Our brothers will select questions that will profit all God’s people. Some questions are too personal, but the questions selected should somehow bring blessing to all of us.
Before the brothers come up to share what is in their hearts, we should remember that, in the Gospels, there are many occasions when a brief encounter with one person gave the Lord Jesus an opportunity to unveil what was in His heart to all His people.
Through one individual’s approach to the Lord Jesus, God opened His heart to all. The best example is Nicodemus. He came to the Lord, and what the Lord shared with him was something tremendous.
So His answer is not so much to one person; He answers all of us. This is the purpose of these questions and answers.
Thank God, our brother has already mentioned that man cannot answer every question, because the answer to all questions is our Lord Jesus.
Then why should we have this question-and-answer period? The reason is that, through the questions and answers, we may be driven to our Lord Jesus.
Whatever man may try to answer, if it is on the right track, should stir our hearts to go to the Lord directly and seek the answer from our Lord Jesus.
Then, instead of being merely an intellectual question, it becomes a spiritual experience. I think this is the reason why we have questions and answers.
The more we answer you, the more we should drive you to the Lord, because only in Him do you get the answer. It is not merely to satisfy your mind; it is to change your life.
I was given a few questions. Some were written in Chinese, and some were written in English. Whenever a question is written in Chinese, I will ask my brother to read it first.
The first question is: How can we arrive at the glorious church mentioned in Ephesians 5:27?
Will you please turn to the Letter to the Ephesians, chapter 5? Perhaps we should read from the second part of Ephesians 5:25.
Even as Christ also loved the assembly, and gave Himself up for it;
that He might sanctify it, having cleansed it by the washing of water with the word,
that He might present the assembly to Himself a glorious church,
not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing;
but that it should be holy and without blemish.
In Ephesians 5:27, we find the glorious church. One day the church will be the glorious church.
What do we mean by the glorious church? What is glory? Glory is a term in Scripture that is most difficult to define.
But Scripture gives us an idea of what glory is. Whenever God is manifested in His Son, there is glory. In other words, glory is God, because God is glorious.
Whenever we think of man, we find that we come short of the glory of God. Only when God is manifested do you see glory.
When Scripture speaks of the glorious church, the picture is found in Revelation 21 and Revelation 22. There you see the New Jerusalem, the bride of the Lamb, full of glory.
Brothers and sisters, by the glorious church it simply means that every spot, every wrinkle, and everything that is not of God has been removed. All that remains is the glory of God.
Our Lord Jesus is glory, and the church must be a glorious church—without spot, wrinkle, or any such thing.
A spot speaks of our flesh. A wrinkle speaks of our aging. In other words, everything that is not of God has been removed, and what is left is the glory of God.
This is why, in 1 Corinthians, the church is called Christ. In other words, in the church you will see no man; you will only see Christ. That is the glorious church.
One day, the body of Christ will truly be the fullness of Christ, because Christ is all and in all. Brothers and sisters, this is a beautiful and glorious picture.
How can the church arrive at that state? When we look at the church today, we find how imperfect it is, with spots, wrinkles, and all these things.
The church that will be presented to Him will be a glorious church. The question is: How can this be?
From the human standpoint, it is impossible. People try to make the church glorious, but the more they try, the more inglorious the church becomes.
Where is the secret? From the very question, we may need to change something. When we ask, “How can we arrive at that state?” the idea behind it may be, “How can we work enough to make the church glorious?”
It is as if it depends upon us. If that is our approach, we will never arrive, because the more we labor, the worse it becomes.
Where is the secret? We do not need to go very far to find it, because the preceding two verses give us the secret.
Ephesians 5:27 is the result of Ephesians 5:25 and Ephesians 5:26.
In Ephesians 5:25, Christ loves the church and gave Himself for it. It is all because of Christ. He loves the church so much that He gave Himself completely for it.
He is the One who is able to purify and sanctify us. In Ephesians 5:26, He sanctifies the church. He is the One who sets us apart for God.
This is based upon how He gave Himself for the church. Because of what He has done on Calvary’s cross, He has set us apart for God. That is our position.
