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The Precious Word of God, Message Three
The Bible—God’s Feeding
Day 6

III. How to enjoy the word—by means of all prayer

Ephesians 6:17–18a And 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….

John 6:63 It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing; the words which I have spoken to you are spirit and are life.

Job 23:12b …I have treasured the words of His mouth more than my apportioned food.

Read over the outline points and verses above and use these for your prayer to spend time with the Lord in the Word in the morning. After your prayer time, jot down in your notebook one or two things that the Lord touched you with. Afterward, read the following portion, either in your morning time or sometime later in the day. It has also been recorded for you to listen to if you like.

Reading portion:

MINGLING OUR READING OF THE WORD WITH PRAYER

In this chapter we want to have more fellowship concerning enjoying Christ in an intimate way. There are always many ways to do a certain thing, but we want to know the best way. The best way to pray is to mingle our reading of the Word with our prayer. We should read the Word to enjoy the Lord. When we come to read the Word, our mind should not take the lead. As we are reading, we will spontaneously understand something. Then we can consider what we read. After our consideration, we can transfer what we understand and consider into prayer. We should pray by exercising our spirit.

We should not exercise our mind to compose a prayer. Instead, we must learn to pray with broken sentences and phrases. When we are speaking intimately to those who are close to us, we do not compose something in a formal way, yet many of us do not pray and talk to the Lord intimately. Instead, we compose something formal. This kills our spirit and helps us to exercise our mind. We must learn to pray in a very spontaneous way with terms and phrases but without any formal composition. We should learn to be spontaneous with the Lord. As we are praying, we are reading the Word, and as we are reading, we are praying. Our praying and reading are mingled together. This is the way to deal with the Word in order to enjoy Christ.

Christ is life and everything to us for our enjoyment. On the one hand, the Lord is the Word and is in the Word. On the other hand, the Lord is the Spirit and is in the Spirit. Also, the Word is the Spirit. John 1:1 reveals that Christ was the Word in the beginning. John 6:63 shows that the Word is the Spirit. Ephesians 6:17 shows that the Spirit is the Word. We have the Word in our hand and the Spirit in our spirit. These are the two means for us to contact and enjoy Christ. The Christian life is not a religious life but a life of enjoying Christ all the time.

First, we can enjoy Christ by dealing with the Word. If we are going to enjoy Christ, we must know how to deal with the Word. If we do not know how to deal with the Word in a proper way, in the way of life, we can never enjoy Christ adequately. We also have to learn how to pray. To pray is to drink of Christ as the Spirit (1 Cor. 12:13). It is also to inhale Christ, to breathe Christ (John 20:22; Lam. 3:55-56). We all have to learn how to deal with the Word and how to pray, to inhale Christ as the Spirit. In praying, we work together with Christ, giving Him the ground and the opportunity to work out something through us. Thus, we may say that there are two ways to enjoy Christ. One is to read the Word; the other is to pray. We need to mingle our reading of the Word with our prayer.

(Enjoying Christ as the Word and the Spirit through Prayer, Chapter 7, pp. 66-67)

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The Precious Word of God, Message Three
The Bible—God’s Feeding
Day 5

II. Why do we eat? (continued)

D. For enjoyment

Jeremiah 15:16 Your words were found and I ate them, / And Your word became to me / The gladness and joy of my heart, / For I am called by Your name, / O Jehovah, God of hosts.

Psalm 19:10 More to be desired are they than gold, / Even much refined gold; / Sweeter also than honey / And the drippings of the honeycomb.

Psalm 119:111 Your testimonies are my heritage forever, / For they are the gladness of my heart.

Read over the outline points and verses above and use these for your prayer to spend time with the Lord in the Word in the morning. After your prayer time, jot down in your notebook one or two things that the Lord touched you with. Afterward, read the following portion, either in your morning time or sometime later in the day. It has also been recorded for you to listen to if you like.

Reading portion:

…When reading the first seventeen verses of Matthew 1, we should let go of the many names. But when we read verse 21, which says, “She will bear a son, and you shall call His name Jesus, for it is He who will save His people from their sins,” we may understand that we are God’s people, so He must save us from our sins. We may then pray, “Lord, save me from my sins.” After this the Holy Spirit may speak to us and point out our sins….Spontaneously, we should confess these sins, saying, “Lord, my temper is too poor. I cannot overcome it. I have been in sin. But You are Jesus. You will save Your people from their sins. I am Your people. Surely You will save me from my sins.” When we pray this way, we are eating the “meat.” Following this, we may read: “‘They shall call His name Emmanuel’ (which is translated, God with us)” (v. 23). Here is a bigger piece of “meat.” We may pray, “Emmanuel! God with man! Lord, You are God with man! You are God, and I am man; You are with me. You are in me, and You are in my presence.” These verses alone can fill us. During the day we will be praying that Jesus is saving His people from their sins and that God is with man. This kind of reading will make the Bible our food, supply, and nourishment. This kind of reading will bring the Bible into us as our life….We are here to eat and drink God. We are the eaters, and we want to feast on the Word until we are filled.

