BUILDING UP A HABIT OF CONTACTING PEOPLE (5)
We should be genuine, exact, and strict not only in the church meetings and church service but also in our daily life and in our private life. Where do we put our shoes after we take them off? This shows what kind of character we have. Everything related to how we dress and comb our hair should be proper. We should be clean and neat, and our room with our furniture should also be clean and neat. We should polish our shoes and dust our furniture. Paul says that we Christians are like those who run on a racecourse. To run is to exercise. Even if we use a broom to sweep a certain area, we should not do it loosely and lazily. We should sweep in a strict and diligent way. If we do not take care of things in such a way, this shows our looseness and laziness.
When we go to contact people, we should not go loosely. We must run the racecourse. We should contact them in the right atmosphere and with the right gestures. Our whole being should be exercised to be proper and appropriate in our contact with others. If a young brother is speaking to a man who is about sixty, the way he sits and talks to this man should be in a very respectful manner. He should not sit before this man in a loose way. We have to run the racecourse by exercising self-control in all things. This renders the effectiveness to our preaching. Whether our conversation with a gospel candidate can be effective or not depends upon how we behave ourselves, even how we seat ourselves and what our gestures are. We must take this fellowship as a principle.
Paul says, “I therefore run in this way, not as though without a clear aim; I box in this way, not as though beating the air; but I buffet my body and make it my slave, lest perhaps having preached to others, I myself may become disapproved” (1 Cor. 9:26-27). Because Paul made his body his slave, he could be enslaved to anyone. He buffeted his body to subdue it, to enslave it. Sometimes we excuse ourselves from serving the Lord by saying that we are tired. But we have to buffet our body and make it our slave to contact people for the Lord’s interests.
We may wonder how we could ever compare to the apostle Paul. But Paul says in 1 Timothy 1:16 that he was saved as the top sinner to be a pattern to all the believers. This indicates that we should do what Paul did. He is a pattern. If there is no possibility for us to be like him, his word is in vain, and this verse should not be in the Bible. But he says clearly that God set him up as a pattern to all those who believe in the Lord Jesus. Today we are the believers in Christ, and we all can be like Paul.
How can we be vital? We have to run the race. Have you begun to run? If not, the vital groups are just vain talk among us. I sympathize with many of us. I know that we may have difficult jobs with long hours, but we should not excuse ourselves too much. We have to labor. On this whole earth everyone is busy. We have to be like those in the Olympics. We must discipline ourselves, exercise self-control, and buffet our body to enslave and subdue it. If we do not take this way to run, I do not believe that the vital groups can be among us. The vital groups cannot be with those who are loose, lazy, or sloppy. (Collected Works of Witness Lee, 1993, vol. 2, “The Training and Practice of the Vital Groups”, ch. 4, pp. 309-310)
The church in Zamboanga 