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Opening Ourselves to the Members of the Group
Verses:
Hebrews 10:24-25 And let us consider one another so as to incite one another to love and good works, Not abandoning our own assembling together, as the custom with some is, but exhorting one another…
Ministry Portion:
Before getting four or five, you may have gotten two or three already. You two or three should come together and pray and get to know each other. Although you may have met in the same church for years, you may not know how many children each other has. Furthermore, you may not know that the wife of one of the brothers has been ill for a considerable time. If you had been practicing the proper grouping, within one hour after one of the group members became ill, you would have known it. In grouping together, the first thing to do is to know one another. Whenever you come together, you should ask concerning the present situation of each group member. We may say that we know each other, but actually we do not. When one of our family members is sick, we may avoid telling others. We may say that everyone in our family is well when actually some are not well. Instead of opening our situation to one another, we hide things from one another.
After opening to one another concerning our present situation, we should pray for one another and care for and help one another. This is a further step in the practice of the group meetings. Because we do not open ourselves to one another and do not have the mutual care for one another, we have lost our impact. If you will practice the new way, immediately you will have the impact. After forming a group, you should not go the next day to visit people by knocking on new doors. Rather, the group members should pray together. The Lord is living, and He is real. He is with us, but He is not with us in the old way. In the old way He is not living and He is not real to us, because we do not practice His organic way. When we come together to fellowship, we still do not fully open ourselves to one another. Thus, there has been little result from our fellowship. It seems that the Lord is not with us, or that He is with us only partially. Yes, the Lord is gracious, and He is broad. He takes care of us, but that does not mean that He is happy with us. He is happy with us to the extent that we open ourselves to our fellow members.
Because we have never opened ourselves to our fellow members, we have very little impact. When you go out to knock on doors, even the unbelievers can sense that between the two or three of you there are some problems. There is no need for you to tell them; they can sense that you have problems. That reduces your impact. But if you are really one, the unbelievers can sense this also. They may say to themselves, “How marvelous that these three people are one. In my whole life I have never seen such a thing.” That is the impact. With such oneness and impact, surely the unbelievers will make the decision within themselves that they would like to join themselves to you. Perhaps they will not understand clearly what you preach to them, but after you leave, they may say to one another, “These people are sincere. They speak what they believe, and they speak what they are.” After the day of Pentecost the believers did not deliberately practice communism. To do so would have been a shame to them. However, they had everything in common (Acts 2:44-45; 4:32) in order to show the entire universe, including the demons, the angels, the Lord, and Satan, that they were truly one. Spontaneously, the impact was there (5:12-14). (Fellowship concerning the Urgent Need of the Vital Groups, ch. 2)
The church in Zamboanga 