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Scripture Reading: Col. 3:16-17; Eph. 5:18-19; 1 Thes. 5:16-20; Eph. 6:17-18; Heb. 10:19-22; 4:16; John 6:63
In the four Gospels the Lord Jesus came as the Word. Then through His crucifixion and resurrection He was transfigured into the Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45b). After His resurrection and ascension, from the book of Acts through all the Epistles, the Lord Jesus is the life-giving Spirit. Therefore, in our experience we need to learn how to transfer the Lord as the Word into the Spirit. We need to know the Lord as the Word, the expression, the revelation, the manifestation, of God, but we need more than this. After we know Him as the Word, we need Him to be transferred into the Spirit so that we may not only know Him but also experience Him.
In the four Gospels the Lord Jesus is revealed as the Word, the expression, the manifestation, of God for us to know. At that time Jesus was always among the early disciples for them to see, to study, and to know. Day by day throughout those three and a half years, Peter and the other disciples knew the Lord more and more. However, when we come to the book of Acts and the Epistles, we see the Lord Jesus as the life-giving Spirit indwelling our spirit (Rom. 8:16; 2 Tim. 4:22), not mainly for us to know but to partake of, taste, enjoy, and experience. Here we have two steps in our dealing with the Lord. The first step is to know Him as the Word — the more the better. The second step is to enjoy Him, to taste Him, and to experience Him — the more deeply the better. The principle is that we all must learn how to transfer the Lord as the Word into the Spirit.
Colossians 3:16 and 17 say, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to God. And whatever you do in word or in deed, do all things in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him.” These two verses show us that psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs come out of the word that fills us. When we are filled with the word, we give praises and thanks with psalms, hymns, and songs. The parallel passage in Ephesians 5:18 and 19 says, “Do not be drunk with wine, in which is dissoluteness, but be filled in spirit, speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and psalming with your heart to the Lord.” Of the two passages in these sister books, one tells us that when we are filled with the word, we praise the Lord with psalms, hymns, and songs, whereas the other says that when we are filled in spirit, we praise with psalms, hymns, and songs. This proves that the word becomes the Spirit to us. When we are filled with the word in a proper way, we are at the same time filled in spirit.
By our own experience we know that the word must become the Spirit. Otherwise, we can never praise adequately. To praise with hymns is not something merely from the mind; our praising must be from the spirit. When our spirit is touched by the word as the Spirit, we have praise within us.
When the word spoken to us comes into us, it becomes the Spirit. Then when we speak it to others, it becomes the word again, and when they receive it, it becomes the Spirit to them. The Spirit going out becomes the word, and the word received in a proper way becomes the Spirit. If the word does not become the Spirit, it is mere knowledge, the letter that kills (2 Cor. 3:6). If we receive the word only in our mind, it is knowledge in letter, but when we receive the word into our spirit, it becomes Spirit. Moreover, when the word becomes Spirit, it becomes life.
There is no need to teach people how to receive the word into their mind. People do this spontaneously. However, not many Christians know how to receive the word as the Spirit. The only way to receive the word as the Spirit is by prayer. Regardless of how deeply we have received the word, it will not be life to us until we have adequate prayer. A person may hear the gospel and be very deeply inspired and moved by the Holy Spirit. However, if this person does not pray, he still cannot be saved. Regardless of how deeply this person is inspired, he still needs to pray; this is a principle. Many times we have been inspired by a good message, but we have neglected to pray. Therefore, after a short time the inspiration is gone. In order to keep the message that we have heard and been inspired by, we must immediately pray the message into our spirit. Then this message will be sown into our spirit and mingled with our spirit by our prayer. To pray makes a very big difference.
In our gospel preaching we have learned that regardless of how much people understand a message and are inspired by it, we still have to help them to pray. To pray is like putting a signature on a contract. Everything may be written into a contract, but if we do not sign it, it means nothing. From now on, after a message is delivered, we have to help the listeners to pray about it.
We can apply the same principle to our reading. Every time we read the Bible, we need to put what we have read and understood into prayer. If we spend ten minutes for reading, we should spend at least fifteen minutes for prayer. We need to pray more in order to receive what we read into our spirit. Many times when we read the word, we gain knowledge and understanding in the mind, but we are not nourished within. Not until we spend time to pray with what we read will we be nourished in our spirit. Then we will be not only enlightened and taught, but also nourished, refreshed, and strengthened within.