Then Scripture says, “purifying it by the washing of water with the word.” That is the process.
He set us apart for God. He delivered us out of the power of darkness and translated us into the kingdom of the Son. We are now in the right place.
Then He purifies us by the washing of water with the word. This is a daily process. He purifies; He washes with the water and the word.
The water here cannot simply be interpreted as the word, because that would be a duplication. What, then, is the meaning of the water?
You remember at the Last Supper how He used water to wash the feet of the disciples. But the water here has a deeper meaning. It means His life.
The Bible says that He poured out His soul like water. Out of His side came blood and water. Water is for purification.
His life within us purifies us from everything that is not of Christ. This work is done together with the word—the written Word of God and the living Word of God.
The life within us and the word before us work together. Sometimes the water comes first and sometimes the word comes first, but His life and His word work together in purifying us.
The end result is that He may present to Himself a glorious church, without spot, wrinkle, or any such thing.
It is the work of our Lord Jesus. Man cannot do it. He alone can do it.
But, as our brother mentioned in his message, Ephesians 5 follows Ephesians 4. In spiritual reality, however, it is in reverse.
First, we find that it is all of Christ. By His work, the glorious church will be the result. But how does He work?
We are members of His body. Therefore, as members of the body of Christ, we have a responsibility. We must respond to His working.
That is Ephesians 4. We need to diligently keep the unity of the Spirit in the uniting bond of peace. We need to minister to one another, and we need to build ourselves up in love.
In other words, all we do is respond to what He is doing. If we refuse to cooperate, we delay the day of the appearing of the glorious church.
But we cannot cancel the accomplishment of the glorious church.
Another question: As Brother Stephen Kaung has shared, God can reveal Himself through the lives of His people. In the Bible, we have examples such as Moses and Paul. Can Brother Stephen Kaung share some personal experiences of how God reveals Himself in his life of service?
God is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He is not only the God of Abraham; He is my God.
In other words, in the life of every child of God, God is able to reveal and manifest Himself—not only in the life of Abraham, but also in the life of Isaac and even in the life of Jacob.
Brothers and sisters, God is able to reveal and manifest Himself in the life and service of every brother and sister. In every life, we can see some glimpse of what is of God.
What we need to do is see Christ in each one of us, and not try to see Adam or Eve in every one of us.
You will find this example everywhere. It is not something special. Every brother should experience the revelation of God, and every brother and sister, in his or her service, should be a manifestation of God.
I want to encourage every brother and sister: do not look at only one person and say that in that person alone we can learn something. We can learn from one another.
By the grace of God, I would like to mention just a little of what the Lord, in His mercy and grace, has done in my life.
By the grace of God, when I was saved, I was fifteen years old. The Lord’s love constrained me. Even in my ignorance, I gave myself to Him.
As I mentioned already, I chose the place where I would serve Him. I even planned the way to prepare myself.
I determined that after I finished high school, I would not go to college, because to me it would be a waste of four years. I chose what I considered to be the best Bible school in Shanghai.
I wanted to serve God in my own way. I did not seek God’s will. That was the way I set myself up.
To my surprise, after I graduated from high school, I talked to my father. My father loved the Lord, knew the Lord, and served the Lord. I thought, without doubt, that he would approve my plan.
But to my surprise, he did not. The reason he gave me was, “After you finish college, I will send you to the United States to study theology, because in China there is not a good one.”
I was so disappointed. I thought my life of service was over. But I had to be obedient. With sadness, I left home and went to college.
When I first arrived at that college, it was a so-called Christian university. The professors were missionaries from the United States.
I immediately plunged myself into all the religious activities, because that was what I had been doing during my last year in high school.
I was busy in Christian activity—not only organizing Christian meetings in our school, but also organizing groups to go to villages to preach the gospel. As a matter of fact, I preached sermons before I was saved.
I was deeply involved in activity. So when I went to college, immediately I plunged myself into all the religious activities.
But within a very short period, I was surprised. These missionaries who came to China did not believe in the Bible as the Word of God. They did not believe that Jesus is the Son of God.
All they talked about was social, political, and moral matters. I felt that something was greatly wrong. I could not continue in that way.
