Let Truth Be Our Fervor, Life Our Flow, and Shepherding Our Increase

Today’s Main Verses for Pray-reading

Proclaim the word in season and out of season

2 Timothy 4:2

“Proclaim the word; be ready in season and out of season; convict, rebuke, exhort with all long-suffering and teaching.”

See the vision and immediately go forth to announce the gospel

Acts 16:10

“...we immediately endeavored to go forth into Macedonia, concluding that God had called us to announce the gospel to them.”

Exercise unto godliness, which is profitable for this life and the next

1 Timothy 4:8

“For bodily exercise is profitable for a little, but godliness is profitable for all things, having promise of the present life and of that which is to come.”

Through practice, have our faculties exercised to discern good and evil

Hebrews 5:14

“But solid food is for the full-grown, who because of practice have their faculties exercised for discriminating between both good and evil.”

Go and disciple all the nations

Matthew 28:19

“Go therefore and disciple all the nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,”

Go forth with the Lord into the fields and villages

Song of Songs 7:11

“Come, my beloved, let us go forth into the fields; / Let us lodge in the villages.”

Today’s Prayer Burden

Let truth become our fervor, life our flow, and shepherding issue in multiplication and increase, causing small revivals to spread like wildfire! The more we practice, the more proper we become; the less we practice, the more passive we become. The greatest and most fundamental need in the Lord’s recovery today is to gain the increase. The way to become more vital is to contact people! The revival God desires does not come overnight or all at once; it comes through accumulated labor. Lord, do not let anyone in Your recovery miss the revival before Your return and regret it!

Today’s Prayer

Lord, we ask You to have a way through us and to bring in a turn of the age. In season and out of season, may we preach the gospel, spread out, shepherd people, and speak forth Your word. Cause us to run the race of the coming ten years in the vital groups, and through begetting, nourishing, perfecting, and building, complete the organic building up of the Body of Christ. Lord, may the truth strengthen us and life supply us with the grace to run. Cause us to exhort one another daily through the word of God and not forsake our own assembling together. May we run the course not only in our own localities but also in the unworked places and throughout the whole earth. Lord, work the burden to spread throughout the earth into the brothers and sisters. Make us more mature, going out into the fields and lodging in the villages, giving our love to You and sharing in Your work throughout the earth. Amen! The more we practice the vital groups, the more we share in Your spreading throughout the earth. Praise the Lord!

Lord, may the new revival come to each one of us, not through spiritual giants but through many people with one talent blended together—five with one talent becoming one with five talents—and small revivals arising locality by locality. Establish our direction with the truth. May Your word become spirit and life to us day by day and kindle our fervor. Cause us to coordinate and flow through life. Wherever the living water reaches, may everyone receive supply and live. Through the practice of everyone preaching, begetting, nourishing, perfecting, and reproducing, produce organic, living members. This is the final revival: everyone rising up, organized in companies of two and three; truth becoming our fervor, life our flow, and shepherding issuing in multiplication and increase, so that small revivals spread like wildfire. Hallelujah!

Companions, we desire to attain the revival God wants. This revival does not come overnight; it comes through accumulated labor—one small revival at a time, advancing and deepening little by little. The more we practice, the wider and deeper the revival becomes; more people rise up to practice begetting, nourishing, perfecting, and building, and to live a personal and corporate God-man living. They shepherd according to God, cherishing others in humanity and nourishing them in divinity. As we practice, the Body will multiply and increase; new ones will join the practice, reproducing continually, and their number will grow by the hundreds and thousands. Praise the Lord! Lord, do not let anyone in Your recovery miss the revival before Your return and regret it!

Fellowship

The God-ordained way: practicing begetting, nourishing, perfecting, and building through the vital groups

We coined the term “the God-ordained way.” We saw in the Bible that the God-ordained way has four steps: begetting, nourishing, perfecting, and building. We need to beget believers; then nourish them so they can grow; then perfect them. This is not teaching by one teacher, but mutual teaching in the groups. In a group, everyone is a teacher, and every teacher is also a student. Through this mutual teaching, the new ones are perfected unto the work of the ministry, as Ephesians 4:12 indicates. This qualifies them to prophesy, to speak for the Lord, for the building up of the church. To take the God-ordained way is to take these four steps; the way to practice them is through the vital groups.