We have suffered too much simply because we have neglected this principle. In reading, listening, and fellowshipping we have come to know many things, and we have been truly inspired, but we have neglected to pray. Therefore, what we have heard and that which has inspired us quickly disappear. Gradually, however, we keep the knowledge in our mentality. As a result, we have much knowledge but not enough growth in life. The knowledge in our mind becomes the killing letter, which damages our Christian life.
The Epistles emphasize that we need to pray more than we need to read. First Thessalonians 5:16 through 20 says, “Always rejoice, unceasingly pray, in everything give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. Do not quench the Spirit; do not despise prophecies.” If we read all these verses together, we can see that praying has very much to do with our thanksgiving to God. Verse 17 tells us to pray unceasingly, verse 18 tells us to give thanks in everything, and verse 19 says to not quench the Spirit. This implies that if we do not pray, we quench the Spirit. We may think that we quench the Spirit by doing something wrong. In actuality, we quench the Spirit simply by not praying. Moreover, verse 20 speaks of prophecies. Prophecies indicate the word and the ministry of the word. To not pray about what we have heard is to despise the ministry of the word. If we respect what we have heard in the ministry of the word, we will pray about it and pray with it.
Ephesians 6:17 and 18 say, “Receive the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which Spirit is the word of God, by means of all prayer and petition, praying at every time in spirit and watching unto this in all perseverance and petition concerning all the saints.” The context of this passage shows us that to pray is much more important than to read. This does not mean that we should not read and listen to messages. We should do this. However, what we need is to pray more than to read. We need prayer to match our reading. We need to pray with and about every portion of the word that we read and every message that we hear. Otherwise, it can be only knowledge in the mind; it can never be nourishment and life supply in the spirit. We will have knowledge but not the Spirit. Eventually, we will have death instead of life. We all have to learn this principle. In order to have our meetings in a new and living way, we have to help the brothers and sisters to practice day by day to pray more than to read. We have neglected this too much.
God needs and desires a people to be priests. We are all saved to be priests (Rev. 1:6; 1 Pet. 2:5, 9). A priest is one who burns the incense before God (Exo. 30:7-8). To burn the incense is to pray. Only those who go to the Lord to pray and contact Him are those who fulfill God’s purpose. In the four Gospels, when the Lord Jesus came to this earth among the Jews, there were not many priests. Rather, there were too many scribes. Scribes are religious scholars, theologians; they are not priests. Priests are not a people of knowledge. Priests are a people of incense. Day by day they burn the incense; that is, they pray. Zachariah, the father of John the Baptist, is a good example of a priest, going into the temple to burn the incense and to pray (Luke 1:8-9).
Throughout the whole Bible, even from the time of Adam, God’s intention has been to have a priestly people. This is the unique kind of people that God needs. Abel was a priest, and Noah also was a priest. They did not have an official priest to make their offerings for them. They made their offerings by themselves. However, the work of the priests is not mainly to make offerings. It is to burn the incense.
There are two altars in the tabernacle. One is outside the tabernacle, and another one is inside the tabernacle. The offering altar on the outside is made of bronze, whereas the incense altar on the inside is of gold (Exo. 27:1-2; 30:1, 3). The offering altar is for the incense altar. We can prove this in two ways. First, the fire used to burn the incense came from the altar of burnt offering. The only fire that could be used to burn the incense was the fire from the altar of burnt offering, the heavenly fire that came from God (Lev. 9:24). Any other kind of fire would have been “strange fire,” like that which the two sons of Aaron offered (10:1). This signifies that in order to pray, we have to pray based on the redemption of the cross. Redemption at the offering altar is for fellowship at the incense altar. At the offering altar there is the cleansing of the blood for fellowship. First John 1:7 tells us that in order to maintain the fellowship, we need the cleansing of the blood. Without the offering altar we do not have the ground to burn the incense, that is, to fellowship with God. Redemption is for fellowship; it brings us back into the fellowship with God. Second, the blood shed upon the offering altar was brought into the Holy Place to be sprinkled upon the four horns of the incense altar (Lev. 4:7a). This again proves that the altar outside the tabernacle is for the one inside the Holy Place.
