Being Released, Living, and Fresh for the Group Meetings (1)
Verses:
1 Cor. 12:3 Therefore I make known to you that no one speaking in the Spirit of God says, Jesus is accursed; and no one can say, Jesus is Lord! Except in the Holy Spirit.
Ministry Portion:
For the sake of the group meetings, we must always be released, living, and fresh. We must not be under any bondage. Almost everyone on earth is in some kind of “shackle.” Every day we may be shackled. We may not be free persons, persons who are released, living, and fresh. As a result, we are in debt to the Lord. We owe Him praises, songs, speakings, and testimonies. If we are released persons who are living and fresh, the Spirit within us has the full freedom to move. However, many times when we come together, it seems as if we do not have the Spirit. Instead, we wait on the Spirit to come and release us. The Bible tells us that we have a human spirit (Job 32:8; Zech. 12:1) and the divine Spirit (Rom. 8:9, 11, 16). To wait for something that we already have is wrong. We have the divine Spirit in our human spirit, so we should exercise our mingled spirit. It does not matter whether or not we feel our spirit. We do not need to feel our spirit; we only need to use it.
We Christians are the people of a speaking God. In the New Testament, God speaks in the principle of incarnation. He does not speak only by Himself; He speaks through our speaking. If we speak, He speaks in our speaking. If we do not speak, we stop His speaking. Therefore, we must exercise our spirit whenever we come together. When we turn on a light switch, the electricity operates. In the same way, when we exercise our spirit by crying, “O Lord Jesus!” we have the sensation that the Holy Spirit is moving within us. This is because as Christians we have a regenerated, enlivened, and strengthened human spirit that has been mingled with the divine Spirit. The Spirit never leaves our spirit. He remains in our spirit and is mingled with it at all times. Therefore, we are able to exercise our spirit at any time and in any place. The problem is that many times we do not exercise our spirit. Because we do not move, the Spirit has no way to move. He becomes shackled by us. When we exercise our spirit to testify in the meetings, we shake off the shackles.
We need to be trained and even disciplined to meet in a released, living, and fresh way. Many times our meetings are dead, cold, old, poor, and low because we are still shackled. For this reason it is difficult to have group meetings. The group meetings need at least one person who is released, living, fresh, and unshackled. If such a person meets with a group for two or three weeks, the entire group will be affected by him. All the attendants in that group meeting will become the same as he is. In that group meeting the new believers all will be released, living, and refreshed because from the day they first became Christians they participated in released, living, and refreshing meetings. They will not know any other way to meet. Without shouting, praising, and saying, “O Lord! Amen!” they would not consider that they have been to a meeting. However, many of us are not this way. For many years we have been molded to be what we are today, always coming to the meetings in the same way. If this is our habit, it will be very difficult to have proper group meetings. (The Practice of the Group Meetings, ch. 4, sec. 2)
The church in Zamboanga 