Fire of the Spirit Ablaze

The “Over­seas Chi­nese Chris­tians Con­fer­ence at the Turn of the Cen­tu­ry” spon­sored by Chris­t­ian Life Quar­ter­ly was held in Chica­go from Decem­ber 31, 1999 to Jan­u­ary 4, 2000.

Of the 1,551 broth­ers and sis­ters who attend­ed the con­fer­ence, 66 per­cent orig­i­nal­ly came from Main­land Chi­na. Dur­ing the con­fer­ence, 178 broth­ers and sis­ters received the call of God and offered up them­selves to live for the Lord for the rest of their lives, and 44 seek­ers accept­ed Christ as their sav­ior and received a new life.

A por­tion of the broth­ers and sis­ters (268 in num­ber) filled out sur­veys at the con­fer­ence. Among these,181 stat­ed that “this con­fer­ence helped me to be deter­mined, from this point on, to more active­ly par­tic­i­pate in serv­ing the church, to be more root­ed in Truth, and to live out the life of Christ.” Many (124) of them indi­cat­ed that “I am will­ing to forego seek­ing things of the world to take up my cross to fol­low Christ.” Those “will­ing to return to Main­land Chi­na to share the Gospel with our own peo­ple” num­bered 42. Anoth­er 60 want­ed to sup­port main­land min­istries: “Even though I am unable to return to Chi­na myself, I am will­ing to sup­port the needs of Main­land Chi­nese min­istries through prayer and mon­e­tary means.” Many broth­ers and sis­ters expe­ri­enced a spir­i­tu­al revival at the con­fer­ence, return­ing to their local church­es to impart the spir­i­tu­al encour­age­ment they received.

By the unchang­ing love and grace of our Lord, the con­fer­ence expe­ri­enced such tremen­dous bless­ings. God cov­ered our insuf­fi­cien­cies; His almighty pow­er made the impos­si­ble pos­si­ble. Glo­ry and praise to our Father in heav­en!

Our gath­er­ing of five days is now over, yet the spir­it of uni­ty and the sweet­ness of serv­ing togeth­er in one Spir­it deeply lingers on in our hearts. Though the Turn of the Cen­tu­ry Con­fer­ence has end­ed, we are at the begin­ning point of putting into prac­tice the theme of the con­fer­ence: “Revive our spir­i­tu­al lives, take up the cross and fol­low Jesus. Car­ry out the mis­sion of shar­ing the gospel to our own peo­ple.” Time may cause us to for­get the intense excite­ment of our gath­er­ings, but we must remem­ber the mes­sages of the Lord we heard through His ser­vants. May the Word of the Lord stir up our spir­i­tu­al life con­tin­u­ous­ly and always remain in our hearts.

High­lights of the con­fer­ence

Sis­ter Xiao Yun, the author of Canaan Poems, an evan­ge­list of a Chi­na House Church who wrote over 600 hymns for the House Church, called in from Chi­na and shared her tes­ti­mo­ny with us. She com­posed a song espe­cial­ly for the con­fer­ence. Her inno­cent, unso­phis­ti­cat­ed, and sin­cere voice encour­aged us to car­ry our cross and spread the gospel of love all over Chi­na.

Broth­er Samuel Lamb (Xian­gao Lin), a House Church leader in Guangzhou, encour­aged us over the tele­phone. He used the exam­ple of the church of Laodicea to warn us that we are in the midst of a “Laodicean age.” If we look around us, what we see is that “this one loves the world, and that one loves mon­ey.” Do not look around, then, but “lift up our heads and gaze upon Jesus Christ, who is the author and per­fecter of our faith! We shall over­come through the Lord!”

Elder­ly Sis­ter Esther Chun­yi Wang, who has com­plet­ed her six­ty-third anniver­sary in serv­ing the Lord, came forth with life tes­ti­monies to encour­age us to “trust in the Word of the Lord.” We should not only “seek after God’s will,” or “know God’s will,” but more impor­tant­ly, we should “fol­low God’s will!”

Broth­er Yun­bo Bian used the last words of Jesus to His dis­ci­ples in the Gar­den of Geth­se­mane to issue us a solemn call: “Rise, let us go! For­sake all. Take up your cross. Fol­low the foot­steps of the Lord. Go to Cal­vary. Rise, let us go!”

Rev. Stephen Tong asked in his mes­sage how the church in Main­land Chi­na could grow from 800 thou­sand mem­bers to 80 mil­lion. The only way is the way of the cross! He said, “A Chris­t­ian who has not walked the way of the cross has a shal­low life; a min­is­ter who serves with­out a heart of suf­fer­ing for the Lord is but van­i­ty; a church that has not been through the cross has no root, and can­not bear fruit!” He issued a wake-up call in the name of the Lord, “Are you will­ing to take up your cross, deny your­self, and fol­low Jesus? Are you will­ing to say to the Lord, ‘Lord, I am here, send me!’ The world needs the Gospel of the cross. You can tell it to them. Are you will­ing?”

