Spiritual Lesson: Full-Timers Training

In the recent full-time serving ones training, the Lord's speaking was, "Being Governed by the Vision, Living Christ, and Being Trained to Take the New Way." These series of messages were apt to the core, meeting the timely need of the churches in India. It also touches me very much as this applies to me as a full-time serving one, and as also as serving one in a local church.

Few things that impressed me deeply are:

The Line of Life

The need to care for the testimony of life, not merely outward work or movement, and the care for the person who does the work rather than the way he carries out the work. In this regard, the experience of Christ as life is of utmost importance. The Lord's recovery is for the fulfillment of God's economy which is in life. All the persons involved and the works done or ways taken must be in the line of life. For this, there must be a rich experience of Christ; even all the serving ones and the saints must be filled with Christ as life. There must be the depth and riches in the experience of Christ. Without the experience of Christ, all our works and ways are empty and void. The Lord does not need another group of degraded Christians with human works which will not and cannot fulfill His heart's desire. 

The Vision and Nature of the Lord's Recovery 

Our vision is the building up of the Body of Christ to bring the Lord Jesus back, and the nature of the work we carry out must be golden as we bear the testimony of Jesus as the golden lampstand. Anything sort of this is not what the Lord wants.

The two main aspects of the Lord's recovery are its ground and its content, or reality. The ground of the Lord's recovery is the genuine oneness, and the content and reality is Christ as life. All the saints need to see that life is the unique way to build the church on the ground of genuine oneness; life is Christ Himself, who is the building material, and oneness is the ground.

Taking the New Way

Training is necessary for the taking of a new way so that we may have a thorough change in our way of meeting, service, work, gospel preaching, and proclamation of the truth. There is also a need to evaluate and improve the way we preach the gospel, conduct home meetings, group meetings, and district meetings. These things may not sound spiritual and it even looks like outward methods, but without the proper care for this new way, there is no way to advance, be skilfull, and be proficient. One very touching thing is the matter of maintaining proper and regular statistics of the church. Many times we made a vow to the Lord, even prayed with much burden, asking the Lord for the increase. But without proper planning, there is no way to fulfill the vow. Statistics is a good way to plan and achieve the vow that has been made.

Prayer, Spirit, Word, Home, and Living Witness

Above all, to experience all the above points there must be a lot of prayers; our prayer life must be strengthened. There must be the inward filling and outward filling of the Spirit in all our services, and there must be the bold proclamation of the word of God. The practice of the church life must be from house to house, and we all should be living witnesse of the  Lord in His move.

And when they had so besought, the place in which they were gathered was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak the word of God with boldness. Acts 4:31

These are the main spiritual lessons learned in recent training. May the Lord grace all the serving ones, and me, to learn this lesson personally and bring it to the benefit of the saints in my locality.