Exercises Necessary to Speak for the Lord

Let no one despise your youth, but be a pattern to the believers in word, in conduct, in love, in faith, in purity - 1 Timothy 4:12.

Take heed to yourself and to your teaching; continue in these things; for in doing this you will save both yourself and those who hear you - 1 Timothy 4:16.

It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing; the words which I have spoken to you are spirit and are life - John 6:63.

But to each one is given the manifestation of the Spirit for what is profitable. For to one through the Spirit a word of wisdom is given, and to another a word of knowledge, according to the same Spirit - 1 Corinthians 12:7-8.

And the spirits of prophets are subject to prophets - 1 Corinthians 14:32.

Proclaim the word; be ready in season and out of season; convict, rebuke, exhort with all long-suffering and teaching - 2 Timothy 4:2.

Speaking for the Lord - The Ministry of God's Word

This series of messages will address the matter of being one with the ministry and speaking forth healthy words. This is a very big topic.

In his book The Ministry of God's Word, Watchman Nee shares about what it means for human beings to minister God's word, and the process by which one becomes such a minister. This is an all-important topic. His fellowship on this subject, given in the latter days of his ministry, represents his own ministry at its peak.

Watchman Nee referred to a person who speaks for the Lord as a minister of God's word. According to the Bible, even in this New Testament age such ministers are also referred to as prophets.

A Prophet's Five Exercises

According to Paul in the fourteenth chapter of 1 Corinthians, we all can prophesy, and we all can be prophets. If you wish to speak for the Lord as a prophet, however, you must meet five requirements. First, your person must be healthy before the Lord. Second, the word you speak must become spirit. Third, the word you speak must have content. Fourth, the word you speak must be with a burden. Finally, you must have an adequate utterance. How well you are able to minister depends upon your ability to satisfy these five requirements.

1. Exercising to Be Healthy before the Lord
As we are learning to minister for the Lord, we should not make skill or even content the focus of our speaking. Instead, we should focus upon who we are. When some brothers minister, they come across as those who are appropriate to minister on God's behalf, while others present themselves as persons unfitting to speak God's word.

Speaking Who You Are
When you speak, you should speak as one who is speaking for the Lord. When you stand up, people should have the feeling that you are respectable and possess some spiritual substance. Those who hear you should have the sense that you are someone who lives before God and who has been in His hand and under His dealing and shaping.

Therefore, I say strongly that we should not care so much about what it is we will say in those few minutes we prophesy; instead, we must realize it is a matter of who we are. It is a matter of our person. Are we godly? Do we fervently love the Lord? Have we allowed the Lord to work in our lives? Are we someone who enjoys the divine life? Our speaking is dependent upon who we are.

Therefore, you must be a proper person. If you are loose or thoughtless, you should not expect that the Lord will be able to use you as someone who can speak for Him. In other words, if you are someone who likes to joke around or if you are loose, your reading of the Bible will be short of revelation or anything profound. If this is the case, certainly your burden and utterance will be loose. If you are loose in your thought and in your living, you will have no ability to receive things from the Lord or to utter things for Him. Others will sense, when such a one stands up to speak, that this person's spirit is loose, and that his words carry no weight.

Brothers, when you speak for the Lord, the first thing you must pay attention to is your person. The kind of person you are is displayed in your words. You may be able to speak high things, but your words reveal your real situation. The Lord will only be able to use you to the degree that your person allows.

When brothers attempt to minister, they often do their best to speak something quite high and excellent, but if what they speak does not match who they are, their speaking is not something genuine. Our words should match who we are.

A Healthy Living before the Lord
Therefore, if you desire to speak for the Lord, you must consider what kind of person you are, and when considering your person before the Lord, you should consider such things as how you live before the Lord during the week, how you pursue and live before the Lord, and the condition of your heart and your spirit. Your daily practice affects who you are. If you are in the word, in prayer, and living in the Lord's presence, you will be healthy before the Lord. Then you may become useful to the Lord as someone who is qualified to minister for Him. Only a healthy person is able to speak healthy words.

The kind of person we are determines our ability to serve the Lord. To be able to prophesy, we must be the right kind of person. Prophesying can help others to receive the divine supply. Therefore we must be a proper person. Are we going to fail? Yes. Do we have weakness? Yes. Will we lose our temper? Yes. Will we experience times of being absent from the Lord? Yes. We realize that we are not perfect, and that we have our weaknesses and failures. In many things we do not match the Lord. If, however, we know how to continually come to Him, repenting and confessing our shortcomings, the Lord will have a way to go on with us. We must, however, be sensitive to these things. We must pay attention to our relationship with God. We must be those who are close to God, and we must exercise to live a godly life in the fear of the Lord.

2. The Words Spoken Becoming Spirit
If you wish to speak for the Lord, you must not only pay attention to your person, but also to your spirit. If you wish to be someone who speaks for the Lord, you should also be someone who knows the Spirit, for it is the Spirit who gives life. Therefore the words you speak must be spirit (John 6:63). When you speak, your words must become spirit; your spirit must be able to touch the spirits of your listeners and cause a spiritual response.

