THE PURPOSE OF BEING VITALIZED
When we come to the last book of the Bible, we hear the sounding of the Lord’s call for the overcomers. If we do not have the boldness to say that we are the overcomers, we should say, “I’m going to be an overcomer!”
The first purpose of being vitalized is to respond to the Lord’s calling. Our desire to be vitalized and be in the vital groups is our response to the Lord’s calling in this age. The Lord needs the overcomers at this time more than at any other time. The darker the age is, the more the Lord would call His overcomers.
We also need to be vitalized for the Lord’s recovery in this age, paying our full attention to the seven crucial points of the major items of the Lord’s recovery today. These points are the participation in the processed Triune God, the rich enjoyment of the all-inclusive and all-extensive Christ, the full experience of the consummated, compound Spirit, the absolute living by the eternal life, the building up of the Body of Christ, the practice of the churches on the local ground, and the keeping of the oneness of the Body of Christ. We have to spend some time to pray over these seven crucial points in the Lord’s recovery. We should pray over them, item by item, until we become fully impressed and even filled up with them.
The purpose of being vitalized is also for the building up of the Body of Christ through the proper practice of the local churches.
The practice of the local churches is on the local ground in the oneness of the unique Body of Christ by four steps.
We do not care for soul winning. Our preaching of the gospel is not to win souls but to save sinners that they may be the members of Christ. We have to believe that a good number of the thousands of people living around us are ones whom God has chosen in eternity past. We do not know who they are, but the Lord knows. How can we gain these ones?
The Bible uses the illustration of fishing. To get sinners saved is like catching fish (Matt. 4:19; Luke 5:9-10). If we do not go to the sea where the fish are, how could we get any fish? The principle, the secret, to gaining a sinner is to “go fishing.” There are many sinners, many “fish,” around us in the place where we live. If we go to contact them consistently week after week, we will eventually gain someone. We do not like to go fishing, however, because we do not have enough patience. A fisherman will fish patiently until he catches some fish, and we need to be the same in our labor in the gospel. We may go out for almost a year without any result, but at the end of the year we may gain a whole family. We need to labor consistently and look to the Lord that each of us could gain one person yearly as remaining fruit for the church life.
After you save some to be the members of Christ, they are babes. They need the feeding so that they can grow.
The newborn members need the feeding, and the fed ones need the perfecting. So we have to learn how to save sinners, how to feed the new ones, and how to perfect the saints.
Finally, to practice the church life is to prophesy, to speak the word for God and even to speak forth God. This is absolutely different from the practice of Christianity. Their speakers have become a hierarchical group, and that group builds up a kind of rank and system to annul the functions of all the members of the Body of Christ.
We may wonder how every Christian could speak for the Lord. Some dear saints who have been in the recovery for a short time may say that they love the church but that they do not like to prophesy because it is too difficult. But we need to realize that children learn how to speak by listening to and imitating what their parents speak. Today, spiritually speaking, it is the same. As the new ones come to meet with us, they will listen to our speaking and spontaneously learn to speak. The New Testament condemns the clergy-laity system (see Rev. 2:6 and footnote, Recovery Version). The way to build up the Body of Christ is by the prophesying of all the saints. This is why we must learn to speak. We need to prophesy to build up the local churches for the consummation of the building up of the Body of Christ. (CWWL, 1993, vol. 2, “The Training and Practice of the Vital Groups”, ch. 1, pp. 269-272)
The church in Zamboanga 