2. ABSOLUTE CONSECRATION
The second qualification is to consecrate our body (Rom. 12:1) to go out to visit people by knocking on their doors. This surely needs your body. You may have offered yourself to the Lord many times in prayer, but your prayer may not have issued in a practical consecration of your body. What is the practical consecration of your body to the Lord? It is to bear fruit. As a branch you should not be occupied by anything. You should be pruned. Get away from all the preoccupations that you could be spared and completely unoccupied to bear fruit. I do not mean that you have to drop your job or forget about your living. We have to have a job to make a living. Just spend the amount of time and ability needed to make a living. Do not have any intent to make more money to make yourself rich. Forget about that. That will preoccupy your body from bearing fruit. All of us can spare some time for the sake of bearing fruit. We do not need to work more than what is necessary to make an adequate living. Why do you need to work more so that you can drive a more expensive car? Could you not save some time to knock on doors? Do not save time to gain dollars, but to gain souls, to gain persons.
You may feel that you need to do cleaning on the weekend and that you need to mow your lawn. I agree with you. But sometimes you have to forget about your lawn. You promised the Lord to go out two hours a week. Do this first. Then use the rest of the time to mow the lawn. Take this way. If you would take my word, you may discover that you have more than two hours to go out. You may not realize how much you are enslaved in cleaning your home and in taking care of your lawn. Is there any pleasure in just taking care of your living and your house? But if you go out and within two hours baptize two persons, you will come back dancing. You will be addicted to that. You will have no patience to wait until next Saturday, but you will go the next day. You may even forget about the Lord’s table to get others baptized.
Is the new way an impossible way? No, it is an altogether easy way. The Lord said that His yoke was easy (Matt. 11:30—KJV). The only problem is that we would not put our neck into His yoke. Absolute consecration is to mean business. A husband needs to take care of his wife and of his children and their education, but thank the Lord, it is not so hard to get our children educated in the United States. There is no excuse for not going out to bear fruit.
(Being Desperate and Living Uniquely for the Gospel, Chapter 2, by Witness Lee)
