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Scripture Reading: 2 Tim. 3:16a; John 6:63; Col. 3:16; Eph. 5:18-19; Matt. 4:4; Jer. 15:16a; John 5:39-40
Recently, the brothers and sisters have been practicing a time of morning watch to learn how to contact the Lord by reading the Word and praying. In this message I do not want to give you more knowledge. Rather, I would like to stress this practice and confirm that it is right. Reading the Word and praying is absolutely necessary in our spiritual life.
Many passages in the Bible show us what the word of God is, what the proper way is to appropriate it, and how to take the word and apply it to ourselves. Second Timothy 3:16a says, “All Scripture is God-breathed.” God-breathed is the literal translation of the Greek word in this verse. All Scripture is the breath of God and is something breathed out of God Himself. We all know that God is Spirit. Whatever is breathed out of God as Spirit must be spirit; this is logical. Therefore, we have John 6:63, which says, “It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing; the words which I have spoken to you are spirit and are life.” The words He speaks are spirit because He is the Spirit. The words He speaks are something breathed out of Him, and anything breathed out of Him must be spirit. All Scripture is the breath of God. In Greek pneuma, the word for spirit, is the same word for breath and air. This is very meaningful. By 2 Timothy 3:16 and John 6:63 we can realize that the word of God is simply the breathing of God as the Spirit.
All the words spoken by God in the Scriptures are spirit. Two more passages prove that the word and the Spirit are really one. Colossians 3:16 says, “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.” Ephesians and Colossians are two sister books; many things in them are the same. Ephesians 5:18 and 19 say, “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.” Colossians says that we sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs by the word of Christ richly dwelling in our heart, and Ephesians says that we sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs by being filled in spirit. By comparing these two passages, we can realize that the word is the Spirit. To be filled with the word properly means that we are filled in spirit. It is wrong to have the mere knowledge of the word but not be filled in spirit. To have the word dwelling in us requires that we be filled in spirit, because the word is the Spirit.
How do we know that we are filled in spirit when we have the word? If we keep the word only in our mind, we will not sing, but when we have the word as the Spirit filling us, we will spontaneously sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs. Psalms are long poems. We should not say that we have too many long hymns. I am still not satisfied with the length of our hymns. I would like to write one with more than one hundred verses, like a psalm. Psalm 119 has one hundred seventy-six verses, consisting of twenty-two paragraphs of eight verses each. In general, though, hymns are not too long and not too short, and spiritual songs are short, like a chorus. When we have the word as spirit filling us, spontaneously we will sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs. When we sing hymns, do we exercise our mind or our spirit? To memorize the word is to exercise the mind, but to sing hymns from the word is to exercise the spirit. We should learn to sing and not just to memorize.
Matthew 4:4 says, “He answered and said, It is written, ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that proceeds out through the mouth of God.’” According to this verse, the word spoken by God is not only the breath of God but also bread as food to feed us. Because we have a body, we need physical food, but besides the body we also have a spirit, so we need spiritual food. The spiritual food is God Himself, and the way to appropriate God Himself is by His word. God is Spirit, and the word spoken by Him is the Spirit as His breath. Moreover, God is in this word as food to us. Therefore, we need to take the word of God, not as mere knowledge, instruction, or teachings but as food, not as the “menu” but as the “dinner.” When we go to a restaurant, we do not go for the menu or pay the most attention to the menu. Regrettably, though, many times we come to the Bible for the “menu,” not for the food. We have to learn to come to the Lord to read His word for the food, not for the knowledge.
Jeremiah 15:16a says, “Your words were found and I ate them, / And Your word became to me / The gladness and joy of my heart.” If we do not know how to eat the word, how can we enjoy it? How can we have the gladness and joy in our heart for the word and with the word? We have to know how to eat the word. When we find the Lord’s words, we should not only know them but eat them, so that they become both the gladness and the joy. Gladness and joy imply singing; we have joy within and singing as our rejoicing without.
In the first stage of my Christian life, for about seven years, I was taught very much not only to study but also to search and research the word by exercising my mentality to take the knowledge in letter from the word. I was not taught how to eat the word and apply it by exercising my spirit, and I never heard of people doing this. After this stage, by the mercy of the Lord, I came to know a different way to deal with the word. It is to exercise the spirit to apply the word in our spirit, that is, to eat the word.
