Also, when dropping off your children in the morning, they should be taken first to their children’s meeting room where they will be met by a serving one. Do not drop them off unsupervised in the opening room. The saints serving on Opening are not expected to supervise the children.

One day, my dad’s cousin visited us. He was so happy, and told us that he had been saved and baptized. The next day he brought a brother from the local church in Medan, Indonesia to visit us. My family decided that we wanted to try to go to this local church. After joining their meetings several times, the Lord attracted me. I saw how different the believers here were from others I had met. They were so joyful and full of love. They loved the Lord. I was curious as to what made them so happy. Talking with them, I found out that it was the treasure in them that made them so happy. It was Christ living in them. In every meeting I enjoyed all the singing and all the members’ speaking. I realized the Lord’s presence was there. After that, I stopped looking other places and came to the local church. I felt as though I had come back home. With them, I began to learn how to contact the Lord in spirit. The Lord became so real and dear to me.

From the time I came to the local church, I have felt that there is a Person who is so wonderful, so full of compassion- the Lord Jesus. He just drew me to love Him more each day; and nothing and no one in the universe is like Him. I just give my whole life to Christ. Nothing is so precious as giving our whole life for the Lord Jesus. Now my whole family meets with the local church. Praise the Lord!

A Pattern to Love the Lord

I really appreciate the ministry of brothers Watchman Nee and Witness Lee. Through their books, I have been helped to know God’s eternal purpose in the Bible. Furthermore, the more I read their books, the more I’m brought to love the Lord. My Father was privileged to attend a conference shared by Witness Lee in Malaysia. At that time, our family had just started meeting with the local church. Actually, we were still visiting other denominational churches as well. My Father was so impressed when he saw Witness Lee. At that time, Witness Lee was in his 80s, but he was so vital and active. As he gave the messages, he still walked around the podium and spoke with such strength. My dad had never seen a man at Witness Lee’s age speak so strongly. After attending that conference. My dad decided that our family would meet with the local church.

For me, I was so impressed when I read Watchman Nee’s and Witness Lee’s books. Their writings concerning the Bible brought me to the Lord. I had never read any books like that before which could bring me to love the Lord more. Through the word of their testimony, I saw how absolute they were for the Lord and how they poured out their whole lives for the Lord. The focus of their ministry was just Christ and the Church as His Body. Because of their ministry, I have consecrated my whole life to the Lord. How could I not love the Lord? He is so precious, so wonderful. I would like to quote 1 Peter 1:7-9, “Whom having not seen, you love; into whom though not seeing Him at present, yet believing, you exult with joy that is unspeakable and full of glory.” How I love Him.

I thank the Lord that He gave me such brothers who have gone before me and established a pattern that I can follow.

- J. K.

During my college years I tasted more of the church life. I lived in a house with seven other college age Christian sisters in Fullerton. It was so encouraging to have companions to pursue the Lord with. I began to see that I couldn’t make it without the other sisters. I saw more of what the church is through visiting other local churches in Arizona with the college students. On that spring break trip to the Grand Canyon, we stayed with different families in the churches in Tucson and Tempe. I had the realization that we are all one Body in Christ and one family. Throughout my college years I can testify that I experienced and enjoyed the Lord in my spirit and in the dear believers in the Church in Fullerton. The Lord showed me that people without the Lord living within them were just dead. He opened up so many opportunities for me to share the Lord with other college students and co-workers. However, without the prayers and encouragement from the other brothers and sisters, I don’t know if I would have made it through the college years still pursing the Lord. I can assuredly declare that the local church is my home

The Ministry of the Age

Listening to the speaking and reading the ministry of Watchman Nee and Witness Lee has been a tremendous blessing to me. Their ministry brings me into the enjoyment of Christ who lives in my human spirit. It brings me into God’s heart. God’s heart’s desire to put Himself into me and be lived out through me to produce the church is really detailed in Watchman Nee and Witness Lee’s ministry. One verse that has been opened up by their ministry is Galatians 2:20 which says, “I am crucified with Christ and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me…”. Witness Lee expounded that the old terminated “I” was without divinity and the new “I” has God’s life added to it. We have died in Christ through His death, but now He lives in us through His resurrection. I thank the Lord that these two brothers were faithful to share these truths.

