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Scripture Reading: Acts 5:42; 8:4; 2 Tim. 4:2; 1 John 1:9; Acts 13:52; Eph. 5:18; 8, Acts 4:31; 13:9; Phil. 3:8-10, 12-14; Col. 3:16; John 15:7; 1 John 2:14; Eph. 5:19; 4-5, 12, 1 Cor. 14:26, 31
In order to enrich and enliven our meeting, we must learn how to speak the word of the Lord in the Scriptures. We must learn to speak and not just read the word. We must also learn to have a corporate speaking of the word in our meetings. This practice is new among the Lord’s children. Everyone in the meeting should exercise his spirit and pay much attention to speaking and listening. When one speaks, the others should listen. When we have the speaking that utters and releases the holy word, the riches of God’s word will be prevailing to touch all the attendants. We must practice this.
In order to be a speaking one in our meetings, we should be people with a proper character. Without a proper living, our speaking will have no backing. Our daily living, our character, or what we are, is the real backing of our speaking. In the previous chapter we saw eight points concerning the kind of persons we need to be so that we can be the proper speaking ones. In this chapter we want to see nine more aspects.
We need to be those who speak Christ to all kinds of people daily in season and out of season (Acts 5:42; 8:4; 2 Tim. 4:2). We should speak Christ to those from every tribe, tongue, people, and nation (Rev. 5:9). In Mark 16:15 the Lord Jesus charged us to preach the gospel to all the creation. This indicates that we should pick up the burden for the preaching of the gospel to such an extent that we would speak to whatever is around us. We should speak to the mountains, the trees, the rivers, the animals, and the entire creation. If we practice this, we will become exercised in speaking. This will strengthen us to speak with power. If we speak awkwardly, that will weaken our speaking and even weaken the contents of our speaking. This is why we should practice speaking Christ all the time even though no person may be present. We always have the entire creation to speak to. I am grateful to the Lord that I practiced this when I was a young man.
When I talk to the saints about the matter of speaking, some tell me that it is not the right time for them to speak. According to their realization, no time is the right time for us to speak. But we have much time to talk on the telephone. It seems that every hour is available for gossip, but no time is available for speaking Christ. This is why Paul charged Timothy to speak the word of God in season and out of season (2 Tim. 4:2). Whether the time is the right time or the “wrong time” for us to speak, we still have to speak. In season or out of season, we have to speak. Our obligation is to speak forth Christ. To speak Christ is never wrong.
When we gossip or speak foolishly, we make ourselves useless. Nothing can destroy our speaking of Christ like a telephone call. To gossip on the telephone is a real temptation. The telephone is a part of American life, but we should not be addicted to talking on it. Sometimes the telephone can be like fly paper. Once we get stuck to it, we cannot get away. The more we indulge in vain talk on the telephone, the more we kill our spirit. Sometimes after talking on the telephone, we are unable to pray, because our loose talk has deadened us. Why would we not talk to people about the Lord and about the holy Word? We should learn to save our time and even our spirit by escaping from unnecessary talk on the telephone.
We also must be ones who deal with our sins thoroughly (1 John 1:9). We must be sin-dealing people. We should not tolerate sin in any way. During the day our hands get dirty, and they pick up many germs spontaneously, so we have to wash them many times. If we washed our hands many times throughout the day, we would be kept from many sicknesses. In like manner, we pick up the germs of sins, of trespasses, throughout the day, so we have to learn to wash ourselves by confessing all of our faults, shortcomings, wrongdoings, and trespasses. Many times we overstep our limit. A runner in a race must keep himself within the two white lines of his lane. Otherwise, he will be disqualified. We are a trespassing people. It is so easy for us to overstep in matters, to trespass. A certain punishment in the Old Testament was not to exceed forty blows, or stripes (Deut. 25:3). It was quite possible for the person who was exacting the punishment to make an error in counting the number of stripes and overstep the limit by giving forty-one stripes. When exacting such a punishment, it was a safeguard to limit it to thirty-nine stripes, or forty stripes less one (2 Cor. 11:24). It is easy for us to overstep the limit in many matters. When we are laughing about something, we should not laugh too much. If we laugh too much, we are overstepping. When we come back to contact the Lord, our conscience will condemn us for this. If we talk too much on the telephone, this is a trespass for which we need Christ as the trespass offering. We need Christ as our trespass offering all the time.
