I recently fellowshipped with the co-workers and elders by speaking a very frank word to them. I said, “Brothers, many of you still work for the Lord by doing affairs. Your kind of taking the lead among the saints is not according to the spirit, but according to your kind of realization. So you made a number of formalities, asking others to perform your formalities. This often causes opinions and even divisions.” All the co-workers and elders from today onward should have a change. You have not been called by the Lord as a co-worker or an elder to carry out formalities. You have been called and assigned by the Lord to carry out God’s economy, and God’s economy is altogether centered on Christ, taking Christ as its reality. Without Christ, there is no economy of God. We may be very busy every day in the Lord’s recovery in the church, and we may be very diligent and faithful, yet we do things which are not the contents, the reality, and the center of God’s economy. So we need a turn.
I pray to the Lord, “Lord, grant us in Your recovery to have a genuine, real revival.” We do not want a revival, however, like the many revivals which went on in the past. One famous revival took place in Wales from 1904 to 1906 under the leadership of Evan Roberts, who was a coal miner. In a short time, this revival became so prevailing that when people would go to Wales to preach the gospel, no one would be saved. This is because nearly everybody in Wales had been saved. When I came into the work of the recovery in 1932, only about twenty-six years later, I heard about that revival. By then it had become not as prevailing as it should have been. The issue of that revival in Wales did not last long.
Evan Roberts stressed spiritual warfare, how to fight against Satan. But today what we have seen of the Lord is not in that category. What we have seen of the Lord is in God’s central lane, the economy of God, with Christ as its centrality and universality, with Christ as its center, reality, and everything. This Christ is now the life-giving Spirit indwelling our regenerated spirit to be one with our spirit (1 Cor. 15:45b; 1 Cor. 6:17).
For such a revelation which is so high, deep, and profound, the Lord needs a model. He needs a corporate people to be raised up by His grace through this high peak of the divine revelation to live a life according to this revelation. Then they will be the model. Even for pray-reading, we did not set up a strong and proper model. Where is the model of living a crucified life that we may live Christ? Even among us, this is not too prevailing. Where is the model of living Christ and magnifying Christ by the bountiful supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ? Where is this life? We have these revelations released as messages printed in books, but where is the model?
My burden is that my fellowship could affect you to be burdened with me for the same thing. We have the local churches, but no model. For all the things the Lord has shown us, there is no model. With calling on the name of the Lord, there is no model. With praying unceasingly, there is no model. The Lord is rich unto all who call on Him, but there is no model of this. We are not that rich in the Lord’s recovery because we do not have the genuine, living practice of calling on the Lord. If we have this model, we will be enriched by the Lord through our calling on Him.
Paul even tells us that we should pursue Christ not only by our own individual calling but also by our corporate calling with others who call on the Lord from their sincere and pure heart. This indicates that we do not only need to call on the Lord and pray-read the word of the Lord as the Spirit individually. We also need this corporately. In all the churches there should be groups of ten or fifteen saints who come together often to call on the Lord.
(Living a Life According to the High Peak of God's Revelation, Chapter 4, by Witness Lee)