Many people have been reading and studying the Bible for years, but I am not speaking about the old way of taking the word. What I am speaking is a new way that the brothers and sisters among us have been helped to realize. Some of us, though, may not know it very well, or we may know it partly but not in an adequate way. I would like to make this clear to you so that we can be brought into the proper way to apply the word of the Lord daily. In the garden of Eden there were two trees, the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Without the revelation of the Scriptures we could never realize that the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is something negative, bringing death to us. However, the Bible tells us clearly that this tree brings death. This is confirmed by 2 Corinthians 3:6, which says that the letter kills. The letter here is mere knowledge, the knowledge in letters. The letter kills, but the Spirit gives life. When we take the tree of life, we have life, but when we touch the tree of knowledge, we find death. The one Bible can be two kinds of books to us, a book of knowledge or a book of life. If it is a book of knowledge to us, it will kill us; it will bring death.
How can this book be a book of knowledge, and how can it be a book of life? I will tell you the secret. If we take this book merely by exercising our mentality to read, study, memorize, and keep it in our mind, it is one hundred percent a book of knowledge to us. But there is another way to contact this book and apply it. It is not only to exercise our mind but even more to exercise our spirit. Of course, we have to read it. We have to use our eyes, that is, our body. When we exercise our eyes as members of our body to read the word, spontaneously the mind of the soul understands it. However, this is not all. After this, we have to exercise our spirit. When we exercise our spirit to contact the word and apply it, the Bible becomes a book of life. Whether this Bible is a book of knowledge or a book of life to us depends on whether we exercise our mind or our spirit to contact it. If we exercise only our mind, this book becomes a book of knowledge. Then it will not help us; on the contrary, it will kill us. However, if we exercise our spirit to contact the Bible, spontaneously it will be a book of life to constantly nourish us.
John 5:39 and 40 says, “You search the Scriptures, because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is these that testify concerning Me. Yet you are not willing to come to Me that you may have life.” The Jews, especially the scribes and Pharisees, spent much time to research the Scriptures. However, they would not come to the Lord Jesus. This means that they contacted only the written word by exercising their mind to understand it; they would not exercise their spirit to come to contact the Lord. Therefore, the Scriptures became a book of knowledge to kill them. The Jewish scribes and Pharisees knew the Scriptures, but they were killed by the Scriptures. They did not have life to constantly nourish them because they were using the wrong organ. They used only their mentality without exercising their spirit.
Let us apply this principle. Whenever we come to read the Bible, we first must realize that it must be a book of life, not a book of knowledge. It must not be knowledge but spiritual food. Second, when we come to read the Bible, we should not have the intention to get mere knowledge. Rather, we must have the intention to get some spiritual food. Yes, the Bible is written and printed in black and white. Yet we must realize that it is not an ordinary writing; it is something breathed out of God Himself. It is the breath of God as the Spirit to be food to us. Therefore, we come to the Bible not with the intention to gain some knowledge but with the desire to be fed. We should not say that we already know these things. We may know them, but we may not practice them. We must thoroughly, clearly realize that the Bible is food to us rather than knowledge, so we come to it not for knowledge but to be fed.
Because the Bible is written in black and white, we have to read it. Praise the Lord, He created two eyes to read with and a mind to understand! Whenever we read, therefore, we spontaneously understand something. Some may say that many times they do not understand what they read. This is true, but still we understand something. We may not understand all the passages we read, but we understand some. Out of eighteen verses, we may understand one verse, or at least one phrase. We should not deal with what we do not understand. We should take care of what we do understand and not be tempted to exercise our mind to understand more. If we simply read the Bible, spontaneously we will understand something. We may illustrate this with eating chicken. When we eat a chicken, we do not care for the bones. Rather, we care for the tender parts. If we simply eat the delicious, tender parts, we can enjoy the chicken and forget about the bones. Then we will be nourished. No one is so foolish as to try to eat the bones. Whoever does this will end up tired and hungry.
With any chapter, any passage, or any portion of the Bible, we simply should read it, understand what we understand, and not try to understand any more. Then we should not wait. Right away we should transform what we understand into prayer, the more the better. By praying about and with what we understand, we will eat the word. We will feed on the Lord through the word by exercising our spirit. We must learn to pray in this way.
