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In the past chapters I have already pointed out that the proper way to meet and to serve as required in the Bible is an overcoming way by living in the spirit.
The goal in the Bible is that we live in the spirit to be a fruit-bearer. This can be seen clearly from the Lord Jesus’ parable of the sower in Matthew 13:3-8. He said that a sower went out to sow, and the seeds fell into four different kinds of soil. The first kind was beside the way, where the birds came and devoured the seeds. This indicates that when anyone hears the word of the Lord’s gospel but does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away that which has been sown in his heart so that he cannot be saved. The second kind was the rocky places without much earth. The seeds sprang up immediately because they did not have depth of earth. When the sun rose, they were scorched; and because they had no root, they withered. This shows a person who hears the Lord’s word, receives it, and is regenerated by it, but because of hidden sin and unexposed self within him, the Lord’s word is not able to take root and grow in him. When affliction, trial, or persecution occurs, he is immediately stumbled, and his Christian life is finished. Hence, in this case there is no need to mention fruit-bearing.
The third kind was the thorny ground. When the thorns came up, they choked the seedlings. This shows a person who is not only regenerated and saved but who has also had this life grow in him. However, because of the anxiety of the age and the deceitfulness of riches, the word of life is choked, and it becomes unfruitful. Thus, he cannot be a fruitful citizen in God’s kingdom. His Christian life also can be considered a failure. Although the seed of God grows in him, at the same time there are things from Satan, such as the anxiety of this age, the deceitfulness of riches, and various lusts, that compete with the seed of life God has sown. In the end he fails. This does not mean that he is not saved or that he will lose eternal life and perish. Rather, it means that he has not attained the goal of fruit-bearing. Fruit-bearing is the goal in the Lord’s parable of the sower. This indicates that a person not only must be saved and regenerated; he must also grow in life to bear fruit, at least thirtyfold. If he bears more, he will bear sixtyfold. The best is a hundredfold. This is represented by the fourth kind of soil, the good earth. It speaks of those who hear the word, understand, and produce fruit.
Here we see clearly that Christians are generally of four categories. The first category is those who are Christians in name, or who are on the edge of Christianity. Although they have heard the word, they have not believed and are not saved. Therefore, they have nothing to do with the fruit-bearing of life. The second category is composed of saved and regenerated believers. They have received the life of God, but they have not allowed this life to grow. The third category also is composed of saved and regenerated believers. They have some growth in the life of God. They even struggle and strive to bear fruit, yet they fail. The fourth category is the believers who bear much fruit in the Lord. They are what we call the overcomers.
Today we are all in the Lord’s recovery. We are not only the saved Christians, but we are also the meeting people. In which of the four categories of Christians should we consider ourselves to be? You must realize that the Christian’s spiritual life is for both a battle and a race. Therefore, at the end of his life, Paul said, “I have fought the good fight; I have finished the course” (2 Tim. 4:7). Obviously, this matter was very important to him in his Christian life. But today the spiritual living of many Christians is neither a race nor a battle; they spend their time foolishly and ignorantly. Although we are in the Lord’s recovery, we should not be complacent. We should not make the Lord’s recovery our hiding place. By the same token, what is set before us is a race, a battle. Although many of you are young, from the time you were saved and began to pursue the Lord, you have had the sensation that the Christian life is a battle and a race. Hence, I would repeat that the way of meeting and serving as revealed in the Bible is a battle and a race. We must take such an attitude, daily putting ourselves on the battlefield and in the race.
For the above reason, in the New Testament beginning from the Gospels, the Lord Jesus told His disciples again and again to be watchful, to watch and pray (Matt. 24:42; 25:13; 26:38, 41; Luke 21:36). In the Epistles the apostles also taught us many times to be watchful and to be sober (Eph. 6:18; Col. 4:2; 1 Thes. 5:6, 8; 1 Pet. 5:8; Rev. 3:2). Today we are on the battlefield, not on a bed. When a man is on a bed, he can relax in every way. But when he is on the battlefield, he has to be on the alert all the time and be aware of everything going on around him. The Lord’s recovery has been among us for over sixty years. From 1922 to 1937, within a period of a little over ten years, we realized that our way of meeting and serving was not up to the standard of the truth of the Bible and that there was the need for change. By 1984 I saw the degenerating condition among us; many saints were half asleep. I was very depressed within. At that time I knew that this kind of situation could not be solved by merely holding a few conferences. Something had to be done from the root. This time we should afford the Lord an opportunity to move on among us, something we have been unable to do in the last few decades.
