EXTRACTS FROM NOTES OF A READING, 1938
H.F.N. … Some of us were saying recently, that the meeting is like a river which makes its own bed or channel; but if you turn a reading into a canal, you lose the flow of life. It is a good question to raise in our minds, Are our reading meetings canals or are they rivers?
E.E. Would the Lord open our understandings to-day?
H.F.N. Yes, indeed, and we should get some distinct illumination from Him; we should expect some definite ray of His glory to shine into the hearts of the saints. We should never have a mere ordinary reading meeting.
E.E.S.L. Is there any way in which we could facilitate this and remove impediments?
H.F.N. With those in Luke 24 there was respect for the Lord’s authority, and a mutual state among the brethren. It is a great thing in a reading meeting, that while we recognise the main stream, we look for a spirit of mutuality, so that all might be contributors …
W.J.H. Say a little more about what you meant by a reading meeting being like a canal sometimes.
H.F.N. I think if we follow a verse by verse study of a chapter, we may miss the living thought that the Lord would present. We are often held by a verbal study of the Scripture, instead of allowing the river to make its own channel; wherever the river comes it brings fertility.
W.J.H. You do not know just where it will branch.
H.F.N. Quite so. A question that is the outcome of an exercise with God may profitably occupy the rest of a meeting as we seek to follow it up.
G.A.v.S. Every godly exercise, whether in brothers or sisters, will contribute to the general spring of what the Spirit is giving us in our reading meeting.
H.F.N. Exactly. And another feature that the Lord would develop is the spirit of enquiry.
Extract from a reading entitled ’Assembly Visitations II’ in The Truth of the Assembly: Notes of Meetings in Australia 1938 H.F. Nunnerley
Sydney, 17 April 1938
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