Two kinds of eating: eating in sowing and eating in harvesting

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“Many of you have testified regarding your enjoyment of the Lord, but all that I have heard pertains to your eating, your enjoyment in sowing. You have not yet reached the level of eating with regard to harvesting. The initial sowing is easy, but the final harvesting is not so easy. After the seeds are sown, whether or not there will be a harvest is still a question. Up until now, your eating of the Lord for enjoyment has been in the initial stage, the sowing stage.

Therefore, I have to make it clear to you, brothers and sisters, that you should not stop at the enjoyment of sowing, but go on to the enjoyment of harvesting. When you sow, you simply bury the seed into the ground. After sowing, you still need to take care of the sprout that it may grow and bear fruit. Only then can you have the enjoyment of the harvest. In our enjoyment of sowing, we receive something of the Lord into us. Whenever we call on the name of the Lord and pray-read His word, we receive a portion of the Lord as a seed into us. Whether this will result in a harvest depends upon our willingness to let the seed grow. If we let it grow, it will surely yield a harvest. Otherwise, nothing will happen.

…Today I want to check with you all. Do you as sowers truly have seeds? Do you as eaters really have bread? Perhaps you have only half a bowl of rice, which is not enough even for yourself. If you cannot feed yourself adequately, how will you be able to take care of others? What is the reason for this? It is because you sow the seed, yet you do not labor to let the seed grow.

We all know that when a farmer labors on a field, he has to remove the stones, eliminate the weeds, water the soil, add fertilizer, and sometimes apply some pesticides. What do you do? You have done very well eating the Lord and pray-reading His word, but you do not remove the stones, nor eliminate the weeds, nor water the soil, nor add fertilizer, nor apply pesticides. In the end you might as well have not sown at all. If you do not sow, your seeds will remain intact, but once you sow, you lose the only seeds you have. There are some people who indeed have a reserve of a small portion of the Lord before pray-reading the Word, but after they gained the Lord through pray-reading and then are disobedient by not laboring, they lose the presence of the Lord. The Lord went farther away from them.

…Let me ask you, brothers and sisters, what do you eat today, manna or the produce of the good land? Some say they eat manna; others say they eat manna as well as the produce. This is true. However, I hope that those who eat manna will gradually stop eating it. Do you know where manna was eaten? It was eaten in the wilderness. Therefore, eating manna is a strong proof that you are a wanderer. Where was the produce of the good land eaten? It was eaten in Canaan! Moreover, the top tenth of the harvest of the land — the firstborn of the herd and of the flock and the firstfruits of the grain — were not to be eaten at home. They had to be brought to the temple and eaten before God. This shows that their wandering had ceased. Do you want to be a Christian who eats manna or a Christian who eats the produce of the good land? Everyone wants to be a Christian who eats the produce of the good land. True, manna is good; but it is not good enough because it is the diet of those who wander about in the wilderness.

…To obtain manna does not require our laboring, but to get the produce of the land of Canaan does. While we are enjoying the Lord and receiving Him into us, He often raises up circumstances and allows many things to happen for our good, so that the seed in us can grow and produce something. For example, a sister, whose husband always makes things difficult for her, prays every day, asking the Lord to cause her husband to love Him as much as she does. However, the more she prays, the less he loves the Lord; the more she calls “O Lord, Amen!” and the more she pray-reads, the more her husband is annoyed…. Let me tell you that all those things that happen are the Lord’s raising up the north wind to blow upon you (S.S. 4:16). Instead of asking the Lord to change your husband, pray that the Lord will grow in you: “O Lord, make me willing to accept Your dealing. O Lord, subdue me from within. O Lord, cause me to submit myself under Your hand and take the breaking.”

…Twenty years ago, when I saw brothers who had good character and proper behavior and who gave good impressions wherever they went, I greatly appreciated them. However, now in retrospect those brothers with good character and proper behavior did not bear any good fruit. On the contrary, some careless and sloppy ones were able to bring people to salvation. The church life, the testimony of the church, is not a matter of behaving well or not behaving well, nor is it a matter of being or not being above reproach. The church life, the testimony of the church, is a matter of eating the Lord as the seed and allowing this seed to grow. Like a farmer, you remove the stones, eliminate the weeds, water the ground, add fertilizer, and apply pesticides so that the Christ in you will gradually grow into a harvest. This is not a matter of being well-behaved or not; it is a matter in a totally different realm. Behaving and not behaving are in the realm of good and evil. What we are speaking about is the realm of Christ. You are full of Christ, and you bring in your topmost portion before God to enjoy with the saints in the meeting. This is our proper meeting today. The emphasis in the meeting is not on singing, praying, praising, speaking in tongues, or functioning; the emphasis is on bringing in the topmost portion of the Christ that you have produced. I bring my portion, and you bring yours. Apart from any forms, we all present our Christ.