So I withdrew myself from all activities. I stayed in the dormitory. There were three people in the same room. How could I survive under those circumstances? I had no fellowship with anybody.
Thank God, He showed me there was a way. The way was that I had to come before Him.
Every day, I spent time before the Lord. I knelt before Him, read the Word of God, and prayed to Him. Schoolmates went in and out of the room, but I did not care. This was my life. Without this, I could not survive.
He shut me up to Himself. It was during that period that the Lord began to speak to me. He began to show me His will and the way to serve Him.
It was during that period that the Lord opened my heart. I began to see what is written in His Word. The way that I had thought to serve Him, I could not find in the Word of God.
The Lord began to change me. I had heard Watchman Nee a few times before, and what he said was good, but I was too busy and too much on fire. I could not come down.
But God put me in a place where He calmed me down. I began to read Watchman Nee’s writings. They began to speak to me, changing not only my life but also my service.
Let me give another example, especially for those who are already serving the Lord.
In 1935, when I graduated from college, a brother asked me to join him in ministry. I was twenty years old.
From 1935 until 1941, I traveled to different cities in China, preaching the gospel, conducting evangelistic campaigns, and trying to establish churches in different places.
But after these years, I began to be very weary—spiritually tired. I began to ask myself, “What am I doing here?”
In the early days, when we respond to God’s call, probably the external things are more real to us than the real thing itself.
In the beginning, the Lord had shown us the unity of the body of Christ. We could not belong to any other group. We needed to return to the unity of the body of Christ.
That became our mission. I went to many places to preach the gospel. People got saved. Then what did we do?
We baptized them, we broke bread, the sisters covered their heads, and we told them to separate themselves from denominations. Having completed these outward matters, we thought a church had been established.
Brothers and sisters, if you do this for years, you become tired. I thought, “What more can I do?” I was at the end of my service.
Thank God, in His mercy, I became a refugee. During Pearl Harbor, I was in Singapore, and at the last minute the Lord took me out. I landed in India.
Thank God. A sister in the Lord, whom I did not know personally, sent a telegram to me: “My home is yours. Come immediately.”
I spent two and a half months there. It was a time of rest. During that period, I was able to be before the Lord, and I began to read Brother F. B. Meyer’s writings.
As I waited before the Lord, He gradually opened my heart. He began to show me that if I was occupied with Christ, there would be no ending, because Christ is infinite. There is such richness in Him.
That is what I should do. The Lord delivered me out of the external things.
I do not say that external matters are unimportant, but without inward reality, they are nothing. Not only are they nothing, but they can become a substitute for Christ.
Knowing Christ has no limit. The Lord revived me in my spirit, and this has enabled me to serve until today.
Brothers and sisters, I hope that those who have served the Lord for years will set their eyes upon the Lord. There is no end and no limit to His richness.
The next question concerns being sanctified in the Lord, sanctifying ourselves, and sanctifying the Lord in our hearts. Actually, these three are all one.
The first is positional. It is the Lord who sanctifies us.
In 1 Corinthians 1:2, Paul says that believers are sanctified in Christ Jesus. Believers are saints because they have been sanctified unto the Lord.
We may hardly call ourselves saints. We may say, “I am not worthy.” But the Bible says that we who believe in the Lord are called saints.
Christ has already sanctified us by His finished work. He has set us apart for Himself. That is the position we already have.
After we have that position, how should we respond to it? We should sanctify ourselves.
In Romans 12:1, Paul says to present your body as a living sacrifice, holy unto God. Holy means sanctified. You sanctify yourself to the Lord. This is your response to His work.
Then, in your daily life, you sanctify Him. In 1 Peter 3:15, we are told to sanctify the Lord Christ in our hearts.
Whenever people ask you what your hope is, you are to sanctify the Lord Jesus in your heart. In other words, in your daily life you honor Him.
These are not separate things. Christ sanctifies us positionally; we respond by sanctifying ourselves; and in daily life we sanctify the Lord in our hearts.
Another question is: How can we be overcomers?
Very simply, read Revelation 2 and Revelation 3. You find that when the church is in general failure, failure is measured by the revelation of Jesus Christ.
