your way through a hymn. The third line of the first stanza of #539 says, “Subjective and available.” A brother may say, “The Lord is not only objective but also subjective and available.” Then someone else could say, “Hallelujah! The Lord is available!”
Everyone can speak the hymns in this way. We should not take the way of the clergy-laity system. In this system the so-called laymen do not know how to speak. Only the clergyman who has studied theology and learned to speak is the one who speaks. This system builds up a hierarchy, and we must hate and repudiate it (Rev. 2:6). We must overthrow this system by exercising our spirit to speak. When we practice speaking, we need to be like a team of basketball players. We need to learn how to pass the ball and how to receive it. We all have to learn the speaking of the hymns in small meetings of six to ten. When we speak the hymns, we should speak them in a proper sequence. When someone is speaking a verse from a hymn, there should not be other competing voices. When one speaks, you should either listen to him or join him. You may wait for him to finish his speaking and then continue. Sometimes while we are speaking, we may make a noise because everyone is praising or speaking at the same time, but this should not be frequent in our meetings. Too much noise will kill the meetings. Mostly, people like to hear a clear speaking. This requires much practice. Athletes perform seemingly difficult tasks through practice, and we need to be the same as they are.
With a small number it may be easier to practice speaking the hymns. Keep a good sequence, and keep your spirit living, exercised, and released. We are so raw to this new way. But I believe that if we practice day after day, we will pick up something. Spontaneously, we will be adjusted. We will adjust ourselves by practicing.
The hymns are especially rich in life experience and in truth. The poetic language is so pure. In our ordinary speaking none of us can utter the purified words that are in the hymns. This is because the hymnal was written with much consideration. Hymns, #501 has seven verses. If we read and speak it to one another, we will see the riches. If we speak properly, we can render a message by our speaking. We should learn to use complete clauses, phrases, or expressions in our speaking and speak so that others can follow our speaking.
We need to learn to speak the hymns in many ways. Sometimes we need to repeat and stress. In the chorus of Hymns, #501 there is the phrase Inexhaustible, rich, and sweet! We need to read this phrase by stressing it and by repeating it. We all have to learn to stay away from our natural way, that is, our natural reading and our natural hearing. We need to learn something new according to the Scriptures. Do not speak too loud, too low, too fast, or too slow. Exercise to speak like an expert. A person who takes piano lessons from a teacher and who practices frequently will eventually be able to play the piano properly.
The Word reveals that we need to speak the psalms, the hymns, and the spiritual songs. Surely this must be very profitable to the Christian meeting. Otherwise, the apostle Paul would not have taught us in this way. He taught us to speak the poems, that is, the psalms, the hymns, and the spiritual songs. In three portions of the Bible—1 Corinthians 14, Ephesians 5, and Colossians 3—he taught the same thing. In the meetings of the early church there was such a practice, which was lost by Christianity. Thank God there is one book in the whole universe that still remains with us and that we can read day by day. But the tragedy is this—when we come to the Word, we always like to pick up the things that fit our natural feeling or our natural thought. Anything that is new or strange to our understanding we put aside. Year after year we read the same thing, but we hardly pick up anything.
For a foreign family to change their native, family language is not so easy. But if they have a heart to change it, they can do it. Once the language has been founded in their home, the new children do not think the language is hard to learn. They will just follow the other family members to speak the new language. By listening to the family talk, they spontaneously pick up the language. Today we are the “foreigners” who do not have this “language.” When we try to speak it, we may make many mistakes. Now we must learn to speak, not in a formal way but in a living way. We need to be free in our speaking but not wild. This needs our learning and practice. I believe that if you practice speaking the hymns in groups of six to ten, you will spontaneously find out how to speak the hymns.
To have one speaker with all the others listening is not the biblical way or the Lord’s ordained way for the Christian meetings. The Lord’s ordained way is that all the attendants in the meeting speak. The saints at the apostle Paul’s time were not born into the habit of speaking. I believe they needed to practice. We also have to learn, and we must be faithful to endeavor in this practice. Then we will have something along this line built up in our meetings. When the newly saved ones come to the meeting, it will be very easy for them to learn this way. I began to learn the English language about seventy years ago, but my grandchildren all speak better English than I do. They have picked it up spontaneously from their English-speaking environment. We do not have a pattern of everyone speaking in our meetings today. Our pattern is to come to the meeting to be silent, waiting for someone to call a hymn, to pray a duty-fulfilling prayer, to give a testimony, or to give an exhortation. This has become our way, our habit. Now we have to tear down and discard this way by building up another habit.