…Now we all have learned to eat. We have learned that there are two kinds of eating. One is the eating in sowing, and the other is the eating in harvesting. The eating in sowing cannot constitute our worship; we need the eating in harvesting. When you bring the eating in harvesting, that will constitute the true worship and the genuine church life. The church needs this. We have to look to the Lord and open up to Him that we all may learn to be exercised in the matter of eating.”

(Eating the Lord, chapter four)

The slower, the better

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PRACTICAL INSTRUCTIONS FOR VISITING PEOPLE

The instructions I am giving now concerning the new way are different from what I spoke in Taiwan. In Taiwan I charged you to visit people and to get them baptized immediately. But today I do not encourage you to get people baptized in a quick way. Also, when you visit people, do not speak too quickly to them concerning the Bible, God, Christ, or salvation. If you do, people may think that you are too religious and that they cannot come up to your standard. They may be turned away by your enthusiasm. In your first visit with someone who has been recommended to you, do not stay very long; the shorter the visit, the better. A short visit will give the one who is visited a good taste so that he will welcome another visit. Do not spoil the taste of those whom you visit. On the first visit do not speak too much concerning spiritual things.

As you visit a second or third time, you may begin to say something concerning Christ. You may need to go a few times before you are able to get a person saved. The principle is: the slower, the better; the slower it is, the safer it is. The slower the pace is, the more certain it is that you can gain that person.

(Fellowship concerning the Urgent Need of the Vital Groups, Chapter 3, Section 3)

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Something must be improper or wrong if we are not bearing fruit

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“Barrenness is an even more subtle enemy. Some married couples are not able to have children, and this becomes a big problem to them. According to human desire, the meaning of a couple’s life is to have children. Likewise, if we do not bear fruit, beget some spiritual children, there is not much meaning to our church life. Without fruit-bearing, there is no practical church life. Suppose that we baptized fifty-eight new ones in the next Lord’s Day church meeting. All of us would be excited and joyful in the Lord. But we do not have much joy, because we are barren. Barrenness is the biggest enemy that annuls the proper church life.

If we cannot have children in our human life, we can have the Lord as our replacement. But the Lord will not be the replacement for the fruit that we do not bear in the church life. We may feel that we have been enjoying the Lord every day, but a tree is known by its fruit. The real church life can be evidenced only by fruit-bearing. If we have not borne fruit for three years, for five years, or even for ten years, our enjoyment of Christ should be questioned. Something must be improper or wrong if we are not bearing fruit.

In the seven epistles to the churches in Revelation 2 and 3, the Lord touched the deadness with Sardis and the lukewarmness with the Laodiceans, but He did not touch barrenness. This is because He had already dealt with this very seriously in John 15. In the four Gospels the Lord did not deal with deadness or with lukewarmness. But He dealt with barrenness to the uttermost in one chapter—John 15. Some people would say that this is a chapter on abiding in Christ. Actually, however, it is not on abiding but on fruit-bearing. Abiding is for fruit-bearing. The Lord said, “Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit, He takes it away…If one does not abide in Me, he is cast out as a branch and is dried up” (vv. 2a, 6a). For a branch to be cast out means that it is cut off from participation in the riches of the life of the vine.

If we do not bear fruit, there is a danger that we will be cut off from the vine tree. This does not mean that we will suffer eternal perdition but that we will lose our enjoyment of Christ as our portion. This proves that if we do not bear fruit, there is a problem with our enjoyment of Christ. This is just like a couple who cannot bring forth children. They may say that they do not feel that anything is wrong with them, but actually something is wrong, which is preventing them from having children. They may even go to some doctors to find out what is wrong with them. This is an illustration of our problem of barrenness. We may feel that there is nothing wrong with us, but based upon the fact that we have not borne fruit, we must realize that something is wrong with our enjoyment of Christ. If we do not have fruit, our so-called enjoyment of Christ can be a self-deceiving matter. It is not so real.

We may think that we have seen a number of saints who have not borne fruit for quite a long time, but we did not notice that they were cut off from the enjoyment of the Lord. My answer to this is that the matter of life is a mystery. There may be a couple who cannot bear children, but no one can see the reason. In the same way it may seem that we are doing quite well, but where is our fruit? This is a test. If we are not bearing fruit, this is evidence that we have lost our enjoyment of Christ. In this chapter I want us to realize that every day, day and night, these three enemies are around us: deadness, lukewarmness, and barrenness.