Success or failure is not measured by any other standard. It is measured by the revelation of Jesus Christ. How faithful are you to the Christ who has been revealed to you?
The measure of His revelation is the measure of success or failure. He reveals Himself to His church. He comes to find Himself in the church.
When He cannot find Himself, He says, “Repent.” When He can find Himself, He is satisfied.
In every letter there is a call to overcome—to overcome all unfaithfulness to the revelation of Jesus Christ.
He has committed Himself to us. Are we faithful to His revelation? Are we walking in the light as He is in the light? Those who respond are overcomers because they overcome departure from the revelation of Jesus Christ.
In every letter there is the call: “He who overcomes.” But in connection with that call, there is another sentence: “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.”
How can I be an overcomer? I need to have an ear to hear what the Spirit says to the church.
The Spirit says nothing to the church except Christ, because He reveals Christ to us. All we need is a listening ear—not merely to hear, but to obey.
To be an overcomer requires an ear that can hear the voice of the Spirit of God.
I am afraid I was not as clear as our brother Stephen, because I have more questions to answer.
The first question I would like to respond to is this: Dana shared that the equipping of God’s servants is done in the church. Do seminaries, colleges, or full-time ministry training have a place in Christian training?
First, we should explain seminary. A seminary is a professional training school for ministers who have completed college and now want to study for ministry.
I was saved in a Baptist denomination. I felt a call to serve the Lord, and when I finished college, I went to seminary for four more years and received what they now call a Doctor of Ministry degree.
If you desire to serve the Lord in a denomination or in the “large house,” you need a seminary degree and credentials, or they will not permit you to preach or break bread.
My question is: Why do you want to go to seminary? Perhaps you sincerely want to serve the Lord, and you think this is the best way.
I tried to count how many young people I knew from various assemblies who went to seminary for training. I remember eight young people. They came and asked me about seminary, and I told them that I did not think it was a good idea.
These eight decided to go. So far, none of them has come back to assembly life. All of them had said, “Of course, I am going to come back. I just want to serve God.”
But when we are young, we can be naive about what happens when we go away to school.
My experience was much like Brother Stephen’s. I was truly saved. I was already preaching before I went to seminary, and some people were saved. I believed the Bible.
Then I went to seminary. First of all, much of the program had nothing to do with the Bible or with anything spiritual. You took courses in denominational history, psychological counseling, and matters like these.
Of course, seminaries are different. The seminary I attended was different from other schools. But half of my professors did not believe that Jesus rose bodily from the dead, nor did they believe that He was coming again.
There were many liberal teachings. Thank God, there were some brothers who truly loved the Lord and were professors at the seminary, and I was helped by their ministry.
Because I went to seminary, it is difficult for me simply to tell others not to go. That was all the light I had at that time.
But I wonder what would have happened if Timothy had gone to Paul and asked, “Paul, should I go study under Gamaliel? You learned so much of the law from him.”
There are many servants of God in this world who have gone to seminary. A number of them truly serve the Lord and have an excellent ministry.
But at the same time, in order to serve the Lord in that way, they have had to overcome some things that happened in schools such as seminaries.
A seminary is formed because there is a system that it is feeding. You may go as a simple brother or sister who merely wants to study the Word of God, but the professional school has a pastoral system and mentality.
Everything they teach you has to do with a pastoral mentality.
When I graduated after four years of seminary, I was a pastor. They ordained me and made me a reverend. I thought I knew everything.
I went to churches as a pastor. Some of the people had been Christians for thirty-five or forty years, but I thought I knew everything. I gave them programs they should follow.
The training tells you that only the pastor can break bread, that he occupies a position over the people, and that there are levels of Christians in the church. This corrupts the truth of the body of Christ.
When you turn to Revelation 2 and Revelation 3, you see that the churches addressed by our Lord had left the testimony of the Lord Jesus and replaced that testimony with other things.
The church is supposed to be focused on Christ. Everything we do comes out of that revelation. Any focus other than Christ is an idol.
When we do not see that vision, or move away from that vision, we try to find another focus for the church.