We may use any chapter to illustrate the way to feed on the Lord through His word. It is easy to use a chapter such as 1 John 1, so for our illustration we can select a more difficult chapter, such as Titus 2. A new believer, a sister, may come to the book of Titus, even though she did not formerly know where Titus is. She may turn to chapter 2 and read verse 1: “But you, speak the things which are fitting to the healthy teaching.” She does not know what the healthy teaching is, so she continues with verse 2, which says, “Exhort older men to be temperate, grave, of a sober mind, healthy in faith, in love, in endurance.” She also does not know what these words mean, although she knows a little about love. She reads verses 3 and 4: “Older women likewise to be in demeanor as befits those who engage in sacred things, not slanderers, nor enslaved by much wine, teachers of what is good, that they may train the young women to love their husbands, to love their children.” At this point the sister understands something. She is impressed concerning loving her husband and her children, so right away she puts these two items into prayer. She prays, “Lord, You know that I cannot love my husband. We have been married for many years, but we always fight. I cannot make it.” In this way she prays and opens herself to the Lord. Then while she is praying, the Lord as the Spirit within her imparts something into her. Even though she has never heard such a prayer before, she can still say, “Lord, I have no love, but You are this love. You are the love by which I can love my husband. Lord, fill me. When You fill me, I will be filled with love, and spontaneously I will love my husband through You, by You, with You, and in You.”
When we learn to pray in this way, the Holy Spirit will teach us many good prayers. In this way we will pray ourselves into the Lord, and we will pray the Lord into us. In the illustration above, she may go on to pray about the second point concerning loving her children. At this point she will open to the Lord and will exercise her spirit to contact Him. There is no need to spend the time to exercise our mind to read and understand. We need to stop the exercise of the mind and open ourselves by exercising our spirit. This opens the gate, paves the way, and gives the opportunity to the Lord to come in more and more as the Spirit. Moreover, we will learn to pray in a wonderful way, in the way of life.
We do not need to hurry to read a certain number of verses. We should simply pray about the points we understand until we feel the burden is gone. Then we can say, “Lord, now I have to go.” We may stop our prayer, but we will have received something.
I have been a Christian for more than forty years. Even up until now, I do not know the proper language to express what I have learned. However, I may illustrate it in this way. All the commandments of the Scriptures, both in the Old and New Testaments, are the Lord Himself. To love your husband is a commandment, but this commandment is the Lord Himself. If it is not the Lord Himself but merely a commandment in letters, it will kill and condemn. This never helps or nourishes us. We should tell the Lord, “Lord, this commandment to love my husband must be Yourself. So Lord, I will not take this word apart from You. I must take You as this word, and I must take this word with You. Lord, if You do not come into me, if You do not impart Yourself into me, then even if I seem to keep this word, I still cannot love my husband. The love that I need for my husband must be You, Lord. You must come into me. I am not taking merely this commandment; I am taking You as this commandment.” How can we take the Lord as the commandment? It is by praying about what we understand. While we pray in this way, we will absorb the Lord into us.
We should not deal with the word alone. Rather, while we are dealing with the word, we have to deal with the Lord. When we deal with any commandment, we must deal with the Lord at the same time to make the Lord one with His word. As we have illustrated, a wife may have fought with her husband for many years, but then she becomes a Christian. She loves the Lord to a certain degree, and she knows that she should read the word. When she reads in Titus 2 that she should love her husband and her children, she is inspired by this word. However, it is not good enough that she keeps this word in her mind and makes the decision to keep the Lord’s word from that day onward. If she does only this, she has a kind of religion, not a salvation. Even the teachings of Confucius among the Chinese are almost the same as this. This is the wrong way.
The right way is that when we read this word, we realize that the Lord can never be separated from His word. Every word of the Lord is something breathed out of Himself. It is the breath of the living Lord. All the commandments must be the Lord Himself. Therefore, we take this word to the Lord to pray with and about this word. We contact the Lord through this word and spend time with the Lord by taking this word, praying, praising, thanking, and looking to Him. In this way, it seems that we are taking the word into our mind, but even the more we are absorbing the Lord into us. There is no need to make up our mind to love our husband. If we simply read by praying to the Lord about what we understand, we will absorb Him into us. Eventually, the Lord will fill us, and we will love our husband spontaneously and unconsciously. We will love him because we are absorbing the Lord and being filled with Him. If we pray for twenty minutes in the morning about, for example, loving our husband and our children, we will be filled not only with the word of the Lord but with the Lord Himself. Then the Lord Himself in His word will be our love.