In the previous chapter I shared that we need to get some companions, at least two or three, with whom we can labor in the gospel. We should never work by ourselves. Instead, we should work by fellowshipping with our companions. The trouble is that we do not like to have fellowship with others. We are self-contented, and some of us may think that we are omnipotent and all-capable. But according to my over sixty years of experience, none of us is omnipotent. Each of us is very limited in his capacity and ability. You need the help, and I need the help. My helpers in the work know how much I need them. I purposely fellowship with them and ask them questions in order that I may learn. I want to be taught by them. If there is no fellowship among us in our work, there cannot be the real one accord. We need to labor in oneness through thorough fellowship. Because of our unwillingness to have thorough fellowship, we are dead, lukewarm, and barren. We must get some companions and open up ourselves to fellowship with them to the uttermost.”

(The Training and the Practice of the Vital Groups, Chapter 3, Section 2)

Meeting with the saints is a party

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“First Corinthians 1:9 says that our faithful God has called us into the fellowship of His Son, Jesus Christ. The word fellowship includes the thought of enjoyment. Sometimes people may celebrate something by having a party. For us to fellowship together is to have a “party.” A party is a fellowship. The Christian meeting may be considered as a Christian party. Every meeting is a party to us. I am interpreting the word party in a very positive sense. A party is an enjoyment. If we are at a party, you will enjoy me, and I will enjoy you. We will share our joy and feelings with one another. We are so happy when we are meeting with the saints because our meeting, in a positive sense, is a party.

In our hymnal there is a hymn about the church life that says, “I’m so happy in this lovely place” (Hymns, #1237). It is hard to enjoy such a hymn by ourselves. If we were at home alone in our living room, it would be difficult to sing, “I’m so happy in the living room.” But if you are in a small group meeting of ten to fifteen saints, you can declare, “I’m so happy!” because you are having fellowship, a party. This party is not like the parties in the world with sinful and worldly things. It is a party of the Son, Jesus Christ. We are enjoying Him. We are happy with Him and happy because of Him. We are so happy because He is our joy. He is our enjoyment. Our fellowship, our enjoyment, our party, is to partake of, to participate in, the all-inclusive Christ. The faithful God has called us with a purpose. This purpose is that we may participate in His Son, Jesus Christ. This means that God has given us Christ and that He has called us into the enjoyment of Christ.”

(The Excelling Gift for the Building Up of the Church, chapter 1)

God sovereignly arranged everything for you before you were born

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“It is easy to reach the high point in our experience with God, but it is not easy to remain there. Look at the environment that surrounds you on every side. It was sovereignly arranged before you were born. God is sovereign. Although you may consider yourself a small creature, as far as God is concerned, you are a very important person. Before the foundation of the world, God arranged everything for you. He even arranged that you would be reading this message right now. We are under God’s arrangement. Do not try to escape. If you escape to a certain place, you will find that place to be the exact place that God arranged for you. When you reach old age, you will bow down and say, ‘Lord, I am fully convinced that You arranged everything for me before the foundation of the world.’”

(Life Study of Genesis, chp. 42)

We must care for the atmosphere and the flow of the meeting

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“[W]e must avoid not caring for the atmosphere and flow of the meeting. The Christian meeting has a flow, an atmosphere…

We have said already that the Christian meeting may be likened to a basketball game. Each team has five players, so there are ten people playing in the game, but they have only one ball and can use only that ball. This is the rule. However, one of the players may simply ignore this rule, so while the game is going on, he is playing with another ball by himself on the side and is even enjoying it. The same situation is frequently seen in the meeting. A certain brother may stand up and speak something of his own and may go on speaking until it is impossible for the meeting to proceed, yet he continues to enjoy his own speaking, caring neither for the atmosphere nor the flow of the meeting. We must not do this. We all love the Lord, the church, and the meetings. Yet when we come to the meeting, we must care for the atmosphere and the flow of the meeting. We must not put on a one-man show, not caring for others’ feelings; this will easily bring in death.”

(CWWL, 1985, vol. 5, “Speaking for God,” ch. 6)

How do we care for every member of the church?