Some have said that what I have been speaking the past three years regarding the new way is correct and scriptural, but they said that they did not believe it could be worked out. If we do not work, of course, how can it be worked out? In 1958 I was staying with a group of Christians in London. One day they jested with each other about the endeavor of the United States to put a man on the moon. None of them thought the Americans could make it to the moon. About eleven years later, the United States did put someone on the moon. They did this by endeavoring. I do not think that having the proper meeting is as hard as landing on the moon. When Columbus was sailing toward America, he encountered many adversities, especially from his crew, but he exhorted his crew by saying, “Sail on! Sail on!” Eventually, he arrived at America. We also need to be those who sail on, who endeavor to enter into the scriptural way of meeting with all speaking in mutuality. The traditional way of meeting is too old and too natural, so we must drop the old way and mean business to pick up the new way and practice it. We can make it with patience and with much practice.
Now we are endeavoring, and we are desperate because we are in the Lord’s recovery. We have the riches, yet where are the people? What is the way for us to get people? Christianity has their own way, but we do not believe that it is the best. By going forth to visit people, knocking on their doors, we have the assurance we can get some people. After you knock on twenty doors, you will get one. If each of us goes out to visit people with the gospel four times a year, we can gain enough new ones for us to labor on year round. After a whole year, you may still have one or two who remain. In one year we can all gain at least one new one as remaining fruit. In this way the churches can double year after year.
We feel that we have found a scientific and definite way to keep people as remaining fruit. The way to keep people is to take care of our meeting, and the best way to take care of our meeting is by speaking. The Christian meeting is a matter of speaking. In the meetings of Christianity, there is only “one-way speaking”; there is no two-way traffic. Now we do not only have two-way traffic, but we also have multiplied ways of mutual speaking to one another.
We need to be trained to speak. We have been meeting for years and years according to a traditional and natural way. This kind of meeting is what we have seen and what we are accustomed to. But we need to drop that way and come back to the biblical way. We do not have the habit of speaking, so we may not have much ability either. This is why we need to endeavor desperately to build up another habit. In the Lord’s recovery there should not be anything old or natural. Everything should be recovered according to the standard of the Bible.
I am so grateful to the Lord for the Bible. Suppose that today we did not have the Bible on the earth. In what kind of age would we be living? We would not know where to go. But thank the Lord we do have the Bible as our standard, and we know where to go. Thank the Lord that some of the saints among us have been laboring on the Word year after year; we have a history of studying the Word for over sixty years, and we have reaped a lot of riches. We have put many of these riches into print. Although we have these riches, we do not have the adequate increase. Our number is too small. Thousands and thousands of people have never heard the gospel or the received truths we have seen. I will never leave the central lane of Christ and the church, but I am not satisfied with the present situation. We should not take any excuse. We must learn to repudiate our present practice because it did not bring in the results. We have to repudiate it with the new way, and we have a book, the Bible, to show us the way. The only thing that is needed is our sincerity in practice. We should have a heart to practice the new way.
It is altogether worthwhile for us to endeavor to get into the new and scriptural way of meeting and serving, especially for those of us who have been in the recovery for a number of years. Even though I am an elderly brother, I am still learning. All of us can learn much more. The Spanish-speaking saints have to improve their way of speaking so that they may build up the Christian meetings according to the holy Word, making them fresh, living, refreshing, and releasing so that they will attract people to come. We will gain people, and we will have a way to keep them and build them up. Then there will be the possibility for the Lord to build up His Body as an organism for the real expression of the Triune God. Today on the earth we can see “churches,” but we cannot see a living Body as an organism of the Triune God. There is not such a thing on the earth yet. There are millions of Christians, but where is this organism? Where is the Body of Christ built? For this we must endeavor.
Our present situation forced us to come back to the holy Word to find out something concerning the Lord’s way. I believe that the Lord has shown us His way to gain people and to build up His Body. Whether or not this will work depends upon how much we will endeavor, how much we will labor, how much we will really offer ourselves to the Lord’s new way. If there is a will, there is a way. I would especially encourage all of us to practice speaking the hymns. A group of six to ten saints can gather together and practice speaking the hymns. In addition to speaking these poems in our meetings, we also need to speak teachings, revelations (1 Cor. 14:26), the gospel (Acts 5:42), and personal testimonies (cf. 15:12). We need to learn how to speak in all these ways in our meetings that they may be enriched, living, and attractive.
