The following is a word of fellowship given by Andrew Yu to the former Trainees of the Full-time Training on December 29, 2007. The full sharing is here via Living to Him (full article is here). Listen to this particular podcast from Living to Him here
An observation: Those who have gone to the training need a way to follow their commitment. The correct word is consecration. They need to serve. And I am not talking about serving full-time. I am talking about giving oneself to serving and not just being in the church life in a general way.
If they do not give themselves to serve in some way, eventually they will go out of the church life. Those who have not gone to the training and who have not gone through a consecrated life can remain in the church life in a general way for many years. The living of the young saints at present is not up to the standard. What is it to have a vital living. It is seven points.
Seven Points of Vital Living
- Schedule for living – Having a schedule for your living.
- Morning revival – The first thing about time management is you need a quiet time every morning. Instead of the things leading you by the nose, you set the priority. Even non-Christians talk about the need of a quiet time. If non-Christians realize the importance of a quiet time, where are we? For a lot of us, there is no quiet time.
- Pursuit of the Truth – You need to set aside some time every day to get into the pursuit of the truth. Get into a reading program to get into the Life-studies, or the high peak truths, or some other reading material. Even a reading program of just studying the Bible book by book by going through the references is good. We need to do this both privately and corporately.
- Companion Prayer – A regular time three times a week of getting with your prayer partner to pray. Not just to call on the Lord but to pray, to intercede. You need to have a ministry of intercession.
- Contact People – Having a set block time every week to contact people either by going out or by inviting people in. You need to set aside definite time to take care of people.
- Church Meetings – Go to all the church meetings.
- Sanctified Finances – Be sanctified in how you manage your finances. That is broad and general. We need a group of people who are very serious about putting that into practice. Both for the full-timers and the working saints, we need to set the priority to live this kind of life. That is the God-man living in practicality and reality.
This kind of living is also for sisters. In the morning, they rush to get kids out of the house and at the end of the day they rush to get dinner on the table. Do they live the above kind of life?
I like to get into the science of this kind of living and confront all these issues face to face. How do you live in all these thing? The mp3 is one way to reclaim the transition times of going to work and coming back.
If you don’t get practical with your time and money you will never get practical about anything. And then everything becomes terminology. They just fly over your head. In one sense, some of us are very busy. But if you sum up what you do in a week, perhaps it’s all consumed between your work and the meetings. But some of the meetings are a waste of time.
They are just going through a routine. Every meeting should have a definite goal and purpose. If you put a magnifying glass on your time, a lot of it is a waste. We need to be focused in what we are doing. If the purpose is prayer, then kneel down and pray.
Where are the money-making full-timers? Money is nothing. The Lord doesn’t need your money. However, you need the sanctifying work to touch your money. Moses threw the staff on the floor. When he let go of what he depended on for his living he realized it was a snake. That is the true picture of our job and money. But the Lord also said – pick it up by the tail, that means after you have dropped the things that preoccupy you, you need to pick them up again. Only this time take them by the tail, and they will becomes useful to the Lord.
I like to call all the young people to form an army to vow to live a certain way. This should not be a condemnation of where they are but an aspiration of where they want to be. The young ones should be able to say to one another: “You live this way, I want to live this way too”. The Lord did not put us in the greenhouse; He put us in the arena, and every day you are fighting the beasts – your job, your family, your children, and in the midst of all these things you have to be an overcomer. That is the vision.
Let us recruit the saints into an exercise. It’s a call to a living. Create websites, and newsletters, get connected, pursue the truth, form fellowship groups. If we raise up 3,000 saints who would sign up for it for a quarter and if we give ourselves to practice it, to exercise ourselves in it, like joining a health club, we will have an army of vital young working ones. Every quarter you make a new commitment and when you give yourself, you exercise to do all or some of these 7 things. I need a prayer partner, I give myself for the Lord’s interest. I give myself to have a structured reading program. I give myself to the Lord to manage my finances.
This quarter 3,000, next quarter 3,000, every quarter 3,000. We help the saints to live an exercised living, a vital living. Practice what it means to practically live the God-man living. Periodically we can have conferences with blending times. During these times, we study the high peak truths, but with a focused direction on how we can be an overcomer in our job and family. To get into the real living is more than rocket science. I am hoping many brothers or sisters would rise up to take the lead to enter into this kind of exercise.
This is just as important as the campus work, the young people’s work and even the full-time training. Wouldn’t it be an encouragement to those with jobs and families to have this kind of living? There are those who flounder and don’t know how or where to consecrate themselves. And this would be an encouragement for those who don’t know how to balance themselves between their job and the church life. I am not talking of a service that interrupts the church life. I am talking about an exercise that is integrated into the church life.
This is like joining an invisible full-time training, a continuing on-going spiritual education full-time training. New Zealand is getting all the graduates to sign up online for some continuing courses. They get units. They read books, and have vital companions. For us, the burden is there but the practice is not there. So young ones graduate from the training and are pushed into the open field. 90% of these ones eventually are not full-timers; they work.
If the overcomers are not produced out of this group of 90%, it is not produced at all. This is one need among us. We should do something like that before we get others saved. We should get 3,000 of our own saved. Saved from the locusts, not just from sin but the “human government” – the licking locust, the swarming locust, the cutting locust, and the consuming locust, consuming our time. What happens today is that rather than you taking hold of your time your time takes hold of you.
The worst thing is to be not vital and yet still doing a church service. I love the brothers and sisters. I hate to see them having a feeling of hopelessness and living a life full of anxiety. Read the last seven chapters in the Life-study of Philippians. They talk about a life of no anxiety.
If we get 3,000 brothers and sisters who would subscribe to this kind of living, and each of them set aside $100 for the Lord’s interest, that will be $300,000 every month to support the Lord’s work. Brother Lee talked about 20 supporting 1. This does not mean 19 are the benefactors and 1 is the beneficiary. Rather it should be 20 beneficiaries and 20 benefactors. Brother Lee is talking about you living a certain way. Can it be done? Yes, but it needs someone to cross the river first and crossing the river means you live like a full-timer even while you are not a full-timer.
I like to see 3,000 brothers praying 3 times a week to pray for the Lord’s interest. Their heart is completely one with those going to Europe, Africa, Asia, all over the world. It is a shame for some in the work to have to go back to a job just because there is no support. It is not a shame for them, but it is a shame for the rest who are holding onto jobs already. Where are they? What I am talking about here is a matter of the God-man living. If we take up these 7 things, that is effectively and substantially the God-man living.
I am not talking about changing anything in your church life. I am talking about changing the spiritual health structure. Build up the saints from the ground level up. This is in the principle of building up the vital groups. You can still serve in your campus work or your children’s meeting. But be vital and get related to others by intercessory prayer just like the full-timers do, but in a miniature way.
This is a “scaled-down” version of an ongoing full-time training. If we have this, when a trainee graduates we can be peaceful about him going to get a job. We have a vessel that will hold him, that will allow him to live a full-time life although he is not a full-timer.
Perhaps we should do something in the middle-age training; make provision for refresher courses – come for a period to detoxify yourself for a week, and then go back to work. You need to set aside a time to pray and when you pray, the haziness will go away and you will start to get into focus.
Listen to the audio version and read the full article via Living to Him.