In conclusion, God is Spirit for us to breathe Him in through prayer, and God is the Word for us to eat Him through reading the Word. The more we pray, the more we breathe in His Spirit, and the more we read, the more we eat His word. The Spirit is God, and the Word is also God. When we breathe and eat enough of God, we will be filled and satisfied with God. This is what it means to enjoy God through praying and reading.

(How to Enjoy God and How to Practice the Enjoyment of God, Chapter 13, pp. 156-157)

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The Precious Word of God, Message Three
The Bible—God’s Feeding
Day 4

II. Why do we eat? (continued)

A. To grow unto salvation

B. To be nourished by the word which we closely follow

1 Timothy 4:6 If you lay these things before the brothers, you will be a good minister of Christ Jesus, being nourished with the words of the faith and of the good teaching which you have closely followed.

C. To be strengthened

Psalm 119:28 My soul melts because of grief; / Strengthen me according to Your word.

Read over the outline points and verses above and use these for your prayer to spend time with the Lord in the Word in the morning. After your prayer time, jot down in your notebook one or two things that the Lord touched you with. Afterward, read the following portion, either in your morning time or sometime later in the day. It has also been recorded for you to listen to if you like.

Reading portion:

The Way of Being Nourished

Now that we have seen that we need to come to the Word daily, we need to go on to see the way to come to the Word. According to our experience, there are three ways to come to the Word. The first way is the way of being nourished, which is to spend at least ten minutes to read the Word and five minutes in prayer. We should take three or four verses each time to read and then pray-read. To pray-read is to make reading and prayer one thing, mingling our reading of the Word with our prayer.

In our times of coming to the Word in the way of being nourished, we should not pray for our relatives, our friends, or any situation. Rather, we should simply praise the Lord for His many wonderful attributes and virtues, give Him thanks, or talk to Him from our heart, confessing our real situation. We may pray, “Lord, You are so good. I just love You. Lord, I am sorry that I am cold toward You. Lord, stir up my love for You; kindle the fire within me.”

We do not need to compose prayers, for we already have a wonderful prayer book—the Bible. The words of the verses we read may be used to compose our prayers. If we use the words of the Bible for our prayer, we will touch God, Christ, the Spirit, and life. Moreover, we will be watered, enlightened, sustained, supported, supplied, strengthened, and nourished. Everyone can spend at least ten to fifteen minutes each morning to come to the Word in this way.

(Crucial Elements of God’s Economy, Chapter 1, pp.13-14)

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The Precious Word of God, Message Three
The Bible—God’s Feeding
Day 3

II. Why do we eat?

A. To grow unto salvation

1 Peter 2:2–3 As newborn babes, long for the guileless milk of the word in order that by it you may grow unto salvation, If you have tasted that the Lord is good.

1 Corinthians 3:7b … God who causes the growth.

2 Peter 3:18 But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To Him be the glory both now and unto the day of eternity. Amen.

Read over the outline points and verses above and use these for your prayer to spend time with the Lord in the Word in the morning. After your prayer time, jot down in your notebook one or two things that the Lord touched you with. Afterward, read the following portion, either in your morning time or sometime later in the day. It has also been recorded for you to listen to if you like.

Reading portion:

GROWING UNTO SALVATION
BY DRINKING THE MILK OF THE WORD

First Peter 2:2 says, “As newborn babes, long for the guileless milk of the word in order that by it you may grow unto salvation.” For our physical growth we need to drink milk. Likewise, for our spiritual growth we need to drink the divine milk from the Word. Every morning we need to drink a cup of milk from the Word. If you will do this, you will see the blessing. You will be healthy and will be a tree of life growing. This tree will bear fruit, and all the fruit will nourish…your neighbors…or your classmates in your school. You will become the tree of life to all the people in your community. Today America needs this. America needs Christ to grow in the neighborhoods, in the schools, in the offices, and among the families and the in-laws.

We should not merely attend the church meetings; we need to grow so that we may be a tree of life to nourish today’s communities in America.…Peter says that if we drink the milk of the word, we will grow unto salvation. We should not think that we are fully saved and have no need of any further salvation. Such a concept is wrong. We still need to be saved every day, even every minute, from our temper, from our sorrows, and from our anxiety. We need to be saved from many things. I am a quick person. It is easy for me to lose my temper. When I was young, my temper was a trouble to me. But later on I learned that I can be saved, and I have been saved through the drinking of the milk of the word. Drinking the milk of the word causes us to grow unto salvation from our anger, our temper, our anxiety, our worry, our fear, and our trembling. Every day we need a daily salvation. We need today’s salvation in our daily walk.