- S. J.

A child, I wandered many paths seeking, searching until the nameless thing I sought eluded me.

The only way I knew I hadn’t found it was the emptiness it left inside.

Many nights I sought along the vacant path.

The darkness that enclosed me left its touch.

And yet in confusion, I reached out for it only to find myself deserted.

Oh, Darkness, lonely mother of orphaned thoughts, your thickness hid my tears.

At that time life was still filled with both promises and pleasures, but even as a young student I discovered that the joys of this life were fleeting treasures steeped in vanity. Something that is real is abiding, but pleasure lasts for a moment, and the emptiness it leaves is deeper than the joy it seemed to hold. I was not content to live a superficial life, even a good one, and at the end proclaim as King Solomon did in Ecclesiastes, “all is vanity”. And yet my search for something genuine and real was futile in the paths I sought.

But then I felt Time pressing me to leave.

Contentment wavered then evaporated.

The air around me let me sink again into the onrushing traffic of complexity.

My search again becomes an endless stream of tears.

A search indeed, because it has no end.

For searching tells of eternal trails that slip and slide through a myriad of traps.

There is no comfort, no rest, only borrowed intermissions that give me strength to continue on.

Oh, emptiness that has no boundary yet imprisons me in my mind’s cage.

Deep within there was a longing to discover the reason for my existence. Still, like so many, I encountered many dead ends in my search. Yet, as I searched, there was One who sought me—patiently, lovingly, and tenderly. I turned to so many “answers” and as each failure brought me closer to despair, I wondered why I was born to live, grow old, and die —all for nothing.

I always believed in God. I was raised in a staunch Italian Catholic home, steeped in ritual and tradition. I was educated in the best private schools. I never questioned my “faith” until I went away to college. Then, away from home for the first time, I observed a world full of hatred, envy and strife, of bitterness and deceit. I began to question and wonder. What is man? Why is he here on earth? An inner turmoil initiated an intense and desperate search. I no longer accepted the traditional religion in which I had been enveloped from infancy. I could not deny that God was real, and yet I had no experience of Him.

In my wandering, I attempted to find a substitute for God, knowing deep within that only He could satisfy my inward longing. I sought some kind of “spirituality” in Eastern mysticism. Even in that situation, the God of Glory who appeared to Abraham visited me. As I was reading a book that advocated a universality of religions, I came across a Bible verse. Out of all those words, only this Word created a response within my being. It was a lamp searching all my inward parts. As I realize now, that was God’s precious appearing. I cannot tell you how many times this Faithful One continued to come to me in my circumstances, eager to rescue and patiently waiting until I was ready to turn to Him.

Then, one day, as I had within my grasp everything I had ever wanted, deep within there was the realization that if I gained the whole world, it could never appease the gnawing hunger that afflicted me. Just at that time, I was led by the Lord’s infinite mercy to find the experience and enjoyment of Christ as a living reality. And so my searching ended.

Today, the joy of the Lord is my strength. Today I can say I know full peace and rest. Not only has the despair that plagued me vanished, but now I have a reason for living. This reason is simply God’s own purpose. He wants a people who care for nothing but to experience and express Christ. Not only is this God’s goal, but it has become my own goal also. The greatest joy on earth is to know this living Christ!

- P. D.

When I was very young, I loved the Lord and enjoyed going to the children’s meetings. I remember one song in particular that stayed with me even from the time I was a little child:

The heavens are for the earth, the heavens are for the earth;

And the earth is for man, and the earth is for man;

Man is for God, man is for God;

Hallelujah! Hallelujah!

As far back as I can remember, I always believed that there was a God; however, God did not become real to me until my teenage years. I entered into middle school with many vain pursuits and empty longings. In particular, I was obsessed with baseball. During this time, baseball became an idol to me, usurping God’s rightful place in my being. I was a young player with a lot of promise, filled with aspirations of playing in the major leagues. This hope was more attractive to me than anything else.

