To me, I always feel the conference has already ended at the worship time, that we may all go back to the various localities with Christ in our hearts, waiting for His return.
But it is the arrangement of the conference that we should have this question-and-answer time. Now, I always feel that this is a wrong name, because the questions are real, but who is able to answer our questions?
No human beings can really answer real questions. We may, by the grace of God, remove some of the ignorance concerning your questions, but the only answer that you can get, you have to get from the Lord Himself.
Now, having said this, I will begin with a few questions that have been given to me. Number one: When someone praises you after delivering a message, how do you resist the temptation of pride?
I remember, before I was saved, I gave a message to the people. Actually, it was not my message; I borrowed it. But the only regret I felt at that time was that nobody praised me.
Now, that was before I was saved. Now, after you are saved, when someone praises you after delivering a message, how do you resist the temptation of pride?
I believe that if you really love the Lord, when someone praises you after a message, there will not be pride rising within you. Instead, it will humble you, because you begin to realize, “Who am I, that God can even use a person such as myself to deliver His word?”
In other words, our inward feeling will be different. I remember, before I was saved, I delivered a message, but it was all borrowed. Yet, after I finished, I regretted it because nobody praised me.
Now, that was my feeling before I was saved. But by the grace of God, after I was saved, if a message was delivered, it never came to my mind to be proud, because I realized, “It is the Lord. He did it. I could not.”
So, in other words, the way to resist the temptation of pride is that you realize it is the Lord who is delivering the message through you. You are just a channel.
The Lord is the One who is the message. And if you realize this, I do not believe you will have the temptation of being proud. Instead, it will humble you, thinking that God can use a person such as you to deliver His word.
So I would say this should not happen after you are saved. It might happen before you were saved, but not afterwards, because you realize it is not you; it is the Lord. He gives the message, and He should have all the glory. I think it is as simple as that.
Number two: When do I know it is the time that the Lord has called me to be a full-time minister of God’s word?
I believe, as we begin to serve the Lord with the word, we do not even have the thought that, “I am now a full-time minister of God’s word.” We do it because the word of God came to us. We do it because people received help.
But it never came to our mind that we were to be full-time ministers of God’s word. So far as we ourselves are concerned, I think our feeling will be that we are just humble servants of God.
But the time when we realize that we are called to full-time ministry, I think, depends upon the people. When the people who listen to us and who are helped by us realize that God has called us to be full-time ministers, that is the testimony.
I think of Timothy, a young man. He began to minister the word of God, and it was not he himself who said, “Now, I am a servant of God.” No. It was the people in Antioch who listened to him and who were helped by him. They realized that God had raised Timothy up to be a servant of God.
So, I feel we should never designate ourselves as servants of God. Let the people who are helped by us tell us that God has raised us up to be His servants.
Now, I remember Timothy in the Scripture. We never hear Timothy say, “I am a servant of God.” But it was the people who recommended Timothy before Paul because they heard him and were helped by him.
So it is the testimony of the church, instead of yourself, saying that you are a full-time minister of God.
Question number three: Concerning preparation of the word, how do we discern between speaking from the spirit and mere feeling? Where do we draw the line concerning the extent to which emotion should mingle with our spirit? I know Brother Nee shared on this in his book, but your personal experience may help.
So far as my own experience is concerned, I was brought up in a Christian family. My father was a pastor, and he had a big library.
I remember the first time I preached. I went to his library and found a book by a famous American preacher. I translated it into Chinese. The subject was Noah’s ark. I memorized it, and that afternoon I went to preach it.
After I finished preaching, the only regret I had was that nobody praised me. I thought I did a good work. Now, that was before I was saved.
But after, by the grace of God, I was saved and began to preach, I never thought of myself as a preacher. At the time, I was still in college.
I remember I went to Shanghai. The first time I preached in the meeting in Shanghai, they had over two hundred people. I did not know Brother Nee was listening. He was behind the wall.
If I had known he was listening, I would have been nervous. But he was listening, and it was his judgment that the Lord had raised me up to be a preacher.
So, at the time I joined him, I had just finished college. I was twenty years old. At that time in Shanghai, they had a meeting of over two hundred people, and on Sunday either Brother Nee or I would be speaking.
He never told me when I would be speaking. He kept me in suspense for a whole year. Early Sunday morning, at seven o’clock, I would get a note from him. The note was only two words: either, “I come,” meaning that he would come to preach that morning; or, “You preach,” and I would preach that morning.
Now, you know, I was twenty years old. That gave me such suspense. I had to be ready at any time, just in case the word came: “You preach.”