Do not be silent; learn to be vital

Do not remain silent. Learn to be active, to be vital, and to speak. Do not be afraid of making mistakes. If you never make mistakes, you will never learn anything. If no one among the five in a group speaks, the meeting will be dormant and silent. Every one of us must learn to be active and not worry about making mistakes. We all must function and be ready to make mistakes, learning from them as we are perfected.

Contacting people makes us vital

I believe the way to become more vital is to contact people. If we keep waiting and do not contact people, we will never become vital. Every week we should set aside one day to contact people, one day to gain people. If we are determined to gain people, there will be a way to gain them. We must ask the Lord to give us some people to gain for Him. We cannot be lazy; we must take the burden to make those who are not yet vital vital. Then we will see that we ourselves must first be vitalized.

We do not want to be dormant, nor do we want others in the church to be dormant

As we take action with the Lord to contact people, we need to pray urgently. We should tell the Lord that we do not want to be dormant, nor do we want others in the church to be dormant. We need the Lord to vitalize us first; then we can go forth to vitalize others. (Fellowship Concerning the Urgent Need of the Vital Groups, Message 24, “Become Vitalized and Go Forth to Vitalize Others.”)

The vital groups must be the teaching apparatus in the church life

It is easy to speak naturally, gossip, murmur, and complain, but it is not easy to teach the divine truths. In the vital groups we need to reach the goal of teaching one another by asking and answering questions. The vital groups must be the teaching apparatus in the church life. We all need to be willing to pay the price to reach this goal. The vital groups can occupy eighty percent of the church life mainly because of mutual teaching. Of this eighty percent, sixty percent is for the mutual perfecting through mutual teaching. (Fellowship Concerning the Urgent Need of the Vital Groups, Message 19, “Paying the Price to Learn the Divine Truth and Practice Mutual Teaching in the Vital Groups.”)

The need in the Lord’s recovery today—gaining the increase

In the near future, we will train the members of the vital groups to go out to contact people and preach the gospel. I truly believe that we will gain some people. Therefore, very soon all of us will need to know how to nourish the spiritual newborns so that they may be preserved and remain. After a short time, we will need to bring these infants into our vital groups and perfect them through mutual teaching.

The greatest need in the Lord’s recovery today: the increase

The greatest and most fundamental need in the Lord’s recovery today is to gain the increase. Without materials, a house cannot be built. We need to save sinners by preaching the gospel so that they can become materials for building up the church as the house of God (1 Tim. 3:15). Generally speaking, the rate of increase depends on how we labor in the gospel, as well as on the environment and people’s situation.

We need to be alert to the present situation

If we are serious with the Lord for His recovery, we need to consider our present situation soberly. We should not be at ease concerning the present condition of the Lord’s recovery, especially regarding the increase. We need to be alert and not anesthetized into thinking that the situation among us is quite good. The recovery is surely good, but some aspects of it are not encouraging, especially the matter of increase.

We need the vital groups

I feel that we truly need the vital groups to be delivered from our present situation. The vital groups are a matter of life and death. From now on, no one among us should behave, act, or do anything casually in the meetings. When we speak, we must say something worthwhile and say it “formally.” Otherwise, we should remain silent. Even when sitting quietly, we should have a sober attitude, not a light one. If we act casually, how can we receive the Lord’s blessing? We need to bring this matter to the Lord in prayer. This recovery is neither yours nor mine; it belongs to all of us. Therefore, we should all consider this matter of life and death soberly. (Fellowship Concerning the Urgent Need of the Vital Groups, Message 19.)

We must resolve to be overcomers, that is, vital persons

Today two ways are before us. We can choose to be vital, or we can choose not to be vital. I place these two ways before us. Which way will we take? Do we want to be vital? We must resolve. In Judges 5:15 Deborah said, “Among the divisions of Reuben / There were great resolutions in heart.” We must resolve to be overcomers, that is, vital persons. Overcomers overcome everything that replaces Christ or opposes Christ. In the Bible there is an age of the overcomers and a call to the overcomers. Furthermore, we have a way to be vital so that we can be overcomers. (The Training and the Practice of the Vital Groups, Message 1, “To Be Vitalized.”)