Before cleaning a room, we may not realize how dirty it is. The more thoroughly that we clean it, the more dirt we will find. We must allow the Lord to search us and cleanse us thoroughly. We must deal with our sins and faults, making a thorough confession to the Lord in His light. When we confess our sins, the Lord forgives us, and His blood cleanses us continually (1 John 1:7, 9). The tense of the verb cleanses in Greek in 1 John 1:7 is present and continuous. This indicates that the blood of Jesus the Son of God cleanses us all the time, continuously and constantly. The blood of Jesus is always ready for us to apply, and it cleanses us all day long. Our confessing should be a daily and hourly matter. As we continually confess our sins, His blood continually cleanses us.
In 1935 a small number of us stayed with Brother Nee while he expounded the Song of Songs. During that time I was dealing with my mistakes, wrongdoings, and trespasses to the uttermost. A certain co-worker and I were assigned to stay together. Because of our limited facilities, we had to bring water in a basin from another place to our room so that we could wash ourselves. When I walked past this brother’s bed, some drops of water from the basin I was carrying frequently fell on it. Then I had to go to him to confess and ask for forgiveness. For the first few days, he was not that disturbed by my mistakes. But later when I apologized to him again, he said, “The worst thing is to sin and not confess. The best is to not sin. To make mistakes and apologize is in between the worst and the best.” I was disappointed when the brother said this to me. I told the Lord, “Lord, I can never be the best. At the most I can only be in the middle. I can only make mistakes and confess.”
If I had been careless, I could have spilled a little water on the brother’s bed without being bothered. But that kind of careless living or behavior kills our fellowship with the Lord. Then it is hard for us to pray a prevailing prayer. The prevailing prayer comes from our constant fellowship with the Lord, and our constant fellowship with the Lord depends upon our dealing with our sins. First John 1 tells us that “God is light” (v. 5). As long as we are in fellowship with Him, we are in fellowship with the light and are in the light. When we are in the light, our real situation gets exposed, and we see all our failures. We have to confess them one by one to the Lord, asking forgiveness for item after item. Then we can have a thorough fellowship with the Lord, and we are qualified and ready to pray in a prevailing way.
We must have such a clearance within us if we are going to speak in the meetings or even if we are going to speak the gospel to anyone. Otherwise, our speaking will not be adequate or prevailing. When we do not have a clearance within our conscience in our fellowship with the Lord, our speaking will be reluctant. We will not have the full boldness because our conscience has been polluted. This kind of conscience is what the New Testament calls a conscience of offense. Paul said, “I...exercise myself to always have a conscience without offense toward God and men” (Acts 24:16). We must keep our conscience from all kinds of offenses until we have a conscience without offense. A conscience without offense is a conscience of clearance. When we have such a conscience, we can speak not only to the Lord but also to the unbelieving sinners with boldness. We should not think that we do not need a cleared conscience to speak to sinners. Regardless of whom we speak to, as long as we are speaking the word of God, Christ, or the gospel, we need a cleared conscience. In order for us to learn to speak in the meetings, we must get ourselves cleared up and preserved in a clear condition. We must deal with our sins thoroughly.
Furthermore, we need to be filled with the Spirit inwardly (13:52; Eph. 5:18). We need the essential filling of the essential aspect of the Spirit. The Spirit in its essential aspect, the Spirit of essence, the Spirit of life, is for our being, our life, our living, our existence. We have to be filled essentially in our inward being with such a Spirit.
To be filled with the Spirit outwardly is the economical aspect of the Spirit (8, Acts 4:31; 13:9). It is the economical filling of the economical Spirit. We must have the Spirit of power economically for our work, for our doing, for our moving. We all need to be filled with the Spirit in His two aspects—we need to be filled inwardly so that we are full of life and filled outwardly so that we are full of power and authority.
When I was young, I was taught that the inward and outward aspects of the Spirit were miraculous things that were hard to obtain. One had to fast, pray, deal with many things, and wait on the Lord. But over the years, I found out from the Word and from my experience that the inward and outward filling of the Spirit are miraculous yet normal. D. L. Moody said that regeneration is the greatest miracle. What a miracle it is that a dirty, vile sinner could become a son of God! Yet the experience of regeneration is very normal and transpires in a moment of time. As long as a person opens his heart to the Lord in prayer, believing into Him and calling upon His name, he gets regenerated. This is so normal, but it transpires by the Holy Spirit in our spirit; in this sense it is altogether miraculous. Romans 10:8 indicates that this filling Spirit as the word is even in our mouth and in our heart. When we open up our mouth to call on the name of the Lord and confess all our sins to Him, we are filled within spontaneously and normally. We then need to exercise our faith that we have been filled with the Spirit both inwardly and outwardly. To exercise our faith is to set our being upon the word of God. We say Amen to what God says in the Bible—this is faith. Both the inward and outward filling of the Spirit are normal and easy for us to experience.