And that is the way he dealt with me for a whole year. That was his training with me.
So, when you are preaching, the one thing you need is not to be self-conscious. If you are self-conscious, you will never be able to be a preacher. You have to forget yourself.
All you think about is your message. All you think about is the people. You forget yourself completely. That is the way to be trained as a preacher.
It was Brother Nee who encouraged me to preach. For a whole year I was with him. Either he would be preaching that morning, or I would. At seven o’clock in the morning, a note came: either he said, “I will come,” or he said, “You preach.” That is the way he trained me for a whole year.
After that whole year, he began to send me out to other places.
So I think the only way you begin to know that the Lord has called you to preach is not through yourself. It is through the people who listen to you. When they begin to testify how much help they have received from your preaching, then that is the evidence that God has called you to preach.
I hope this will be clear. This is all I have to say.
Well, I have more questions, but they are mostly practical in nature, based on things that were shared last night. This is the first question.
Brother Nee spoke about the necessity of having an unoccupied mind. As we get back to lives with full-time jobs, marriage, children, and so forth, what does an unoccupied mind look like?
Well, first of all, I think this matter of the mind, as we have already touched on, is very important in the life of God’s servants. As we saw, the Holy Spirit is at work renewing the mind from the moment we consecrate ourselves.
We see in the Apostle Paul, in 2 Corinthians 10, that some of our greatest spiritual wrestling is in order to take our minds captive to Christ.
Now, to make an analogy, there are, you know, the four horses of the Apocalypse, right? When we get saved, our spirit has come alive by the Holy Spirit, but we still have four untamed horses.
Our body is running wild, our mind is unbroken, our emotions are runaway, and our will—so that is our soul. The Holy Spirit is in the business of saving our soul.
To put it in terms of this image, He is the soul-whisperer who has to break these wild stallions and make them useful for His purpose.
Now, it is the wrong idea to think that the Lord annihilates your soul so that you speak as if you were a robot. The Lord wants to use your soul, but in its original condition, it is wild.
Especially, we notice the emphasis that seems to be put on the wild stallion of our mind. Many people today—and it is even worse because of social media, multitasking, and all of this—actually wreck their minds prematurely by glutting the mind with so much information.
We see so much multitasking. I see people who are talking, and while they talk, they are reading their devotional on their phone and also doing something else. But studies show that our minds and our ability to concentrate are declining. Multitasking is not working.
We see even the physical damage done to the brains of children who get too involved in these kinds of things. Now, all I am trying to say is that even before the digital age, people had runaway minds.
One reason for it is that you and I, as fallen creatures before we were saved, ate daily from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The thing about the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is that as you get smarter, you have to eat more fruit. It is an addiction.
So, when we think of sharing a message, the first thing we begin doing is thinking our way through. We are right back there in the Garden of Eden, grabbing from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
Now, the Holy Spirit has to do something about that. He has to tame, capture, and take our mind captive for Christ. He has to do something about the runaway mind.
This is a common problem, not just among brothers but among sisters. I counseled a sister who openly confessed to me, “Even during prayer time, my mind is completely wandering during the prayer meeting. I go to bed at night and cannot sleep. My mind is busy, busy, busy, busy.”
This is the nature of many of us. Now, let me share the good news: the Holy Spirit can capture your mind for Christ. This is His calling, and this He will do bit by bit.
We have to cooperate in the process. This, I think, is perhaps the most important spiritual meaning of what it means for us to obey the Sabbath.
Somehow, you and I have to disengage from this crazy, endless flow of media. We have to take a Sabbath from it, because if you are taking things from the world into your mind, it makes it very difficult for you simply to turn around and think godly thoughts.
There has been too much input from the world, and so we have to cooperate in this way. But there are other ways we cooperate. Our brother Ray shared this morning in the devotional that one way is to set the Lord continually before us.
This is an exercise and a discipline. You will find in your life that your spirit has an intellectual facet to it. It wants to take hold of your mind so that you can share the thoughts of Christ with people.
He also wants to tame your mind, so that you are not feverishly going this way and that. We have two problems when people share ministry. We mentioned one yesterday.
One problem is that people are so complicated that they cannot share a message. They start, get off on one road, and then chase that rabbit. You immediately see, “That person is smart,” but they are chasing so many rabbits that they cannot run in a straight line.
On the other hand, some people’s minds are so subjective. Have you ever heard a brother open the Bible, read a few Scriptures, and then share a sort of stream of consciousness that has almost nothing to do with the Scriptures?