During this time our family was living in the Sandia Mountains, near Albuquerque, New Mexico. Because my father was building our house from scratch, we were living out of a very crowded garage. As I became a teenager, I developed a very bitter attitude. I was extremely shy and self-conscious during my middle school years. Being void of the reality of Christ, I started to loathe going to the church meetings, which were a forty-five minute drive from our house. Every Lord’s Day began to feel like another tedious day at school. It was very hard for me to sit through a two-hour meeting, as I did not understand what it was all about. I never spoke in the meetings, neither did I open up my mouth to sing. Like many my age, I was introspective, shy, and very self-conscious. According to my realization, God was far away from me. I did not know that I had a human spirit by which I could experience God as Spirit.

As I began seventh grade, my inward condition got worse. I was often depressed and did not even like myself. I had no self-confidence, feeling that no one could see me for who I was, and that the only things they saw were my imperfections. Inwardly I was crying, complaining, and ashamed of what I was. I longed for perfection, but there seemed to be no hope that anything could cure me. But these feelings eventually caused me to turn to the Lord, to experience and respond to His calling.

One day, while still in seventh grade, I began to read the New Testament. Prior to that time I had read very little of the Bible —mainly the first chapter of Genesis. But as I read through the gospel of Matthew, I was drawn to the Man called Jesus. He was not an ordinary man! I was attracted by His healing of so many people afflicted by so many diseases. I started to realize that I was “diseased” also, a pitiful sinner, and that only He could heal me. I saw that He was the perfect man, the perfection I was seeking, and that He was crucified on the cross for my sins. Gradually, He began to change my inner being and inward condition.

Then, in the summer prior to eighth grade, an older believer moved to Albuquerque to be in the church life there. I was attracted to his personality because he was always smiling and joyful, and because he was the first person other than my parents to shepherd me in the Lord. How I love this brother in the Lord! Through my parent’s nourishing and this brother’s caring, I was encouraged to open up to the Lord. In a short time, I was singing and praising the Lord in the meetings. Since then, I have been pursuing Him, having dropped my former dreams of worldly glory. The glory in the church life far outshines anything the world can offer. My praises are to the Lord for everything He has done for me.

- T. R.

I was born in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1944. My parents separated from one another almost before I can remember. My mother raised my sister, my brother, and myself until she had to be hospitalized for a long period of time. I was then eleven years old. The authorities placed us children in an orphanage run by a group of elderly Italian nuns. With about 100 other children we were herded to mass every day and were instructed in the basic doctrines of the catholic religion. Although I believed that Jesus was the Son of God, little did I dream how real He was, and how much He could be to me.

Anyway, at that time my inclinations were more toward trouble and mischief than toward God. I didn’t like the orphanage and repeatedly ran away, once making it as far as Washington, D.C., forty miles away. There, my younger brother and I were apprehended by the police. Exhausted, we had fallen asleep on the lawn of the capitol building.

Eventually, the nuns decided that I needed sterner measures and the authorities sent me to a reformatory for boys in Pennsylvania, where I spent the next seventeen months.

I was released and, at the age of fifteen, went back to live with my mother, now out of the hospital and living in Baltimore. We lived in an inner-city neighborhood, largely inhabited by transients, the elderly, and the poor. There were few positive influences, and I grew up admiring and desiring to be like the guys who played cards or shot pool for their living. I was contemptuous of work and family ties. I considered these to be a “square” way of life. So I lived in this kind of environment, occasionally obtaining my spending money by less than legal means, and also becoming involved with drugs and alcohol.

At eighteen, I rather impulsively decided to join the army and was sent to Germany for almost three years. Essentially, I remained the same type of person. It seemed that the older I got, the more empty and frustrated I felt.

Eventually, in 1969, I went through a long period in which I was unable to find a job. This period of unemployment was, I believe, God’s sovereign arrangement for me. It left me with a lot of time to myself, and I began to think, considering all that my life had been, and all that it hadn’t been. It sadly dawned on me that my life, up to the age of twenty-five, had been mostly wasted time. Twenty-five wasted years.