If your spirit is weak, if your spirit cannot be released, or if you are short of the Spirit when you speak for the Lord, your speaking will not be effective. In other words, if your words do not become spirit and life, they will effectively be meaningless. Therefore you must pay attention to your spirit, as well as to your person.

How can your word become spirit? Every time, before you minister, you must pray and spend time with the Lord. Years ago, it used to be our practice that a brother would lock himself in a room and kneel in prayer for at least a half an hour to an hour before ministering. During that time the brother would pray, sing, and confess. In those early days the brothers took their ministering very seriously before the Lord.

It seems this kind of exercise has gradually been lost among us. Too often the person who should speak does not, and those who should not speak take up the time. Such saints are habitual meeting-killers. They say whatever they feel like saying, even though they know they have nothing. Their kind of prophesying kills the meetings.

When saints speak with the concept of the "three-minute prophecy," what they speak may seem very spiritual, but if their speaking lacks life, spirit, truth, revelation, and supply, it will cause people to die rather than giving life.

In our prophesying, we must speak in spirit, supply others with the Spirit, and allow the Spirit to restrain us. When we speak, we must be exercised in this way. Our spirit must come forth in a strong, fresh, keen manner and with riches. Then our ministering will have impact.

3. Speaking with Content
We should know what we are going to say when we prophesy. We should not merely speak whatever comes to us by way of inspiration. In other words, our speaking must convey something of content. We have to be clear about what it is we wish to convey to the saints.

There are some exceptions. If you are someone who is mature and experienced in the Lord, you may not necessarily be clear about what it is that the Lord wishes you to speak beforehand. When the Spirit leads you to share something, you can stand and speak as the Lord gives you to speak at that moment. Another situation in which you should stand and speak without forethought is when you are encouraged to speak by all the saints just for the experience of standing up and releasing something. In this case, your speaking will be enjoyed by all, even though you may not have much to say in your speaking. Besides situations such as these, however, inspirational speaking that is short of content will not be that rich or strong.

Every time you minister, your speaking should be very rich in content. You should know exactly what you are going to say, including which verses, which phrases, and even which words you are going to use in your speaking. Then when you share, many riches will be released for the saints' benefit.

4. Speaking with Burden
When you minister, not only must the content be rich; it must also be with burden. There should be something operating as a force driving you inwardly. You should feel as though you will have no true rest until you speak out what is within you. This is what we call burden. When you speak, you should minister within and out from such a divine burden.

A word without burden is somewhat like a dish without salt. You may have content, but without burden, your message is somewhat tasteless. You may have riches, but people will not be able to receive them adequately if you are not truly burdened about what you share. If you lack burden, it will seem to others that you are merely repeating some teaching. How can you make your prophesying enjoyable and readily received? People need to realize not only that you have riches of divine truth, but also that you are divinely burdened with these riches.

What kind of word can bring people into the experience and enjoyment of the truth? The word the saints can receive is the word spoken both with truth and with burden. The greatest shortage among those who speak for the Lord, however, is that they often speak without burden. Yet if we have received vision and revelation concerning the truth, we will become burdened, for we will have touched what is real, and we will be burdened to bring others into what we have seen. Then the saints will certainly respond to our speaking.

5. Speaking with Adequate Utterance
When you are burdened by the truth you have seen, you need the right utterance to adequately convey what you see. Utterance, the proper words and phrases to convey your thought, is not a small thing. When you read Brother Nee's and Brother Lee's hymns and messages, you discover utterances which open your understanding to truth.

For example, consider the following stanzas from Hymns #242, in which Brother Lee writes,

The Spirit of God today
The Spirit of Jesus is,
The God-man who died and rose,
Ascending to glory His.

The suffering of human life,
Effectiveness of His death,
His rising and reigning too
Are all in the Spirit's breath.

This Spirit of Jesus doth
Encompass both great and small;
Inclusively He doth work
In us, making God our all.

In such a hymn we are not impressed with its poetry or lyricism, but rather with the phrasing and terms utilized to convey the truth. Because of the content, burden, and utterance utilized in the composition of this hymn, it is able to supply us with truth. When we sing such a hymn, we are ushered into these wonderful riches.

If you desire to speak for the Lord, you must take care of these five matters. First of all, you must become a person who is proper - you must be someone who is basically healthy before God. Second, when you speak for the Lord, your words must become spirit. Third, your speaking must be with rich content. Fourth, your words must be charged with burden. And fifth, you must be able to convey what you have seen with adequate utterance. If you exercise to speak with these five elements in view, you will become someone who can speak for the Lord. May we all become those who are able to be one with the Lord's ministry to speak healthy words for the building up of the Body. May all the gatherings among all the local churches be filled with such healthy speaking!