He mentions the Lord, then forgets the Lord, then comes back, and there is almost no form to the message. Some people are so subjective that their minds have not been mastered to the place where they can say, “One, two, three.”
But the Lord can take any mind and bring it under the control of the Holy Spirit. Where we have to cooperate is by setting our mind on the Lord.
Now, have you heard that phrase, “Set your mind”? Let us look at a few passages on that. In Colossians 3:1, Paul gives practical application to the tremendous gospel of the full adequacy of Christ Jesus.
Therefore, if ye were raised together with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated on the right hand of God.
Set your mind on the things that are above, not on the things that are upon the earth.
Let me take you to another portion with which you are familiar, Romans 8. After Paul declares the wonderful liberty that we have, where we no longer live according to the flesh but live by the law of the Spirit of life, he makes application in Romans 8:6.
For the mind of the flesh is death; but the mind of the Spirit is life and peace.
Now, brothers, we have a choice. You can set your mind. Before you were a Christian, you could not set your mind; it went wherever it wanted to go, and it usually went toward evil.
But now, by the Holy Spirit, we can set our mind. It is not always easy, especially when there are conditions or difficulties in your life that crowd in. But even then, we learn the discipline: set your mind on the things above; set your mind on Christ.
Let us read Philippians 4. Paul again gives practical advice as he speaks about not being anxious. You see, our minds get anxious. But pray about everything.
Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honorable, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.
The things which ye both learned and received and heard and saw in me, these things do: and the God of peace shall be with you.
As soon as the Holy Spirit can get you concentrated in the right area, that peace will overcome the anxiety that works in your life.
Let me give you an example. We were at the Harvey Cedars Conference, a Northeast Conference, this fall. I was asked to speak a few times, and the day after Harvey Cedars I was to have my hip sawed off and replaced.
Now, I am not a doctor, and I had only been in a hospital once before. Anxious thoughts come into your mind as the day draws closer. “I am now two days away. I am now one day away.” Meanwhile, I had to minister the word.
But the Lord, by His Spirit, enabled me to say, “All right, Dana, stop thinking about that, and let us turn our attention to the burden you have to share.” And I was able to do it.
Before the operation, I was in quite a bit of pain, so I would wake up every hour during the night. Of course, when you wake up, what comes on immediately? The mind—one hundred miles an hour. Your mind is thinking.
But after a little while, I would say, “Okay, Lord, I need the rest.” Somehow the mind would calm down, and I would get another hour of rest, then wake up again.
What I am saying is that David understood this to some degree when he said:
Why art thou cast down, O my soul?
And why art thou disquieted within me?
Hope thou in God.
He sensed that there was something deeper in him that could rule over his runaway mind and anxieties—or, in that case, his emotional depression.
We do not have to be ruled by our soul-life. If the Holy Spirit can take our soul-life and rule it, there is no brother with greater capacity than a brother whose mind, emotions, and will are under the rulership of the Holy Spirit. There is liberty there.
Now, with all of that, I get back to the question. I do not know where he is referring to, but I do not believe Brother Nee would ever say we need to have an unoccupied mind. Actually, he says it is not a good idea to try to make your mind blank.
That is what an unoccupied mind means. But he does talk about being able to still our minds and meditate. It is exactly by turning and thinking on the things of the Lord—on things that are precious, on the beauty of one’s wife, on the blessing of having children—that we turn away from those other things.
David says in one place in the Psalms:
In the multitude of my thoughts within me,
Thy comforts delight my soul.
David had to learn to turn away from overwhelmingly anxious thoughts. As he thought about the Lord, opened and trusted His word, and studied His word, these things lessened.
Part of this great warfare in our lives is this: either set your mind on the Spirit, or you will walk according to the flesh. Part of walking according to the flesh is being ruled by your runaway mind.
But if you walk in the Spirit, you will find that the fruit of the Spirit—love, joy, peace, longsuffering—will come in and fill your life with those things necessary to keep your mind stayed on Jesus.
That wonderful phrase in the Old Testament, “Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on Thee,” was the basis of a great hymn that we sing.
So it is not really a question of having an unoccupied mind. But there is a necessity for all men in this day to take a Sabbath from all the intake in which they are involved in the world.
I am always happy when I hear one of the brothers, perhaps in Manhattan, say, “On Saturday, it is my day with my kids and my wife. I do not even listen. I do not even go to the phone.”