The revolutionizing way to read the Bible is to pray. We must pray about every word that we understand. If we do not understand something, we do not need to focus on that part. The Bible is too rich. Some friends brought me into an American supermarket and said, “Brother Lee, do you see how rich America is? See how big the supermarket is with so many items.” I tell you, the Bible is bigger than the supermarket and richer than America. There are so many items in it. I have been laboring on this book for more than forty years, but today I still do not understand many things. Many items are new to me day by day. Therefore, there is no need to be tempted to know more. The supermarkets in America are not poor. There is no need to search for things. There are plenty of items; just pick something. In the same way, simply come to any corner of the “supermarket” of the Bible and stretch out your hand, and you will get something.
We should not read the Bible only to read the Bible. The right way to read the Bible is that as soon as we understand something, we should put it into prayer. We should not spend more time in reading than in prayer. Rather, we should pray more than read. We must learn to change our way.
Some may say that they do not understand much about the Bible. Praise the Lord that you do not understand much. I am afraid that many people seem to know the Bible too much. I can assure you that by taking the word with prayer, the Bible will be very open to you after only five years. You will know this book in a living way. The first time you read it, you may not understand much; still, you understand something. The second time, however, you will understand more, and the third time even more. Even so, I would advise you not to try to understand more. Rather, always try to pray more.
There is a real need, especially for the new and young believers who have not been built up in this way, to daily spend some time with the Lord, at least half an hour a day. I would recommend that you have a morning time, but if that is not convenient, you can use other times. The best time, however, is the morning. If possible, you must build up such a habit to spend at least half an hour to be with the Lord every day. Make this your top regulation. During this time simply read the Word, understanding it spontaneously, but mostly spending your time in prayer. Do not try to read too much, and do not try to understand too much. Rather, always spend more and more time in prayer. I do not mean that you should bring many items to the Lord. Instead, simply pray according to what you understand. As to your needs, leave that to the Lord’s care. We have the promise that if we seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, our Father will take care of whatever we need (Matt. 6:33). We have to stand on this promise. We should simply seek the Lord Himself, seek His kingdom, and seek His righteousness, forgetting about our need, or rather, leaving our need to His care.
We need to spend time to read, to understand, and to pray over the Word. By doing this, we will absorb the Lord into us and apply the word to ourselves in a living way. Then we will be nourished by the Lord Himself. The commandment that we receive will be the Lord Himself, and it will be an easy thing for us to do. To love our husband will be easy. It will be spontaneous. It will not be a burden or a mere commandment; it will be an enjoyment. We will enjoy the Lord to love our husband. It will not be we but the Lord who loves our husband through us.
We must learn to change our way to read the Word. Fifteen years ago I did not dare to tell this to people. Today, however, I have the full assurance that this is the right way. We should not say this is too slow or that it will take twenty years to finish the whole Bible. We should leave that to the Lord. With this way, we will know the Word better and more deeply, and we will enjoy it in a richer and more living way. When will we finish reading the Bible? We should leave this to the Lord. We must simply come to the Bible day by day. We should not ask, “When will I exhaust all the riches of America?” We cannot finish eating all the riches. They are too rich. We simply need to take care of our nourishment and be nourished that we may grow and be strong. In the same principle, we must learn to spend at least half an hour with the Lord daily. During this half hour, we should not pray for something else, such as the church, the gospel, the work, or the service. We must forget about everything else. We need to first feed on the Lord through the word, taking the word as life and food. We need to learn how to practice reading in this living way.
I have no assurance that we all practice this. Therefore, I am still concerned. We need to promise ourselves and the Lord that from today we will practice this kind of reading, spending half an hour every day with the Lord to open His Word, read, understand something, and put it into prayer, the more the better. If we are open to the Lord in this way, the Holy Spirit will inspire us to pray, and He will give us the living utterance to pray. Then whatever we pray will be our nourishment. It is by this kind of prayer that we will absorb the Lord into us and apply the word as our spiritual nourishment that enables us to grow.