I began to get interested in “religious” things and started going to a Catholic church. During this time there were often young people preaching the gospel on the streets of Hollywood, where I lived. Sometimes I would see what I knew was God reflected in their eyes and faces. I wanted to get “saved,” but didn’t know how.

One evening, I was invited to go to a Christian meeting in downtown Los Angeles. When I walked into that meeting hall, I sensed something extraordinary about that place. Everyone’s face seemed to be shining and there was a kind of brightness there that seemed to light up the whole room. The atmosphere was one of love and pleasantness.

People began to share what Christ meant to them and what He had done in them. As I listened, I began to be terribly convicted of the shame of all that my life had been. There was a tug-of-war going on inside of me, with one side saying that God was real and the other telling me to get up and get out of there! I struggled within myself. After a while, I realized that this was Godspeaking to me! He was real and He wanted me! I found myself opening to Him. As I called upon His name, “Lord Jesus,” something wonderful happened. At that moment it seemed as if He were in me and all around me. Every weight, care and feeling of guilt was lifted off of me. I felt so new and clean inside. I sensed the presence of someone so loving, so gentle, so warm, and so good. God had come into me! Then someone requested a hymn, and I stood with my new-found family and joined them in singing, “Christ liveth in me”.

That was March 27, 1971, when the Lord Jesus came into me. Since my initial experience, He has become increasingly real and precious to me. When I first began to consider accepting Christ, one of my biggest fears was that this new life would not last. I have been a Christian for these many years now, and am still experiencing this living One! He is peace and He is rest and contentment. Christ is the meaning of my life.

- P. C.

After a year had passed, we received word that Dad had suffered a heart attack. This was a big shock to our family, especially to my mother. Our family devotional times became more regular and specific, as we asked the Lord to release the visas and financial means we would need in order to join Dad in America.

Then, in 1985, we were able to come to this country and joined Dad in Norman, Oklahoma. We were very happy to find out that he was meeting with a group of Christians who took care of him during the time he was recovering. Not only so, but the church in Norman also took care of us after our arrival. We did not have a car or many other necessities, but the church members would give us a ride wherever we needed to go as well as supply us with many material needs. When we moved to Manhattan, Kansas so that Dad could take a job at Kansas State University, a church family drove there with us, using their car to help transport our belongings. Their wonderful loving care was typical of the care we received from the church in Norman.

What was even more beneficial to us was the spiritual care we received. While attending the children’s meetings in Norman, I heard for the first time that I had a human spirit and that God as the Spirit indwells the believer’s spirit. I remember singing a song that said, “Drop by drop the Lord will get inside of you.” This was a revolutionary concept to me, even at such a young age. Later in 1985, along with others my age, I was baptized during a young people’s conference in Oklahoma City. What I really enjoyed about the church meetings was the singing. I had never before heard believers sing with such strong spirits. Meeting after meeting was a joyful experience to me. I was sad when we moved to Manhattan because there was no local church meeting there. We attended denominational meetings, but the experience did not match what we had had in Norman.

But by the Lord’s sovereignty and through the prayers of our brothers and sisters in Christ in Oklahoma, God sent a family to Manhattan who was used to meeting in the same way that we had in Oklahoma. This was the Lord’s mercy and His continual care for us through the prayers of His church. We began to meet with this family regularly, getting into the truths of the Bible and staying in the fellowship. Even though our number was small compared to Oklahoma, and even though we hardly knew this family, we felt at home because we were all members of the Body of Christ meeting according to the revelation of the Bible. In our meetings we enjoyed the ministry of Watchman Nee and Witness Lee. Their writings caused me to have a deeper experience of the Lord, and my love toward Him increased as never before.

After another period of time our family moved once again, this time to Ruston, Louisiana. As in Manhattan, there was no local church meeting in Ruston, but there was one not too far away, in Shreveport. The fellowship and shepherding we received from them was the same as we had experienced in the other local churches. After graduating from Louisiana Tech with a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering, I went to Anaheim, California to attend a two-year Bible training carried out by Living Stream Ministry. After completing that training, I began to serve the Lord with my full time in Fullerton, California. I praise the Lord for His mercy and grace that have kept me in the fellowship of His one Body, no matter where I have been.

- R. P.