Now, that is a big step. Take a Sabbath from your phone for a day—all those emails, all those things. On Monday, of course, you open it up and hit your eight apps before breakfast. Check this out. That is why we are all exhausted but omniscient. Maybe that is not the highest way.
So, “I have set the Lord always before me.” In His presence is fullness of joy. May the Lord make captive our minds for Christ’s use and purpose.
This is a lifelong sanctifying process. Some of us have especially runaway minds; some of us have especially runaway emotions. It is the same principle again.
That is why, in Psalm 42, David was dealing with his depression, saying, “No, this depression is not going to rule me. I am going to hope in God. I am going to trust He is going to see me through.”
If somebody has runaway emotions, they need to settle down. Some people lie on the bed and cannot sleep, not because their mind is roaring, but because the to-do list starts running: number one, number two, tomorrow, number three, number four, number five. That is a person whose will is runaway.
That again needs to be handed over to the Lord. This handing over, so that the Lord can control, is a deliberate thing. It is a deliberate thing.
But you will find something very interesting. Even if you have a runaway, distracted mind—even if you sit here right now listening to me, but I have become boring and your mind has rolled off onto something else—here is what you do: say, “Sorry, Lord, fix my mind on Jesus.”
The Lord knows. A lot of high-wire minds get distracted very easily, but the Holy Spirit is stronger than the high-wire mind. Let us give Him a chance.
Is it not wonderful when we can actually focus on something? Could you imagine reading the ministry of Watchman Nee and actually concentrating on a whole chapter without saying, “Whoa, wait a minute. Where am I? What is he saying?”
You get what I am saying: concentration. It comes from spending enough time, not with an unoccupied mind, but with a still mind.
Next question: What is the balance between volunteering and choosing to minister the word, then trusting the Lord to provide it, versus waiting to have a living word given before volunteering? Or is there a different way to know when to minister as we learn?
The key to this question is this: the person is asking, “Should I volunteer to speak in three weeks, even though I have nothing? Or do I wait until I have a burden, then say, ‘I would like to speak’?”
Now listen, it can be either way. That is not really the point. Here is the point: if you have a living relationship with the Body of Christ and with the word of God, you will always have something to say when the Lord asks you to.
You will always have something on the back burner of your stove: some Scripture that has caught your attention, some aspect that has stirred you.
You read 1 Corinthians 1:30 and wonder, “What does this mean, that God has made Christ to us wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption?” What does that mean?
You write that down and put it on the back burner. “Now, I am going to look into that.” You start looking into it, and the Lord begins to develop something. Sooner or later, you can go to the brothers and say, “I have something I would like to share on Christ, the wisdom of God,” or something like that.
So, do you have a living relationship with the word? Are you wrestling with something? Maybe last night, I went overboard, but I shared those eight revelations that give a wider perspective. Do you know all of those? Maybe you should circle one and say, “I need to check that one out some more.”
When you have a living relationship with the word of God, there is something stirring inside that the Lord can use. Sometimes you do not realize it, but it is there.
Now, sometimes it is a discipline. We do not have Brother Nee around to ask us every Sunday, “I want you to be ready.” That was some kind of discipleship course: every Sunday, be ready. You find out at the last minute whether it is you or me.
But there is a discipline in being willing to go to the brothers. If, in your assembly, they schedule speakers and you feel the Lord wants you to share in that cycle, then ask. Do not ask on Saturday if you can do it tomorrow—except in emergencies.
If you serve the Lord for a while, you will get into a place where you have to speak and did not even know it.
You know, I love my Indian brethren. They do things so extremely. I went there because they told me, “Come, because we have a youth conference. We want you to speak.” I said, “Well, how many messages?” They said, “Three messages.” I said, “Oh, that is good.”
They did not tell me I was to have a devotional message every morning, as well as those three messages, and then a gospel message every afternoon. So it went from three to twelve very quickly.
I had notes for three. But, of course, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly.” The Lord can bring things to the surface when you ask Him, in a time of emergency and a time of need.
A brother was going to share this morning, but he called in sick. Do not be surprised if the Lord says, “That thing you have been working on—let us gather it up.”
It is amazing grace what the Lord can do if you are an available vessel and the word of God is churning in you.
You need not worry about this, because it is just a technical matter if you are alive in the Body of Christ. If you have been to the prayer meeting, you get the sense of where things are going.
If you are in the worship and have heard the ministry over the last four weeks, you see that there is a direction. That helps you get on board and begin to share messages that seem timely and in the flow of things.
In one assembly where I go, they try to set a theme for a period of time. Brothers have the freedom to share on that theme, if they want, or to share something else. But it gives them a basic guideline of where we are wanting to go at that particular time.