Most seminaries hold to a teaching, even those that believe the Bible is the inerrant Word of God. At the base of such teachings, there can be idols.
The teaching of Balaam is basically serving God for money. A worker is worthy of his hire, and those who serve the Lord should be sustained when the Lord puts it on our hearts to help them.
But if a servant of God sees ministry as a career, as Balaam saw his prophetic ministry as a career, it is wrong.
The Nicolaitans represent another danger. There are different interpretations of who they were, but the root meaning of the word is power over the people.
When there is such teaching, there is clergy above and laity below. This corrupts the truth of the body of Christ.
When you go to seminary, they do not tell you, “Be a Nicolaitan,” or “Be a Balaam.” But the system can gradually produce this mentality.
There are many traps that await naive students who go to seminary. This is why none of the eight young men I mentioned ever came back to assembly life.
Why do they not come back? Often they are offered too much money, and they become the best students at the schools.
Paul makes an exhortation in 2 Corinthians 11 that I always think of when someone asks me about seminary.
For I am jealous over you with a godly jealousy:
for I espoused you to one husband, that I might present you as a pure virgin to Christ.
But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve in his craftiness,
your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity and the purity that is toward Christ.
I realize I must be careful in what I say about seminary, because some of you may have attended or may be considering attending. Different schools place different emphasis and pressure upon people.
But one thing for which I am jealous is this: when young people have simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ, we should not allow that devotion to be taken away by theological training.
Every seminary has a system behind it. It may be a system of success, building large churches, or a particular denominational system.
Studying the Bible verse by verse is wonderful. But if one merely repeats another man’s notes, adds his own notes to those notes, and passes them on to the next generation, it can become a Pharisaic system.
More dangerous than Nicolaitanism or Balaamism is Gnosticism. Seminary training can steal the mind away from the simplicity of devotion to Christ.
I cannot imagine the damage that would happen to the work in China or Russia if young servants of God received training that destroyed what God has done.
At the same time, I believe in studying the Word of God. People who take correspondence courses can learn just as much as those who attend a school.
It took me five years after seminary to be delivered from liberalism and from the confusion in biblical understanding that I received while I was in seminary.
My desire was not to compromise the Word of God. I had to put the Bible before me and say, “I believe this even when I do not understand it.” I refused the other teachings.
It was as if a demonic weight came off my mind. Suddenly, I could see things with a faith and simplicity that I had missed through those years of seminary.
Another question concerns gospel ministry: What do we do where I live regarding gospel ministry?
Brothers and sisters who love the Lord often want to share the gospel, but Satan puts a lie into their minds: because they do not know enough theology, they think they cannot witness for the gospel.
But as soon as you are saved, you are already an instrument that can share the gospel of Jesus Christ.
We had special meetings. Brother Christian took the Chinese-speaking group, and I took the English-speaking group.
For several months, we met one Saturday each month. Everybody who was burdened to share the gospel came to these meetings.
Each person had to prepare two messages, no more than ten minutes long. They actually preached the message, and then we gave critiques.
This was not merely theory. After they went through this training, we all went out into the street together, and different brothers and sisters preached those ten-minute gospel messages.
We went to a very busy corner in New York City. Many Chinese people lived in that area. There were Chinese young people, brothers and sisters, American Caucasians, and Brazilians—all together.
We sang a gospel song in English, then a brother shared for ten minutes in English. We sang gospel choruses in Chinese, and somebody shared for ten minutes in Chinese.
Then we sang more songs and had a testimony in Spanish. People would say, “This is not a Chinese church. What is this?”
Meanwhile, our real secret weapons were the brothers and sisters throughout the area, handing out tracts and talking to people about Jesus.
We did this for a couple of hours. Then we also had gospel meetings in our assembly.
Last Sunday, on New Year’s Eve, we had a gospel meeting at the end of the year. I received an email today saying that eleven people were saved.
But I enjoyed another part of the email even more. On the two Saturdays before Christmas and New Year’s, we had more than sixty people out sharing the gospel on the street.
The temperature was below zero, yet some parents brought their children. We had twelve-year-old children handing out tracts.