To be a speaking one, we need the inward filling. Then we have the content. We also need the outward filling. Then we have the power and the authority. We may have a burden to speak, yet it may be hard for us to speak because we are short of the infilling of the Spirit. The infilling is short because our dealing with the Lord is not thorough. We do not empty ourselves of things other than the Lord Himself to allow Him to fill us to the brim. Also, if we do not have a proper dealing with the Lord, we will not be fully released to have the strong faith that we are clothed with the Spirit as our authority. Then our speaking will not be powerful. Instead, it may be vain talk. When we deal with the Lord properly and adequately, we will have the assurance, the faith, that the Spirit of power is upon us. We believe this because the Bible tells us so. Then when we speak, our speaking will be powerful and prevailing. We all need to practice this.
When we speak anything concerning Christ, we have to speak in a way in which we are exercising our spirit and even our whole being to believe the Word of God. We should not speak anything concerning the Lord in a light way. When we speak in the meetings, our speaking should be full of the exercise of the spirit. Our entire being must also be exercised. I saw certain saints speaking in the meetings with little, if any, exercise of the spirit. It seemed as if they needed to lie down to get some rest. We need to learn to speak in the same way that we speak when we lose our temper. Whenever we speak in our temper, we speak by exercising our spirit. Our spirit is strong when we lose our temper. Without the exercise and release of the spirit, no one can lose their temper. This, of course, is the release of the spirit in a negative way. When we speak in the meetings, however, we must learn in the same principle to release our spirit in a positive way.
In order to be the speaking ones in our meetings, we must also accumulate the experiences of Christ. From Philippians 3:8-10 and 12 through 14, we can see that Paul was accumulating the experiences of Christ day after day. Paul was pursuing Christ. The Greek word for pursue in Philippians 3 is dioko, which is also the word for persecute. Before he was saved, Paul persecuted Christ. After being saved, Paul continued to persecute Christ in a positive sense. Paul would not let the Lord go; he pursued Christ to the uttermost. Because he sought after Christ in such a way, he accumulated the experiences of Christ continually. All day long Paul was enjoying the addition of these experiences. This is why Paul had so much to say about Christ. Many times when we come to the meetings, we do not have much experience of Christ as a base, or a foundation, for our speaking. We are short of experiences. We can speak the word, but our speaking of the word needs a backing, and this backing is our real experience of Christ.
We also must keep a rich storage of the Lord’s word (Col. 3:16; John 15:7; 1 John 2:14). If we would just practice to pray-read two to four verses from the Word every morning, and we do this week after week and month after month, we will gain a rich storage of the living word. The word will not be just in our memory, but it will be something stored within us. Many riches of the word of God and of Christ will be stored richly within us. The riches of Christ are embodied in the holy Word. This is what makes the Bible different from all the other books. I have been reading the Bible for many years, but the more I read it, the more riches I receive. We have the same experience whenever we read the publications of the ministry that expound the Bible in the way of life. The more that we abide in the word, the more light we receive.
We need to dwell upon the word every day. The best time is in the morning, and the best way is to pick up two to four verses from a specific book of the New Testament. Do not pick up two verses in the morning in a random way. Do not choose the verses that fit your taste. Instead, pick a book of the New Testament and pray-read your way through it, verse by verse. If you want to start with Philippians, you can begin with verses 1 and 2 of the first chapter: “Paul and Timothy, slaves of Christ Jesus, to all the saints in Christ Jesus who are in Philippi, with the overseers and deacons: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.” The first word of verse 1, Paul, is very rich. We can pray, “Lord Jesus—Paul! I want to be a Paul today.” Then we can go on to speak, “Paul and Timothy.” “O Lord, not only Paul but also Timothy. Hallelujah! Paul and Timothy! Thank You for the Pauls in the church life today and the younger Timothys.” Every single word of the Bible is good. We can read it, pray it, and speak it to the Lord and to ourselves. How rich the phrases slaves of Christ Jesus and to all the saints are! Every word in the Bible is so meaningful. When we come back to these verses in Philippians again with an open and empty spirit, we will receive more light. We may say, “Lord, thank You that this is Paul and not Saul. It is not the natural Saul but the regenerated Paul.” Every time we come to the Word in a proper way, we will receive some fresh points from the Lord.