Sometimes an assembly does that, and that is good. If you know there is a theme, it would be good to ask the Lord, “Lord, is there something I can contribute regarding that theme?”
So it is not really a problem if you are in a daily relationship with the word and in the Body. The Lord will use it to discipline you.
But if you say, “They will never ask me unless I volunteer, so I am going to remain passive and hide under the bushel,” then your ministry is not going to develop. If the Lord is pushing you to share, share. If it is helpful, you will find the saints encouraging you to share.
Here is the third question: After ministering the word, you have a sense of whether the message originated from head knowledge or the spirit. But in preparation, I often do not have that sense. How do I sense in preparation what comes from the head or from the spirit?
Well, that is the sixty-four-dollar question.
Let us talk about this matter of when you share. First of all, your reaction after sharing is pretty undependable.
Many times you go away with your tail between your legs. You missed point three, said something else wrong, and went blank on your most important point. You feel, “I am never going to share again.”
You know something? In your messages, I will not say this always applies, but you can almost figure that the first shall be last and the last shall be first.
Sometimes a message shared in broken shards actually touches people’s lives, while the one you put together like Charles Spurgeon leaves people saying, “Well, what was that?”
So I would not depend too much on what your feeling is after the message. That is not completely true, because I know the Spirit does want to instruct us sometimes. If we have really gotten off, sometimes the Lord wants to discipline us in that.
As you minister the word more, there is a sense in which you can say, “I think I released the burden that was in my heart.” But when we are preaching from the heart, it can be hard to know.
When you are preparing, does it come from the mind or the spirit? You see, it comes from the spirit through the mind. But sometimes we have extraneous things going on.
As you look over and review it, you can kind of sense it. A lot of us get going in a pretty straight line, but then something gets us off a little bit. We get over here, and it is not really profitable.
With time, we begin to realize, “You know what? That whole section I did not need to share.” The Holy Spirit trains us through these things.
But if we get too involved with, “Oh, what was my message? I think I really…” Listen, I do not want the devil to condemn any one of you. So I want to suggest two things.
Number one: go to 2 Timothy 1:12 and make this your prayer after any message that you give.
For which cause I also suffer these things: yet I am not ashamed; for I know Him whom I have believed, and I am persuaded that He is able to guard that which I have committed unto Him against that day.
When you speak a message, it may not have been so good, or it may have been very good in your own estimation. But here is what you say: if you commit that message to the Lord, the Lord will use it and keep it.
Especially concerning the things you really wanted to say, even if they got obscured a little bit, it is okay. “I know whom I have believed, and I know that He is able to keep whatever I commit to Him.”
Have you committed your message to Him? You spoke and said, “Ah, it is good. It is no good.” Lord, I just give You this. If there was anything said by Your Spirit, would You keep it in the hearts of Your people? Anything extraneous, take it away.
Otherwise, I would not get too worked up about all of this. As you let the Lord lead and the Spirit lead, sometimes you will be able to sort out in preparation whether there is a clear way through by the Spirit through your mind, or whether you have simply adjoined unnecessary things to it.
Next question: In sharing, I find myself reading from my notes a lot. Is there any practical help on how we can share without reading and saying word for word what we have written down?
There are insecure people, people who are shy, and people with various different difficulties who have a hard time looking at people. But when you minister the word, you have to look at people. So you are going to have to get past this somehow.
Usually, somebody who is shy like this is also very conscientious, and they write it down word for word. Now they are up there reading it word for word, down there like this: “And the Lord said…”
Well, first, can I say this? The Lord can, in fact, use that.
You remember Jonathan Edwards and the Great Awakening in New England, which happened in Northampton where he was pastoring, when he preached the message, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.”
Have you ever read that message? What is interesting is that our dear brother did not have good eyesight. He had a candle over his rostrum, and with his thick glasses on, he was reading that message word for word.
As he read it, people started to drop, fall, and cry. Revival came, and he read that thing word for word.
Having said that, here is what I would suggest. It is just a practical thing. If you write down the entire thing, fine. Then go over it, and go over it, and go over it, until you can make some bullet notes.
You will find that if you have just some bullet notes, a notation and a reminder, as soon as you see that bullet note, you have a whole paragraph in your heart concerning that point.
If you go over a message you have written three or four times, I am not saying you have memorized it, but you kind of know where you are going. All you need are little bullet points, and you can take it from there.
What I am saying is, reread your message. If you finish at midnight and have not even reread it, then of course you are going to have to read it the next day.