(The Organic Union in God’s Relationship with Man, Chapter 4, pp. 55-56)

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The Precious Word of God, Message Three
The Bible—God’s Feeding
Day 2

I. The Bible is our food, (continued)

C. You are what you eat

Matt. 12:34b–35 For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. The good man, out of his good treasure, brings forth good things, and the evil man, out of his evil treasure, brings forth evil things.

Phil. 2:15–16 That you may be blameless and guileless, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and perverted generation, among whom you shine as luminaries in the world, Holding forth the word of life, so that I may have a boast in the day of Christ that I did not run in vain nor labor in vain.

Read over the outline points and verses above and use these for your prayer to spend time with the Lord in the Word in the morning. After your prayer time, jot down in your notebook one or two things that the Lord touched you with. Afterward, read the following portion, either in your morning time or sometime later in the day. It has also been recorded for you to listen to if you like.

Reading portion:

How I look to the Lord that you would enjoy Christ every day! Daily you need to enjoy Him as your manna to satisfy and strengthen you. There is a proverb that says, “You are what you eat.” Consider the house of Israel. They ate manna day after day. After eating manna for quite a long time, they eventually became the composition of manna. If we eat Christ day by day, we shall become Christ, for we become what we eat. If we enjoy Christ, eat Christ, drink Christ, and take Christ into us, Christ will become our constituent. Christ will be wrought into every part of our being—into our mind, emotion, and will. When we all become Christ, we shall be one in Christ and one with Christ. Then we shall be built together to be the tabernacle, the dwelling place of God on earth…

…Daily we need to eat and drink Christ, enjoying Him as the manna and the living water. As we enjoy Him in this way, we shall become Him. Our thinking will be His thinking.…Because Christ has transformed us, He will be all and in all (Col. 3:11). If you enjoy Christ as your manna day by day, you will come to look like Him. If we all have the appearance of Christ, then when we come together, we all shall be Christ….Every day we need to apply Christ to our situation and take Him to meet every need in our daily living. The more we do this, the more we shall be constituted with Christ and become Christ…

(The Kernel of the Bible, Chapter 2, pp. 22-23)

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Note: Here is the entire outline and daily portions for Week 3 in PDF format if you’d like to have it or print it for your reference.

Week 3 – Outline and Daily Portions

The Precious Word of God, Message Three
The Bible—God’s Feeding
Day 1

I. The Bible is our food

A. We eat the word of God to live

Matt. 4:4 But 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.”

B. By eating the word of God we are constituted with God

Ezekiel 3:1–3 Then He said to me, Son of man, eat what you find; eat this scroll, and go, speak to the house of Israel. So I opened my mouth, and He gave me that scroll to eat. And He said to me, Son of man, feed your stomach and fill your inward parts with this scroll that I am giving you. And I ate it, and it was like honey in my mouth in its sweetness.

Read over the outline points and verses above and use these for your prayer to spend time with the Lord in the Word in the morning. After your prayer time, jot down in your notebook one or two things that the Lord touched you with. Afterward, read the following portion, either in your morning time or sometime later in the day. It has also been recorded for you to listen to if you like.

Reading portion:

Reading the Word Being to Receive
the Lord’s Word as Food

Prayer is to breathe in the Lord’s Spirit, and reading is to receive the Lord as the Word. The Lord as the Word is our food. Man does not live by bread alone, because he is not composed of only a body; within man there is also a spirit. The physical body requires physical food, but man’s spirit requires a different type of food. Physical food is not enough to make man live. Hence, the Lord says that man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that proceeds out through the mouth of God (Matt. 4:4). All the words that proceed out through the mouth of God are man’s spiritual food. For this reason the prophet Jeremiah says, “Your words were found and I ate them” (Jer. 15:16).

Reading the Word with an Attitude
of Eating and Drinking God

Our attitude should be that the Bible is our food. The Bible is a book of food. When we read the Bible, we should eat this food. Whenever we read the Word, we should have the attitude that we are coming to eat and drink God. If our motive is merely to study truths, analyze teachings, or understand doctrines, we are not eating and drinking God, and the Bible is a book of doctrines and teachings to us. We must have a change in concept to see that the Bible is not a book of God’s teaching or truth; it is God’s food for us.

…If our view changes, and we consider the Bible to be God’s expression and His breathing out, the Bible will be a different book to us. We will realize that since God is food to man, the Bible as His breathed-out word must also be food to man. When we come to the Bible, we must eat and drink God as our food; we must breathe in God Himself and enjoy Him. If we read the Bible this way, it will no longer be a book of teachings, commandments, truths, or doctrines. Instead, it will be God’s embodiment, unveiling, expression, and exhaling. It will also be our rich food. We will receive nourishment, supply, and life from every word.

(How to Enjoy God and How to Practice the Enjoyment of God, Chapter 13, pp. 153-154)

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