● Sharing at the conclusion of the English speaking saints perfecting training

At the Lord's Day meeting on December 11, 2011, saints who attended either  the English or Chinese perfecting class had their respective prophesying time to testify of their enjoyment of the Lord's grace and their companions' help. They also consecrated themselves to the Lord as a response to His love. Those who showed excellence in attendance, homework, daily spiritual exercises, and functioning in class were rewarded with Bibles or spiritual books as incentives.
May the Lord further perfect them for their continuous pursuit of His riches and practice of the church life. 

Prophesy from the trainees

       During the past 6 weeks of perfecting training, brothers prepared 6 basic but crucial topics for our Christian’s life. I particular touched on the topic of preaching the gospel and pursuing the Truth. Matthew 28:18-20 And Jesus came and spoke to them, saying, All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go, therefore and disciple all the nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you all the days until the consummation of the age.

        Here we see that we all have been commissioned by the Lord to preach the gospel, baptize these ones into the Triune God and teach them the Truth as the Lord has revealed in the Bible. We all need to desperate to bear new ones as remaining fruit. Gospel preaching should not be something we do and detached from our living. Rather, our living should be the gospel, gospel should be our living. In other words, what we do and say should be the manifestations of Christ and we should preach the gospel on regular basis, not once a year. Also, we need to be constituted with the divine truth and we must first enjoy the Lord before we can preach the gospel to others.


        If we are not equipped with the truth, we will run out of words to say very quickly and our gospel will be weak. In addition, we must exercise our spirit so we are filled with the Holy Spirit and pray with much persistence for our gospel contacts. Because we are all branches in the vine, without the Lord, we cannot do anything. May we all encourage one another in pursuing the truth with our spiritual companions for the furtherance of the gospel in all the places we go. Amen.
                                                                                                                                           - Alice Hsing      
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        At the beginning before I signed up for the English training I was hoping to perfect my English in pursuing the Lord to be able to preach the Gospel in English and pray in English. And I thought it shouldn’t be as intense as compared to New Jersey’s training where we were required to be at the meeting early in the morning and throughout the day until 9pm at night. It turned out to be a wonderful experience after all.

        In the New Jersey training, I was surrounded by saints literally 24-7, I was able to touch the Lord in a very deep way with much help by many testimonies and saints exercising together. We would pray many times in a day together, eat together, enjoy the Lord together, receive message together the whole 7 days. However because the English training is only on Lord’s day for 6 weeks, so after the training, I was back to my own daily life. The 6 weeks of English perfecting I found was more challenging than the 1 week perfecting training in New Jersey. I realized that I can not just exercise my spirit only in meetings, at trainings, or by Lord’s table, but I need to exercise my spirit in and through my daily life. And this is what I found more challenging than the NJ training.


        So, I really appreciate in the training material where it says the whole environment around us does not help us to exercise our spirit. It has an intention to keep us down. The whole situation does not help us to go on to labor. It helps us to be lazy; it helps us to be backsliding. It is a downhill current. The downhill current helps us go down. The current is carrying us downwards. But if you try to go upwards, you have to exercise, and you have to struggle. Actually, to exercise of our spirit comprises and implies all of the following words: labor, toil, struggle, wrestle, and fight. But what are we fighting for?? We are fighting against our natural being that is keeping us away from the Lord. Our spirit is where the Lord lives. In order to touch the Lord we need to exercise our spirit! We not only need to exercise our spirit but also fan our spirit into flame.

        The Lord says through Paul in 2 Timothy verse 6 to 7: For which cause I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God. For God has not given us a spirit of cowardice, but of power and of love and of sober mindedness. Our spirit is a gift by God which we must fan into flame to let our spirit take the lead in our whole being. This helps our mind to be set on the spirit and with the Lord and to not wander in vanity. This also helps us to have a clear conscience and a sober mind to discern spirit and soul, because the enemy’s strategy is always trying to mix our spirit up with our soul and whenever such mixing is there, the spirit loses and the soul wins.

        Galatians 5:25 says If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit. The Christian walk is a walk according to the spirit, which is our spirit mingled with the Holy Spirit. It is easy to do things by our soul and flesh but we must learn this practice: whatever happens to us, we must turn ourselves to the Lord. This means to turn to the spirit. On the one hand, I deny my natural and independent mind, emotion, and will, which is my self. On the other hand, I learn to sense the spirit. I only do things when I sense that I have the inner life and peace. To do this is to exercise the spirit. Praise the Lord that we all have this gift in us which is the spirit. Our spirit need to be exercised
                                                                                                                                                 - Eric H

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          I appreciate the opportunity to be trained even though I could attend a half of the training sessions. The training is an essential to practice the normal Christian life. It sounds easy to keep doing the normal things every day. Indeed it is not.

          First, we need to know what the normal Christian life is. Second, we need to make certain things, such as reading the Word, the morning revival, to be a habit or be a part of daily life. To be a Christian, we not only enjoying Christ but also contribute the purpose of God. We have to be a functional member of the Body.

           During the training, I learned (1) Exercising spirit, (2) The knowledge and pursuit of the truth, and (3) Prophesying-its meaning and purpose. All subjects are not new, but, I realized my shortages. Moreover, the training forces us to practice the normal Christian life. That helps us to experience the Load during the training period.

            The training is not a onetime event.  We need to be trained constantly until be confirmed and glorified. I pray many brothers and sisters will have opportunities to be trained.

-Brother  Koichi Kato