The priests are not those who only offer the offerings. The priests are a people who burn the incense, and to burn the incense is to pray. Ephesians 6:5 through 7 tells us that even to serve a human master as a slave is a kind of service to God. However, that is not a service like the priests had in the Holy Place when they burned the incense. Many Levites labored around the altar in the outer court, without coming into the Holy Place. They only carried the cows and sheep, slew them, skinned them, and did many other duties. That was a work to serve God, but that kind of service was different from the service of those who burned the incense. We need to learn how to burn the incense in a fine way to offer a sweet odor to God. To serve God in the outer court as a Levite is one kind of service, but to serve as a priest burning incense to God directly is another thing.
To come into the Holy of Holies is even deeper. In the Holy of Holies there is not an altar but the ark with the shekinah glory of God. The service in the outer court, the service in the Holy Place, and the service in the Holy of Holies are all services to God, but what kind of service do we want to have? To serve in the Holy Place requires that we learn to burn the incense by praying.
The tabernacle and the temple signify our being which is composed of three parts — spirit, soul, and body. In order to burn the incense, we must learn how to behave, act, and serve inwardly, not only outwardly. Gradually, we must learn how to be in our spirit. According to the record of the Bible, it is hard to discern whether the incense altar is outside the veil or within the veil before the Ark (Exo. 30:6; 1 Kings 6:22; Heb. 9:3-4). This is a problem for Bible students. However, this arrangement is under God’s sovereignty. In typology this signifies that when we begin to pray, we are mostly in the soul and only a little in the spirit. It is hard to tell whether we are praying in the Holy Place or in the Holy of Holies. After a few minutes, however, we enter more deeply into the spirit. At this point we are praying in the spirit.
Aaron took a censer of incense to burn before Jehovah within the veil of the tabernacle (Lev. 16:12-13). This censer is different from the incense altar. According to the proper spiritual interpretation, the incense altar is for general prayer, but the censer is for special prayers. Special prayers are something deeper, in the Holy of Holies. All our special prayers must be in the spirit. Therefore, we must learn to behave, act, live, and walk in an inward way.
We all must seek to live in an inward way to contact the Lord. What God needs is a people to contact Him by praying. In today’s Christianity there is much outward activity, but there is not much inward contact with the Lord to burn the incense. A priest is a person who burns the incense inwardly, not in the outer court but in the Holy Place, and even in the Holy of Holies, to contact the Lord. Hebrews 10:19 through 22 exhorts us to enter into the Holy of Holies, and 4:16 encourages us to touch the throne of grace. One who enters the Holy of Holies and touches the throne of grace is a priest. In Colossians 4:16 Paul exhorted the Colossians to read his epistle to the Laodiceans, but for the most part, the writers of the Epistles encourage us not to read more but to be praying persons, persons who constantly go into the Holy of Holies to touch the throne of grace.
The kind of person who can contact God is not a working person but a praying person. What we need in the Lord’s recovery today is for more people to pray. We look to the Lord for changing the way we have our meetings, but if we are not a praying people, we can have only formal meetings. We can have living meetings only when we become a praying people. We may compare the formality in Christian meetings to grave cloths. In John 11:44 the Lord told the people to remove the resurrected Lazarus’s grave cloths. However, if Lazarus had not resurrected, taking off his grave cloths would only have uncovered his stench. If we change the way we meet, but our meetings are not living, they will be meetings full of stench, like a cemetery full of death. Therefore, we must encourage the brothers to learn how to pray.
To be a praying people, every day we have to read the Word, but we have to pray more than read. If we spend ten minutes for reading, we should spend another twenty minutes for praying. This kind of prayer is not to pray for affairs, business, husbands and wives, school, jobs, or even for help. This is simply to pray about what we read and to pray with what we read in order to contact the Lord. It is not a business-doing prayer but a God-contacting prayer. We must learn to pray to feed on Christ and drink of Christ. We should forget about our business and forget about our needs. We have Matthew 6:33 as a promise: If we seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, He will add to us whatever we need. We must learn simply to seek Him by praying about what we read and with what we read.
Very few Christians have a proper prayer life, and even fewer pray with what they read. We need to pray with what we read and pray about what we read. Then the word which we receive will become the Spirit in our spirit, and when the word becomes the Spirit, it is life to us. “The words which I have spoken to you are spirit and are life” (John 6:63). How can the word become Spirit to us? There is no way other than by our prayer. May we pray about this word. May the Lord grant us a real change and a real revelation in spirit that we may serve Him, not merely in the outer court but in the Holy Place, even in the Holy of Holies. We all must learn not to be scribes or teachers but priests, paying more attention to prayer than to reading.