But if you go over it and go over it, it becomes part of your heart. It is good to do that anyway with your message: get it into your heart, and then have some bullet notes.
Our dear brother Lance goes up to the pulpit, gets out his Bible, and has notes about this big. He usually has, I would say, six, seven, or eight bullet points. But as soon as he starts a bullet point, he knows he is going to talk about Israel.
What I am saying is that I think this is probably the way to go. Then you can look up at people, and you will understand it. Maybe the bullet notes can simply be Scripture references.
Then you are not so dependent on the notes, because you have hidden your message in your heart.
Now the last question: Dana mentioned using many commentaries to prepare a Bible study on John. When is using those books proper, and how should they be used to benefit the assembly?
When I am speaking on a Sunday, let us say delivering a message, I am not in twelve commentaries. At this point in my life, things come out of my heart, and I begin to develop that way.
I will not say I never look at a book. I may remember an illustration and go to some book. But specifically, on Monday nights I do a little classroom for the saints, and on Wednesday night in Flushing I do this also.
I am trying to share the word of God in a comprehensive way, including some Greek words and things like that. In my preparation, I want to be careful about what I say.
For example, tomorrow night, Lord willing, I will be sharing in Manhattan from John 14. I have used twelve commentaries, but while I have been here, I have prepared my message.
When I go home tomorrow, I will look into some commentaries because there may be an illustration that I remember, or a comment on a Greek word, that I want to find again.
I use them as background for a Bible study, but I do not bring the commentaries into the meeting. I do not know how much the saints realize that I have been in commentaries, because I do not go in that direction.
But I do use them, and I think they are helpful. I am thankful for my training in this dimension. I have learned enough Greek and Hebrew to read some of these things.
Some of the best commentaries, unfortunately, require you to know some Greek or Hebrew. Lightfoot’s commentaries on Paul’s epistles, and even F. F. Bruce, require you to know some Greek—or at least pass over those little places.
I am able to read some of those. So commentaries are helpful, but I do not think they should design your message, or even your Bible study. They help you to know the basic things that are important in the word of God and need to be shared.
That is why I use them, but it is for a very specific purpose. When I go to the Bible study, we do not have an open Bible study when I am there. They do when I am not there.
But when I am there, we do not have an open Bible study where everybody shares, “Well, I see verse three, and I see…” I simply share the chapter as a teaching session.
I think there is a place in our assemblies for actual understanding of the Scripture—what it means in context, what the Lord is saying. There is actual teaching needed. Sometimes we have too much devotional Bible study where people merely share their impressions.
Years ago, I was in a fellowship out on Long Island. We had Bible study and a good time together. Of course, it really helps when people study the Bible before they come, which in that small group people did not do.
One brother moved to the West Coast, where he got a job in the aviation industry. He got into the Vineyard Fellowship, if you know what that is.
They immediately asked him to be a group leader because he was fifty years old. That means you are an elder. So he and his wife began to have a meeting in their home every Wednesday night or something.
It was mostly younger people—people in their twenties, newly married people—and about fifteen people came every week.
They would get together for what was ostensibly a Bible study. They opened 1 Corinthians 1, but somebody would say, “I have been having a rough week this week,” and they would begin talking about it.
Then our brother, in whose house it was, would say, “Okay, now back in 1 Corinthians.” Then somebody would wander off again.
This went on for about four weeks. Finally, after four weeks, he said, “Now, back in 1 Corinthians 2,” and somebody piped up and said, “We do not want to hear the Bible. We want to talk about our problems.”
Now, there are too many Bible studies like that, and they are not really that edifying. In your assembly, make sure that folks are really learning the word of God as best we are able.
Well, these are my questions. I took way too much time. Our brother did a much better job, shorter. But fortunately—or unfortunately—he is not hiding behind the screen, so I am a bit nervous here.
It is best that we quit. You see, we do not have answers for you. But I tell you what: love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength.
You can almost hear Jesus say, “Do you love Me? Love My word.” Be a man of the word, and by the Spirit of God, the Lord will teach you great and wonderful things.
There was a tremendous renewal in Great Britain when those brethren, all on their workaday jobs, began to see things in the word of God that had been hidden for a few centuries. They began to share them with one another in what they called Bible readings.
When they had those Bible readings, people came from far and wide—Anglican ministers and others with wonderful testimonies. They came simply because somebody was opening the word of God.
I pray that in these days there may be a reviving of the church and God’s people, because people are seeing Christ in the word of God. May that be our portion.