A HOLY LIFE AND LIVING FOR THE PRIESTHOOD OF THE GOSPEL
The Morning Revival
As New Testament priests of the gospel, we must have a holy life and living. This holy life and living is maintained by being revived every morning. Each morning we should have a new start. To have some time with the Lord each morning does not mean that we have to spend a great deal of time with the Lord. I have practiced a lot and have found out that having about ten minutes with the Lord each morning is enough time. In this time with the Lord, we must reject all distracting thoughts about our activities. Try your best not to go along with your emotion, mind, or will. It is also good not to consider many different portions of the Bible at this time. Just concentrate your entire being on the Lord, and try to exercise your spirit to call on His name. We must learn to call on His name in the morning. It is also helpful to pray-read two or three verses, using them for your prayer. There is no need to compose a prayer; simply pray the verses as they are. In these ten minutes, it is best to avoid praying for other things. In this time, we should simply talk to the Lord directly. This is real prayer. As you contact the Lord in this way, something in your being will be revived, your spirit will be stirred up, and you will be strengthened to live a holy life. This is the morning revival.
If you have more than ten minutes, you can spend the first ten minutes contacting the Lord to be revived, and the extra time can be used to read and study the Bible. In this time of study, it is helpful to use other publications in order to understand the Bible in a more thorough way. This second part of your time in the morning is what we call morning watch. Usually, in our speaking, we combine the morning revival with morning watch. But it is good to separate them, because if you only have a small amount of time each morning, you should try to have a revival every morning.
An Overcoming Daily Life
After the morning revival, we must exercise to keep ourselves in the spirit throughout the day. We must do and say things in our spirit. This is to be overcoming and victorious. Throughout the day, there will be a lot of failures because we are so fragile, unstable, untrustworthy, and not very steadfast. We may ascend very strongly early in the morning, but by ten o’clock in the morning we may already be down. We do not have to remain down. We can always exercise our spirit to come back to the Lord. Then we should continue to practice remaining in our spirit the rest of the day. This is to have the morning revival and the overcoming daily living.
We should not only exercise to have such a life and living ourselves, but we should also help each of our new ones to have the same kind of life and living. We have discovered that a very convenient way to help the new ones get revived every morning is to have some time with them over the telephone each morning. It is best to make an appointment with them before calling them. Because of the convenience of calling the new ones by telephone, if we rise up a little earlier each morning, there is the way to take care of as many as three persons very easily.
CONCLUSION AND SUMMARY
We must practice the biblical way to preach the gospel as priests of the gospel (Rom. 15:16). This priesthood of the gospel is carried out by training. The co-workers and leaders in the churches must understand this and labor to train the saints to practice the New Testament priesthood of the gospel. We must preach the gospel in such a particular way. If we would practice this priesthood in a thorough way, we may be able to have a one hundred percent increase each year. But, at the very least, we should be able to realize a thirty percent increase a year.
The crucial point of the God-ordained way is the group meetings. How much success we will realize depends upon how much attention and labor we are able to put on the group meetings. Therefore, we must endeavor to build up the group meetings. When the group meetings are built up strongly, the church will also be very strong.
(The Exercise and Practice of the God-Ordained Way, Chapter 29, by Witness Lee)