The first item we began to practice was gospel preaching by door-knocking. I believe that all you trainees have tasted the joy, the song, as well as the tears in this matter. The tastes of sourness, sweetness, bitterness, and spicy hotness are all there. If you want to be an overcomer by visiting people for the preaching of the gospel, you must be prepared like an athlete in the Olympic games. During the time of the competition, every aspect of your life has to be adjusted and restricted. You cannot eat as you please, and you cannot do as you please. This is a suffering. It causes you to lose your soul-life. This is why the Lord said repeatedly in the Gospels that man has to lose his soul-life for His sake (Matt. 10:39; 16:25; Mark 8:35; Luke 9:24). To lose the soul-life means to cause the soul to lose its enjoyment and to suffer. It is not too hard to knock on the door of our relatives and preach the gospel to them. But to knock on a stranger’s door is not easy. For that you have to lose your soul-life. Therefore, before you go out to knock on doors, you have to spend at least twenty minutes to deal with sins, to pray, and to be filled with the Holy Spirit. These three items are the prerequisites for our going out to knock on doors. Anyone going out to knock on doors without dealing with sins, praying, and being filled with the Holy Spirit will definitely make the trip in vain. But if you spend twenty or thirty minutes to deal with sins, to pray, and to be filled with the Holy Spirit before going out to knock on doors, your preaching of the gospel will be victorious, and you will experience in a genuine way that the Lord is one with you and that His power and authority are with you.
Although I have been a Christian for sixty years, I have just discovered that to preach the gospel in an absolutely overcoming way, we must knock on doors. Today the most universal and effective way to preach the gospel is by door-knocking. During the last year and a half in which we practiced door-knocking here, we baptized over thirty thousand people. No other method can compare with this. Also, its advantages are many-sided. Our former way of preaching the gospel reached only the ones whom we were acquainted with, but when we practice preaching the gospel by door-knocking, we contact many whom we did not know and could not reach before. Because of this way of door-knocking by sweeping through a district, house by house, we have not only gained thirty thousand new ones but, unexpectedly, have also recovered over two thousand dormant brothers and sisters.
Previously I gave you a budget. If one-fourth of the saints meeting with us would go out to knock on doors, in just thirteen years, by the year 2000, all the doors in the whole world would be knocked on by us. Today the gospel has been preached in every corner of the world, but it has not reached every household. In order to send it to every household, there must be the door-knocking. We have discovered that no other way of gospel preaching requires us to pay a higher price than door-knocking. Door-knocking requires that we sacrifice our time, our family life, our face, and our self. This is just as the Lord told us: “I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves” (Matt. 10:16). However, He also said, “A son of peace is there” (Luke 10:6). Our Lord knows that among the wolves there are still the sheep, the sons of peace, and He wants us to go and bring them out.
From now on in the Lord’s recovery, we must lead the church to practice this matter of door-knocking for the preaching of the gospel. This does not mean that we take door-knocking as a condition for the receiving of a saint. We cannot expect every saint to preach the gospel by knocking on doors. But we do hope to build up this family tradition of door-knocking among us. Today in Taiwan, both knowledge and riches are abounding. Entertainments of all sorts also have increased. If we still use the old way in gospel preaching, we will not succeed. We must pay the price to be an overcomer, to take this overcoming way to preach the gospel by knocking on doors.
Our door-knocking to save people is just the first step. In the next step we need to care for the new ones we have gained. This also requires us to be overcomers. Although our present way of carrying out the home meetings, group meetings, and district meetings is still under study, as a whole it has been settled. I believe that you have experienced this one thing; that is, if you are not an overcomer, if you would not live absolutely in the spirit, put aside the world, and deny the self, it will be difficult to take care of a home meeting or a group meeting. You can still go to the meeting, but you will be cold and dead, having nothing to supply to others. At most, you can help people learn some doctrines. You must remember that the biblical way, whether for meeting, gospel preaching, or serving, requires that we be overcomers. When the Lord Jesus sent the seventy disciples two by two to visit all the cities, He told them clearly that He sent them as lambs in the midst of wolves (vv. 1-3). No one knew what danger awaited them. But the disciples had no excuse. They had to overcome. Since we want to follow the Lord, we must overcome in everything. To preach the gospel and to take care of home meetings and group meetings all require us to overcome. If we do not overcome, we can do nothing.
