The Training And The Practice Of The Vital Groups

In this book Witness Lee stresses the importance of the vital groups in carrying out the God-ordained way and lays out a number of crucial principles related to the practice of the vital groups. God's need is for His people to be vitally grouped together through prayer and fellowship in order to bear remaining fruit for God's glory.

Our sufficiency is from God, who has made us sufficient as ministers of a new covenant, ministers not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life. (2 Corinthians 3:5-6) Second Corinthians may be considered as an autobiography of the Apostle Paul. In it we see a portrait of a person who lived in the Spirit. For us to enjoy and experience Christ in a rich way we must be persons in the Spirit as symbolized by ten aspects in 2 Corinthians—captives, letters, mirrors, vessels, ambassadors, co-workers, a temple, a virgin, lovers of the church, and tasters of Christ. It is by all of these aspects that we can be thoroughly wrought by God and with God and be constituted the ministers of the new covenant for the building up of the church.

This book covers six vital factors for the recovery of the church life—Christ, the Spirit, the divine life, the proper practice of the church life, the Spirit's operation through the cross, and the transformed human virtues.

When God created man, He placed him before two trees: the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and the tree of life. In warning man to avoid the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, God indicated His desire for man to eat of the tree of life, signifying that man should receive God as his life supply. Witness Lee unveils in The Tree of Life that God is not looking for well-behaved Christians; He is looking for those who will experience and enjoy Christ as the reality of the tree of life.

"In God's dispensation and economy, the leading ministry is the priesthood. In this universe God has an administration, a divine economy. His economy is the way He arranges or dispenses. Therefore, it is a kind of dispensation. According to the Bible there are three main ministries in God's divine dispensation: the priesthood, the kingship, and the prophethood. The priesthood is the leading ministry of the three and brings the kingship and prophethood into function. In other words, both the kingship and the prophethood depend upon the leading ministry of the priesthood."

“We must realize that we Christians are a meeting people. A Christian is a meeting person. Without meeting, there is no Christian life and no church life. It is rather difficult for any Christian to grow without attending the meetings. There is no way for any Christian to serve God without meetings, and it is impossible for Christians to express Christ if there are no meetings. The church life is a meeting life.” In How to Meet Witness Lee offers much precious and practical guidance related to the biblical way to meet as Christians.