When we exercise our spirit to read the Bible, the Spirit within our spirit reacts and echos with something. The Spirit of God explores the depths of God concerning Christ and shows them to us in our spirit for our realization and participation (1 Cor. 2:10). In this way verse after verse and phrase after phrase from the Bible can be stored within us, and we can keep a rich storage of the Lord’s word. When we come to any meeting or meet with anyone, it will be easy for us to speak, and we will have the material to release because we have the experiences of Christ and the riches of the holy word accumulated and stored within us. This will strengthen and enrich our speaking and even encourage us to speak.
The speaking ones in our meetings must know some of the hymns on Christ, the Spirit, the church, life, etc., in our hymnal (1 Cor. 14:26; Eph. 5:19; Col. 3:16). If we want to know the hymnal, we must spend some time to get into the table of contents of our hymnal. The hymns are divided into thirty major categories arranged in a proper sequence according to the truth. Each major category has a number of subcategories. Under the major category “Experience of Christ” there are thirty-two subcategories. Thank the Lord that we have the Bible and also a hymnal with hymns that were composed according to the truths of the Bible. Our main hymnal has one thousand and eighty hymns, and our supplement has two hundred and sixty-eight hymns. We composed our main hymnal with so many hymns to show others that we in the Lord’s recovery have the knowledge of the truth. We put many hymns into the hymnal mainly for our knowledge of the truth and not for our singing. Among these one thousand and eighty hymns, there are at least over three hundred very good hymns that are good for singing and for speaking. We should know a hymn like “Oh, what a life! Oh, what a peace!” and we should learn to speak it (Hymns, #499). From now on we have to learn to use the hymns first for speaking. Singing the hymns is not as important as speaking them. We have discovered in the Word and in our experience that speaking a hymn is much more important and profitable than singing it. Hymns, #501—“O glorious Christ, Savior mine”—and Hymns, #539—“O Lord, Thou art the Spirit!”—are other excellent hymns that we should know and learn to speak. We must endeavor to learn a number of the crucial hymns in our hymnal.
We all have to desperately endeavor to build up a habit of speaking in any meeting (4-5, 12, 1 Cor. 14:26, 31). We must be desperate to build up a habit to speak. This habit has to be built up universally in the Lord’s recovery. We do not have such a habit due to the background of Christianity, and our function has been killed because of this background. Many Chinese people do not speak English well because they did not have the habit of speaking English when they grew up, and they still do not have this habit. I did not pick up the habit of speaking English until I began to minister the word in the United States in 1962. It was hard for me to acquire this habit, but for my grandchildren it was easy because they grew up in an English-speaking environment. If we learn to build up a habit of speaking in any meeting, our children, the new ones, will spontaneously become speaking ones. The new ones will follow the trend and the atmosphere in the meeting. They will pick up the habit of speaking easily. We must endeavor to do this because it is not just for ourselves but for the benefit of the Lord’s recovery.
We have to overthrow the old, traditional, and unscriptural way of meeting. Brother Nee told us that the Lord’s Day message meeting with one person speaking and the others listening was a waste, that it was not worthwhile to maintain, and that it was according to the customs of the nations (see Church Affairs, ch. 4). Although we have to overthrow this practice, it is hard to overthrow because it is our habit. If we give up this habit and do not have anything to replace it, we will have nothing. It seems that we cannot live or survive as a Christian without this traditional way of meeting. This is why we need a new start in the recovery, and this new start depends on us. If we would pick up the burden to practice this fellowship in order to be the speaking ones in our meetings, a habit will be built up among us. How could anyone take away the speaking of English from the people of the United States? It is impossible because this has been founded and built up as a habit among them. We also need such a foundation of speaking Christ in all our meetings. If not, within five years, perhaps within ten years, such a habit will be prevailing among us. Then even the unbelievers will have their concept changed concerning the Christian meeting. Most of the unbelievers today have the concept that a Christian meeting is to have a pastor or a preacher speak while all the others listen to him. Even before they get saved, they already have this concept. We have to overthrow this practice and build up another habit.
All of us can speak. We have the Bible, a hymnal, the Life-study messages, and other spiritual publications to speak. If we spoke a Life-study message together, this would make the best message full of the divine riches and the refreshing utterances. We should not merely read the message but speak it, and this speaking should not be an individual speaking but a corporate speaking. May we all rise up to pick up the burden to be the speaking ones in our meetings. May we be desperate to practice speaking and to build up a habit of speaking. This is a great thing for the Lord’s recovery, for His move on this earth, and this practice will really build up every saint in life.
We should always have something to speak in all the meetings as a freewill offering to God and to the audience (1 Cor. 14:26 and footnote 1, Recovery Version). In all our meetings we should not speak merely out of being forced or compelled to speak. Our speaking should be an offering of our free will to God for His glory and satisfaction and to the attendants for their enlightening, nourishing, and building up.