I encourage you to exert your best effort to study the Bible and to pursue the truth. But these are only tools. Basically, you must be a right person. You must have fellowship with the Lord; you must have nothing between you and the Lord. Your conscience must be without condemnation, and you must not have any offense toward man or God. You must be a person who lives in the spirit. You must be such a person now, not waiting until the future. The Bible tells us that if man wants to receive salvation, he can do it now; there is no need to wait. In the same way, if you want to overcome, you can do it now. If you want to be filled with the Spirit, you can be filled today. This is absolutely possible. Perhaps in an hour and a half you have to go to take care of a meeting, but yesterday you lost your temper with someone. You can confess right away and ask for the Lord’s forgiveness. You can pray, “O Lord, be merciful to me. I am going to the home meeting now. Fill me. You must go with me. Lord, I am a pitiful man. A person such as I can still serve You. Lord, forgive me.” After you pray and confess in this way, go to the home meeting. The Holy Spirit will surely fill you.
I heard that when you go to the home meetings, some homes welcome you very much. They invite you not only for tea but also for meals. Of course, this is very good, but you cannot depend merely on others’ welcome. Even if some homes do not welcome you but give you long faces, you still have to go. What you can do is based on the price you pay. The price you pay will determine how much you will overcome before the Lord. The price that you pay is your capital; the truth that you have learned is just your means or channel. Of course, if we have not learned the truth, even if we pay the price to be overcomers, it will not be possible for us to have the utterance because of the lack of the word. We must have the truth as the channel, and we must pay the price to dispense into people what we have experienced. As a result, what we give to others will not be merely teachings of truth but what we have learned, experienced, and obtained from the Lord.
When you go to take care of the home meetings, someone may advise you out of a good heart, saying, “You are so young and are quite smart. Why don’t you go back to school or go abroad to get a higher degree? Or why don’t you start a business? This way of running around every day without accomplishing anything or gaining a name for yourself is too great a sacrifice.” At this time, based on your own experience, you can say to him, “Brother, thank you for your kind concern. When Mary poured out the precious ointment on the Lord Jesus, some complained, ‘Why this waste?’ Throughout the ages there have been countless people who poured out their precious lives as ointment on the Lord. To the world, this is a waste. But I am willing to waste myself for His sake!” The brother may not understand your word, but the Holy Spirit will work in him, and your word will be deeply impressed into him. The spirit and attitude of your speaking will be planted in him like a seed. There is no need to persuade him to consecrate or sacrifice himself. Something will have been wrought into him already.
We who serve the Lord can exhort others to love the Lord, to be spiritual, to study the Bible, to pray, to deny the self, and to reject the flesh, but what is important is whether we ourselves have these experiences and whether we are such persons. Especially you full-time trainees, you who have given up everything to be for the Lord, should be ones who fellowship with the Lord every day, dealing with Him, living according to the spirit, and having genuine experiences in your daily lives. When you come to the meetings, whether large or small, spontaneously you will be able to release something from within. With either a long message or just a few sentences, you will be able to supply others with what you have received and experienced. This is the meeting that the Bible talks about. Probably not every saint in the meeting can do this. The church is like a home. There are the old, the young, the sick, and the lame. But I hope that at least one-tenth of those meeting with you can do this. I hope that all the trainees will be such overcomers, not only during the training period but also in the future, wherever you may go. While you are in the training, you should build up such a life. After the training, whether you return to school or to a job, do not forget the training that you have received here but continue to live this kind of life. You are different from others. You are those who live in the spirit. Wherever you meet, you will be able to function properly. Thus, the Lord will have a way to go on.
I hope every one of you can see clearly that you are being trained here not just in methods of the new way: knowing how to preach the gospel or to take care of the home meetings or group meetings. All these are less important; they are not our main emphasis. Our main concern is whether or not we are living in the spirit and living the overcoming life. First, for this kind of life there is the need to pay a price and to sacrifice oneself to go out regularly according to a schedule to preach the gospel by knocking on doors, to bring people to salvation and reap fruit yearly. I hope that you all are the fourth kind of soil, which is the good earth, growing in life and bearing fruit abundantly. However, you should not despise those who would not do this, and you should not be concerned with those who criticize you. You yourselves must have the determination before the Lord that you will bear fruit in season. Second, you must live in the Lord’s presence and speak the Lord’s word to people every day. Third, in any meeting you must follow the Spirit of the Lord to release the riches that you have experienced, realized, and obtained. I hope that all the churches will practice this overcoming way and bring the brothers and sisters into this overcoming way.