People see the body of Christ: Chinese brothers and sisters, Americans, and others all together sharing the gospel.
Every assembly must go in the way the Lord leads. But we should all have a burden for the gospel.
Here is another question. Someone has a real heart to serve the Lord. This person studies the Bible, receives much from the Lord, and wants to share in the ministry of the word before the saints.
But this person has shared a few times in the assembly, and the saints have discouraged him from continuing. He acknowledges that perhaps he failed miserably, but he still feels a desire to minister the word.
There is also a related question concerning employment. How can someone find work suitable for being a servant of the Lord?
Sometimes a person works in an environment where he is told to work constantly, and he comes home too tired to study the Word. In another environment, people curse and speak evil things, and he feels vexed.
I sense behind these questions a mentality of being a full-time servant—that one should not have to work a secular job and can instead spend all his time studying the Word and ministering to people.
But brothers and sisters, we are all servants of God. There is not a person in this room who does not have to overcome something in order to serve the Lord.
Everyone must take up the cross and sacrifice in order to serve the Lord. When we consecrate our lives in the assembly to be servants in the body of Christ, we should serve in every way we can.
There can be a certain ambition behind wanting to minister the word before the assembly. Since I do not know the person, I cannot speak specifically, but some people want to do this and simply are not gifted for it.
The saints may be wrong, but I think we need to listen to the saints. What brother or sister does not want to hear a message alive with the Spirit of Christ?
I do not think any assembly would hesitate to ask someone to share if what he shared was life.
If there is not a good feeling after someone has shared a few times, there must be something wrong. Sometimes we gain knowledge, but our character has not come to the place where there is an attestation of Christ out of our lives as well as through our message.
Sometimes it is not a rejection of our ministry. It may simply be that the Lord is telling us to put it down and serve in other ways.
Thank God if we have a heart to serve. Surely there are ways to serve without having to speak to the congregation.
Many times the Lord tests us in this. When Paul was saved, of course he wanted to go to his own brethren, but the Lord said, “No preaching to the Jews for you. You go to the Gentiles.”
Sometimes the Lord will not let you speak to the people to whom you want to speak.
After being a Baptist pastor, I finally saw something of Christ in the assembly and joined myself to a local assembly, the house of God.
I had ordination papers. I was Reverend Dana Congdon. But I said, “I am just a brother.”
The brothers and sisters in that small assembly accepted me as a brother, but the brothers took me aside and said, “Brother, we do not want you to share the word with us.”
I thought that was terrible. Why were they doing that? Perhaps they did not know me. Perhaps they feared that I could take over the flock in two months just by preaching.
Perhaps I had left the Baptist church, but the Baptist church had not left me yet.
I was depressed, because I had just seen Christ and had so much that I wanted to say.
I remember one day going out into the woods and crying to God, “God, I am burning in my bones, and I cannot speak.”
But He said, “I have never taken away your ministry. Now is the time for you to pray.”
I always liked speaking better than praying. But I had to go through a time when I could only pray for the saints. I could not speak.
This small group had twelve or fifteen teenagers, and they did not know what to do with them. So they said, “We will let you work with the teenagers.”
No longer Reverend—now I was a youth worker. I got together with the young people, taught them, played my guitar, and sang. These teenagers began to be touched by the Lord.
Then the brothers in Richmond asked me to come and work with the young people at the Richmond family conference. For twenty years, I went to Richmond and worked with the young people.
Sometimes I sat in the auditorium and thought, “I would like to be up there.” But the Lord sent me down to the young people.
Of course, this was exactly where God wanted me. I pray that those young people became men of God.
Many times we do not get to do what we want to do. But if we are faithful to do what the Lord gives us to do, He opens doors in His good time.
Brother or sister, whoever wrote this note, be faithful and serve the Lord because you love the Lord.
If you have to take the last place at the table, then serve with all your heart, and the Lord will increase your weight.
When people see you serving in whatever you are given to do, they will ask you to come up. The best testimony of a servant of God is that you are a giver. You are a giver.
Another question is this: If we serve to the point where we lose our joy, and only responsibility remains, what should we do? How do we reach an equilibrium between the outward need and what we can inwardly give?