Sometimes we need to sing something. This is why we need the hymns. For the proper Christian life, there is the need not only for the Bible but for a hymnal. That is why we have spent much time in the preparation of our hymnal with one thousand eighty hymns. I would encourage the church to learn one or two new hymns in every meeting. Then we should spend time to sing them, privately or with two to six others. Every time after reading and praying, it is right to sing the hymns. We should sing them not merely in a musical way according to the regulations of singing, but from our spirit. We should sing the hymns spiritually. If we learn the hymns, we can select those that fit the meaning of certain Scriptures. Then we can use a proper hymn to fit our situation. To sing in this way will stir up our spirit. Therefore, I am in much anticipation for the completion of our hymnal. It will be a great help to us.
I would encourage the brothers and sisters to practice two things, which strictly speaking are one. First, we should spend half an hour with the Lord daily, not to pray for our needs, the church, the gospel, or the work, but to feed on His word. Then second, every time we feed on the word we should sing a proper hymn that matches our prayer, our understanding, and our feeding. We should practice these two things daily.
In this message we have clearly seen that the word of God is the breath of God as food and drink to us. We have to learn how to take the breath of God by exercising our spirit. The way to exercise our spirit is to transform what we understand from our reading into prayer. Then as we are open to the Holy Spirit, He will grant us many new experiences and new utterances. Many times when we pray in this way, it is easy to be filled with the Holy Spirit. If we do this, we will have a feast, a rich nourishment. If we have the time, we can try this a second time in the day and have another meal. However, we should at least have one meal a day. We must forget the old way to read the Word and take this new way of practice. We should not care for our concordance; we can just take the word in a simple way. We must open the Bible and go book by book, chapter by chapter, and verse by verse without skipping. We must just keep reading and then when we understand something, we can put it into prayer. We should not care for how long it will take. We can simply pray and let the Holy Spirit have the free way to get into us. We should not make a regulation that we must understand a certain number of items each morning. We should simply open ourselves very much to the Lord and leave the understanding to Him. We must try to learn this way.
Concerning whether or not we should pray aloud, I would not make a regulation. What we do depends on two things, the Holy Spirit within and the environment without. If the Holy Spirit leads us to jump, we have to jump. If the Holy Spirit leads us to shout, we have to shout, if the environment allows. If we shout too loudly, though, we may be thrown out of our apartment. That is not right.
With everything in the universe, however, there is a principle, a natural law. In principle, it is hard for a person to pray with no voice. It is hard to maintain a silent prayer. At least it is hard for me; I have to utter something with my voice. In order to keep ourselves in prayer, we may have to utter something. I say again, however, that we should not make a regulation. It depends on the Holy Spirit. If we are open to the Lord, the Holy Spirit will lead us to release our spirit, and if the environment permits, He will lead us to pray loudly. The most important thing, though, is to read, understand something, and pray.
We have three parts: a body, a soul, and a spirit. Especially in reading, we must exercise all three parts. We use our body with our eyes to read, our soul with the mind to understand, and our spirit to pray. Most Christians only go so far as to read and understand. Eventually, they are killed, and they kill others. Because they know so much, they are condemned, and they condemn others. The more we read the Bible in this way, the more we know how to condemn others. Because we receive the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, our eyes are opened. This is good for killing others, condemning others, and criticizing others. When we come to the message meeting and a brother turns to Genesis 2, we may say, “I know. He will talk about the two trees.” This is because we have the knowledge. Then we will listen with a criticizing spirit; we will be killed, we will kill others, and we will spread much death. We have to break through this limitation. We have to get into the spirit, not merely to read and understand but to pray.
We should exercise our eyes a little to read the black and white letters. Spontaneously there will be no need to exercise our mind. Our mind is too exercised already; it is too active. Even when we sleep, our mind is still working in our many dreams. We are good dreamers who exercise our mind too much. There is no need to exercise our mind, because when we read, we will spontaneously understand something. However, we must pay our full attention to the exercise of the spirit though prayer.
We need to learn this new way. Then the Bible will be living to us. It will be a book of life and the real tree of life. Day by day we will sit under the shadow of this tree and enjoy all its fruits. We will not be killed, and we will not kill others. Neither will we be condemned, nor will we condemn others. Rather, we will be nourished so that we will be able to nourish others. We must learn to read the word in this way. If we all would practice this kind of reading, the church will be very enriched, strengthened, and built up. We will be so rich to nourish others. We will have the life nourishment without the dead knowledge of letters. May the Lord be merciful to us and deliver us from seeking the knowledge of letters so that we may take the word as the nourishment of life. May we take this and put it into practice.