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“According to our experience and learning and based upon the clear revelation in the New Testament, the proper group meetings should consist of two sections. The first section should include fellowship, intercession, mutual care, and shepherding, and the second section should carry out the perfecting of the saints through teaching. In the first section of the group meeting, the attendants should fellowship concerning each person’s present spiritual condition and practical environment…

The group meeting is eighty percent of the church life, and the church life is a life in the Body. In our physical body it is impossible for a problem in one member to be hidden from all the other members. The circulation of life in our body carries the feeling in one member to all the members. Thus, we should not hide our problems from the other members in the church life…For the practice of the group meetings, we must first overcome this to have a real, genuine, practical, and thorough fellowship concerning each person’s current spiritual condition and practical situation. A proper group meeting does not depend on singing and praying in a formal, religious way. It depends on this kind of fellowship.

After fellowshipping about each other’s situations, the attendants in the meeting will spontaneously be stirred up to intercede, to pray, for one another. This prayer will not be formal or like a theatrical performance but will be sincere and practical. After the fellowship and prayer the attendants in the group meeting should extend their loving concern for one another in the exercise of a definite and practical care. After becoming aware of a brother’s practical situation, some saints in the meeting may consider whether the brother is in need of financial help or some other practical care. Then, after caring for a brother in this way, some may go to visit him. This is the practice of the practical shepherding.

I would say that this principle regarding the practice of the group meetings is “scientific.” As such, it cannot be changed. Everything in this universe is governed by a God-ordained law, a spontaneous principle. In order for the church to be fully built up, we must have proper group meetings, and for the group meetings in the practical church life, there is the need of fellowship, intercession, care, and shepherding. In this way, every member of the church, regardless of how large that church may be, will be taken care of. The way to care for every member of the church is by the proper group meetings.”

(CWWL 1990, vol. 2, “The Practice of the Group Meetings,” ch. 6, pp. 39-40)

Beseeching.org: Prayer for the saints to see the meaning of perfecting

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Day 302: Prayer for the saints to see the meaning of perfecting

“Many saints who have regularly attended church meetings, trainings, and conferences for several years still lack growth or do not function adequately. Others function a great deal, but their functioning is not effective or fruitful. In such cases, we need to find the reason. There may be a hidden sickness or disease undermining a saint’s growth or function. Thus, part of perfecting is healing such sickness so that growth may return, function may become adequate, and there may be the rich production of fruit. Perfecting is to help the saints to grow in a definite way and to function adequately and fruitfully.”

(CWWL 1980, vol. 2, “Fellowship with Serving Ones,” ch. 4, pp. 14-16)

Beseeching.org: Prayer for a church life filled with mutuality

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Day 284: Prayer for a church life filled with mutuality

“The word mutuality is used in relation to church meetings and is the basic principle of the meetings of the church. This is shown in three portions of the Word. Colossians 3 says that we need to practice “teaching and admonishing one another” (v. 16). Teaching one another means that you teach me and that I teach you; admonishing one another means that you admonish me and I admonish you. This indicates that as believers, we should be full of mutuality when we come together. Hebrews 10:25 says that we should not abandon “our own assembling together…but exhorting one another.” Since we are the Lord’s disciples, we should not abandon proper Christian meetings. Moreover, whenever we meet, there should be mutuality. First Corinthians 14:26 says that whenever we “come together, each one has a psalm, has a teaching, has a revelation, has a tongue, has an interpretation.” This verse refers to the gathering of the whole church (v. 23). In such a gathering there should not be only one person speaking; rather, each one should function for building up (v. 26), that is, for mutual building up.”

(CWWL, 1988, vol. 1, “The Proper Way for Believers to Meet and to Serve,” ch. 6, p. 84)

We need to grow in life, but we also must increase in number

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The brothers and sisters who have been raised up by the Lord in these days to take the way of His recovery must realize that we must always increase in two ways. We must increase in the measure of life, and we must also increase in the number of persons. This is to increase both in quality and quantity. To be increased in the growth and measure of life is to be increased in quality. However, quality always comes out of quantity. If we do not have the quantity, how can we have the quality? We need the quantity, the increase of numbers.

It is easy for Christians to be unbalanced and go to an extreme. We need to learn to be balanced in several directions. We need to grow in life, but we also must increase in number. Life always must grow in all the churches day by day, and our numbers also must always increase. Otherwise, we are unbalanced; we are a “cake not turned” (Hosea 7:8)…

The best way to check whether a commercial business is right or wrong is to look at its accounting. We should not care for the general manager’s or director’s report; we should examine the accounting books. What are the balance, profit, loss, and liabilities of this business, and what kind of turnover has it had in the past ten years? We should look at the statistics and worksheets. In the same way, we should not say that our meetings are wonderful and everything is wonderful. If everything is wonderful for a whole year yet there is no increase, there must be something wrong. We need to check ourselves.

(CWWL, 1964, vol. 4, “Serving in the Meetings and in the Gospel,” ch. 5, pp. 116-117)