I believe the person who wrote this question began serving full of love. But after serving for a while, he or she lost the joy, and only responsibility remained.
This is a time when we can learn a lesson concerning service. Every service is an opportunity for us to learn.
There is a true story about a neighbor who saw a child tear up another neighbor’s garden. When the owner returned, the neighbor told him, “Look at your child. He tore up your entire garden. He did more damage than good.”
The father said, “What I am cultivating is not my garden. Whom I am cultivating is my son.”
The father knew that his son might do more damage than good. In the same way, when we serve, we should not think that we are so capable and know how to serve.
When God looks at us, we can be uncontrollable. When we are happiest with our service, God may not be able to help us.
It is as if the Lord says, “What I want to cultivate is not merely these outward things. I want to cultivate the person.”
This is a great opportunity. When you first begin full of love and joy, perhaps you are simply on your honeymoon.
In a honeymoon there is much honey. But true service begins after the honeymoon period.
At one point, you lose your joy, yet you see that your responsibility is still there.
Being grandparents is different from being parents. When the grandchild comes, you are full of love. You can cuddle the child, and when you are tired, you return the child to the parents.
You have love, but not responsibility. The mother, when she receives a child, is full of love and responsibility. The responsibility rests upon her.
The sufferings a mother undergoes are not merely birth pains. If you are prepared to serve, especially to serve the children of God, remember that there will be suffering.
You serve because you want them to grow in the Lord. You are full of hope for them. You pray for them. Of course, there is much suffering.
That is the first point.
The second point is this: when we serve the Lord, we often have a direct relationship with the people whom we serve and with the work that we do.
But our Lord was different. On earth, He met many people and touched many things, but He did not have a direct relationship with the people or the work in that sense.
There was only one Person with whom He had a direct relationship: the Father. That is why our Lord often retreated into the mountains.
Before we preach or work, there may be much pressure. We want the Lord to bless us and bear much fruit. But after we finish, very rarely do we go back to pray.
Our Lord was different. Every time His work was done, He went to pray in the mountain.
We pray before we work because we want power. But once the work is done, why should we still pray?
Consider the feeding of the five thousand. Five thousand people were satisfied. What a great work that was. Those five thousand wanted to make Him king.
This could have appeared to be one of His greatest moments for building His kingdom. But there was one secret: He did not have a relationship with the crowd. He had a relationship with the Father.
The disciples had to learn a lesson. When they saw the five loaves and two fish, they thought the experience was great. They wanted to stay there. But the Lord quickly sent them into the boat.
Especially when your work is fruitful, without realizing it, you may begin to have a relationship with the people and the work.
But our Lord is the perfect Servant of God. Many people crossed His path, but the first thing He did was to have a relationship with the Father.
Of course, we need to be at our brothers’ and sisters’ feet. We need to wash one another’s feet. That is our service.
But before that, we need to learn one lesson: we must be at the Lord’s feet first before we can be at our brothers’ and sisters’ feet.
If you love a brother, it is because you love the Lord. You have a vertical relationship, and because of that vertical love, you have a horizontal love.
This includes loving unbelievers. You may happily give a gospel tract to an unbeliever, but he may crumple it up and throw it back in your face.
Some brothers and sisters become upset. But if he hates you, you still need love. If he persecutes you, you still need to love him. This is our service.
Another question asks: If we are to wait for everyone to be perfected, when will the Lord return? If we wait until the church has matured, how long must we wait?
If you look at the condition of the church today, it can seem as if the Lord will never return. But here is an important principle.
You can see the usefulness of Revelation. Many people read Revelation and know only the seven seals, the seven trumpets, the seven bowls, and the number 666.
But this book is very important. It shows us that when the church is in desolation, there is still a way. The church still has a tomorrow.
Thank the Lord: before Him, He is going to gain a glorious church. The Lord will make it happen.
What is the secret? The secret is the overcomers. God calls for overcomers.
Overcomers are not special people. They are those who stand under the horizon of God’s will when others are not willing to do so.
God places responsibility upon them. It is like Gideon’s three hundred. When they won the victory, the entire body gained the victory.
