Week 3, Day 6

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)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 3:32 — 1.2MB)

Subscribe: RSS