Dear broth­ers and sis­ters, God has chal­lenged us through His ser­vants, how should we respond? So, we are appeal­ing to all broth­ers and sis­ters who have been born again in Jesus Christ and are will­ing to walk on the pil­grim­age of the cross.

Let us be holy, for God is holy! Let the filthy, unclean things depart far from us. Let us “rid our­selves of all such things as these: anger, rage, mal­ice, slan­der, and filthy lan­guage from your lips. Do not lie to each oth­er,” for we “have tak­en off our old self with its prac­tices, and have put on the new self” (Col. 3:8–10).

Let us die to sin! Let us cease sin­ning and claim vic­to­ry over evil by the word of God and the pow­er of the Holy Spir­it, as we dili­gent­ly read the Bible and pray! Let us no longer take the grace of God in vain. For those who sin with the pre­tense that “God is full of grace” are sure­ly bring­ing shame to the name of the Lord! Let us remem­ber what is taught in the Scrip­tures: “Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means!” (Rom. 6:15).

Let us die to the world! Let not the world cor­rupt us any longer. Let mon­ey, fame and world­ly things hold no attrac­tion to us. Let us stop putting so much time and mon­ey into hous­es, cars, beau­ti­ful lawns, or stocks and bonds. Are not these things exter­nal to our own bod­ies? They have noth­ing to do with us! What else do we want if we have the Lord?

Let us be salt; let us be light! Let the love of Christ so fill our hearts that we may go and love oth­ers. Become a “Good Samar­i­tan” today! Keep in mind, “what­ev­er you do for one of the least of these broth­ers of mine, you do for me!” (Matt. 25:40).

Let us go and spread the gospel! Were it not for the tear­ful sow­ing of the mis­sion­ar­ies and their water­ing with the blood of mar­tyrs in those ear­ly days, how could we be reap­ing with joy in Chi­na today? If it were not for those who were saved before us, and preached to us this joy­ful good news, we would be still strug­gling, float­ing, and sink­ing in sin and death! Let us also share the good news with oth­ers! If we are too far away to become a mis­sion­ary or a mar­tyr, we can at least share the Gospel with our imme­di­ate fam­i­ly mem­bers, neigh­bors, or col­leagues … even with those we meet on the street, those push­ing shop­ping carts when buy­ing gro­ceries in Chi­nese stores. If we feel it is too hard for us to give up our life in North Amer­i­ca and return to that land of suf­fer­ing where we were raised, at least we can share the Gospel with our kin­folk by means of prayer, let­ter writ­ing, tele­phon­ing and home vis­it­ing! Let us begin to act!

Let us take up our cross, deny our­selves and fol­low Christ! This should not become an emp­ty slo­gan. As Rev. Stephen Tong said, we are present­ly bear­ing no cross in our lives in the form of great per­se­cu­tions, pris­ons or chains. We are not cur­rent­ly in a sit­u­a­tion of “suf­fer­ing for Christ” or “dying for Christ,” but we are fac­ing the cross of “tak­ing small loss­es for Christ” (bear­ing mis­un­der­stand­ing from co-work­ers) and “liv­ing for Christ.” Let us take up this cross! As sung by Sis­ter Xiaoyun to us: “For the sake of the Lord, we are bur­dened under snow and sleet, mis­un­der­stand­ing and attacks, but with no com­plaints. The skies are vast, the earth is vast, noth­ing is more majes­tic than the love of our Lord! We walk togeth­er on the pil­grim­age and come home togeth­er. We will see our Abba Father, who will wipe our tears away.” Sis­ter Xiaoyun has tak­en up her cross. Thou­sands upon thou­sands of broth­ers and sis­ters in Main­land Chi­na have tak­en up their cross­es. Let us also take up our own cross; begin to act!

Let us begin to act, go for­ward on our knees, putting our faith into action! Do not let “Evan­ge­lize!” “Bear the cross!” and “Live for Christ!” be emp­ty and abstract spir­i­tu­al ter­mi­nol­o­gy, but action while on our knees in prayer. The time has come for our spir­i­tu­al lives to be revived, and our church­es to be awak­ened!

At the Olympic games that occur every four years, a torch is lit at the open­ing cer­e­mo­ny, and extin­guished at the clos­ing of the games. The torch­es that were lit in our hearts at this Con­fer­ence should nev­er be extin­guished! As we have sung at the con­fer­ence: “Fire of the Spir­it Ablaze!” Let the fire of the Holy Spir­it keep burn­ing ablaze in our church­es, ablaze in our lives! Oh let the Holy Spir­it’s fire of revival burn off the spir­i­tu­al wilder­ness in our hearts! Amen! Amen!

-Edi­to­r­i­al from Chris­t­ian Life Quar­ter­ly Newslet­ter, No. 13.