They sweated and shed blood, but others collected the spoil. Their victory was not for themselves.
We must not say, “We are overcomers, and others are not.” The overcomers overcome for the church. You cannot build a wall and say, “We are overcomers; you are not.”
In church history, there was a group of brethren who felt that they were overcomers and that they stood with the Lord. They had no name, but they had a plaque outside their building that said, “Jesus Only.”
Then a storm came, and some of the letters in the word Jesus were torn down. The only letters left were “U” and “S”—“Us Only.”
That is what can happen in our hearts. If we say that we are overcomers because we are better than others, then we are no longer overcomers.
For this reason, we need to mature. We need to grow up.
Thank the Lord: wherever He sees a group of people who do not live for themselves but live for the church, any good in them becomes good for the church. Their abundance becomes the abundance of the church.
If they are rejected, misunderstood, or suffer, the entire church can still be helped by their victory.
No matter where we are, the Lord wants to recover the body. We have only one time before the Lord’s return.
When He sees a group of overcomers, their overcoming is for the church, and their maturity is the maturity of the church.
The principle of overcomers is the way before us. Revelation calls for overcomers, and from Revelation 4 onward we see the issue of overcoming.
This is the ministry of John. When he was called, he was mending nets. His ministry is a ministry for the time when the church is in desolation.
When will the Lord return? When will the bride be made ready? When the overcomers are ready. When they are mature, our Lord can return.
Another representative question is: In the church, how many people must be overcomers before the Lord can return?
I do not have an answer. Perhaps the question refers to the 144,000. I do not know how to answer that.
The second part of the question is this: If, in a local assembly, more than half the brothers and sisters are not overcomers, should the work in that locality be preaching the gospel or shepherding the flock?
When we speak of overcoming, we mean growth. In the growth process of life, if brothers and sisters are obedient to the Lord, they are overcomers.
As life grows, the requirement becomes higher. We move to a higher level, and there we are perfected and overcome. Slowly, the life of Christ grows.
How do you know that half are overcomers and half are not? Overcoming is not absolute in that sense; it is relative.
Someone may have just been saved. The Lord enlightens him, and he obeys the Lord’s will. His life may not yet be rich, but if the Lord returned that evening, he could be ready.
Like John Wesley, before he slept he prayed, “Lord, I am ready.” He put his shoes beside him: “You can come, and I can go.”
If the conscience is not accusing us, then we have peace. Nobody can accuse us.
There are many levels of growth in the church. Older sisters help younger sisters. This is the service of the church.
There are always those who are older than you. You help others to grow. Lesson by lesson, first you learn, and then you can help them.
But do not forget to preach the gospel. The church is not only the body of Christ; it is also a lampstand.
When you speak of a lampstand, you speak of testimony. In Revelation 1, the garment of the great High Priest extends all the way to His feet.
In other words, our Lord encompasses every single member of the body. As long as someone belongs to the Lord, he is encompassed by Him.
The Lord also gives us shoulders. Our shoulders should be as broad as the Lord’s. As to Christ, we need to love everyone whom the Lord loves.
As to testimony, the church should have shoulders as broad as the Lord’s. Wherever we are, the responsibility for every soul should be upon our shoulders.
Do not say, “The spiritual things are mine; let others preach the gospel.” Do not forget the church in Ephesus.
When the lampstand shines, all the responsibilities for the souls in Ephesus are upon the shoulders of the church.
Billy Graham once said that he had his ministry only because the church had failed to do its responsibility. If every local church took up its responsibility, Billy Graham would be unemployed.
That is God’s original intention. Do not merely say, “We are the church.” There must be content, and there must also be representation.
We cannot simply say that a few of us are gathered and therefore we are the church while others are not. Our eyes need to be opened.
We cannot merely see a group of brothers and sisters. We must see the requirement of the testimony.
Wherever the Lord has placed us, if the church is the body of Christ and the lampstand, what is behind it?
The Lord gives His people a heart to encompass all the children of God. He gives them a soul so that responsibility for souls rests upon their shoulders.
This is what the Lord shows us in Scripture. On one hand, the gospel; on the other hand, building. This is the work in our hands.