One of my highlights from my third term in the Full Time Training in London was the meeting with the local saints London in their homes after our gospel outreach every week! I have previously enjoyed meeting with believers in homes very much. However, I believe that I never really got to see the preciousness of the home meetings as in this term. For me this was almost like a new discovery, realizing that this is how the Lord can gain what He is after.
To see saints faithfully opening their home week by week impressed me and was such a pattern to me as well. We could bring any kind of people to the saints’ home with us, and their needs would be taken care of. In the training, on the one hand, we always learn to appreciate and have a taste for the truth which is revealed in the Bible; but praise the Lord, that we also have a way to apply all these treasures in our coming together with other believers, so that the building up can be so living and practical.
The matter of making our home a place for meeting is the way God has ordained in order have His Body practically built up, and this way is also solidly found in the record of the New Testament – it was in the homes that the believers were meeting (see Acts 2:42). The matter of the building up of the Body of Christ may sometimes seem too abstract and doctrinal for us to apprehend. However, this matter becomes so practical when we gather and enjoy Him together.
After a busy week, I admit that tiredness often overcomes me, and sometimes I just desired to stay back and take some rest. But every time I went to the saints’ homes for meetings the Lord was just so refreshing in His shepherding of us through the saints. Every coming together was such a cleansing and so refreshing!
This made me consider this matter of the homes, because at similar moments in other meetings I might easily fallen asleep. Maybe sometimes I have been enjoying big meetings because then I did not have to exercise that much to do or say anything. In the homes, however, there was no way to escape from functioning! I realized this term that each member of the Body of Christ is so precious and so crucial, and that it such a tragedy if someone’s or my own portion of Christ remained dormant! And I realized that if I myself remain passive, I actually delay the building, and ultimately the Lord’s coming back.
The atmosphere in the homes is very cherishing and not religious at all. Most of all I enjoyed that this is not “the time for professionals showing of their eloquence or good Bible knowledge”. On the contrary, it is a sweet and intimate time for the family to come together to enjoy the sweetest Person in the universe together! It is indeed the real family life and actually the highest life because we all share God’s life. My desire is that this fresh taste I got this autumn I hope will continue after my time in the training so that this becomes a practical part of my daily living.
The truth which we enjoy can actually be applied practically in our daily life – it is not only for our knowledge, it’s a living Person that we love and come together to enjoy corporately. Praise Him for such a privilege, that we can even today in this age, “day by day, continue steadfastly from house to house”, until the Lord comes back!
