Crucial Points to Consider as we Eat, Digest, and Assimilate Christ in the Word

As believers in Christ, we need to eat the Lord Jesus by receiving Him into us so that He may be digested and assimilated into our regenerated new man in the way of life; for this, we need to eat, digest, and assimilate Christ as our spiritual food day by day.

God’s economy is that we eat, digest, and assimilate Christ so that we may be constituted with Him, with the result that we express Him and represent Him.

How can we, sinners and self-centered persons, express Christ and represent Him? It is only by being reconstituted inwardly with the element of Christ that we can become like Him to express Him and represent Him.

God is not after improving our behavior, neither does He want that we merely obey what the Bible says and try to live according to the principles in the word of God. What God wants is to dispense Himself in us so that He may become our very constitution inwardly and our expression outwardly.

God’s way is the way of life, as we see both in the case of Adam (after he was created, God placed him in front of the tree of life) and in the gospel of John (where Christ came as the bread of life for His people to eat).

The way for us as believers to experience the daily divine dispensing of the Divine Trinity in our living is to eat, digest, and assimilate the Lord Jesus as our food by feeding on the word of God.

On the one hand, the Lord Jesus has come into us at the time of our regeneration, and He will always be with us; on the other hand, we need to daily eat the Lord Jesus by praying over His word so that He may increase and we may decrease, so that we may express Him in our daily living.

In His economy God doesn’t look at the outward things we can do for Him – He wants that Christ would come into us inwardly, and for this we need to take Christ by eating, digesting, and assimilating Him.

We need to let the Lord Jesus make His home in all the inward parts of our heart, in all the chambers of our inner being, by eating, digesting, and assimilating the Lord in our prayerful consideration of the word of God.

As we prayerfully consider and read the word of God, God dispenses Himself into our being until He becomes every fiber of our inward being; He is being eaten, digested, and assimilated by us so that He can be our very constituent.

We need to Eat, Digest, and Assimilate Jesus as our Spiritual Food Day by Day

The children of Israel went out of Egypt, crossed the Red Sea, and all ate the same spiritual food in the wilderness; this spiritual food refers to the manna (Exo. 16:14-18), which typifies Christ as the daily life supply (John 6:31-35).

Christ came from God as the bread of life, the living bread, and the bread of God for us, His people, to eat, digest, and assimilate into our being to express Him and represent Him. Christ is the portion allotted by God to all the saints, and we need to eat Him as the spiritual food day by day.

As believers in Christ we should all eat the same spiritual food, which is Christ; we should not eat anything else but Christ, our real spiritual food, until He becomes our very constituent.

Outwardly speaking, we cannot eat anything that is inorganic, and anything we eat must become our supply by our digesting and assimilating it. Spiritually speaking, God in Christ went through a process to become our food, and now we need to eat, digest, and assimilate Jesus as our spiritual food in the word of God day by day.

When we eat Christ as our spiritual food, He enters into us and mingles Himself with us as one. The Lord is the bread of life – He came to be our life supply in the form of food, like the tree of life (Gen. 2:9).

Christ came down from heaven not only to be our Savior but also to be our food, and we need to receive Him not only as the One who saves us but also as our spiritual food, the bread of life.

We need to daily eat Jesus and allow Him to be digested and assimilated into our spiritual being; when we do this, we will live because of Him (John 6:57). Many times we realize that we cannot express the Lord, and the reason is that we don’t eat the Lord enough so that He would become the content of our being through digestion and assimilation, so that we may express Him.

Our inner man is strengthened and energized when we eat the Lord; the more we eat Jesus, the more we are inwardly nourished and supplied to live because of Jesus and thus express Jesus.

We live by what we eat, and we express what we eat; if we eat proper food, healthy food, we will have a healthy expression, but if we are undernourished, we may not be able to walk or do some things in our human life.

The way for us to live Christ and express Him is to eat, digest, and assimilate Jesus as our spiritual food day by day through much prayerful consideration and reconsideration of His word so that He may be digested and assimilated in our being.

The result of a daily diet of Jesus is living Jesus – we live Him, we live because of Him, and for us to live is Christ!

Lord Jesus, we confess our need to eat, digest, and assimilate Jesus as our spiritual food day by day. Save us from eating other things than Jesus. May our daily diet be Jesus Christ in His word through our prayerful consideration of the word of God. Lord, we want to live You and express You by daily eating You, digesting You, and assimilating You. Keep us eating You, Lord, until we live because of You, we live You, and for us to live is Christ! May Jesus be our food day by day!

Crucial Points to Consider as we Eat, Digest, and Assimilate Christ in the Word

As believers in Christ, we should not only believe into the Lord Jesus and receive Him, but we should also eat Him, digest Him, and assimilating, allowing Him to become the content of our being (John 3:15-16; 6:51-57).

We need to cooperate with the Lord’s word that we read and pray over, allowing the Lord to become the content of our inner being. In doing this, there are at least four crucial points concerning what it means to eat the word of God:

1. Don’t try to take in everything at once, or else you will experience spiritual indigestion. As with physical food, if we eat too much or try to understand and take in everything at once, we will experience indigestion.

The important thing in eating is not how much we eat but in making sure we eat, we receive the life supply, and we get the nourishment. When we pray over God’s word, we shouldn’t try to take in everything at once but make sure we get the life supply, even if it is a small portion in the word.

2. Don’t try to understand everything you read. It will take a long time before you can understand everything you read. We need to have the aspiration to understand, but at the same time we need to read the Bible again and again.

Martin Luther once said that he comes to God’s word as to a tree with many branches and many fruits; to eat some fruits, you need to shake the branch and, if the fruit falls, you eat it, but if not, you go to the next branch.

When we read the Bible in a prayerful way, we should not try to understand everything we read, but “shake a branch” and, if no fruit falls, move on to the next branch. What matters is not understanding everything but making sure you get the life supply. We need to tell the Lord,

Lord, I’m not leaving the table until I’m full. I will not leave Your word until You feed me and I am inwardly nourished. I may not understand this verse or the next verse, but speak to me and nourish me in Your word!

3. We need to ponder, consider, and muse over what we have read (see Psa. 119:15). We need to muse over the word of God; this word for musing means also to meditate, implying worship, conversing with oneself, and speaking aloud.

You can meditate silently, but you can’t muse silently – you need to use your mouth. We need to taste and enjoy the Lord in His word through careful considering, prayer, speaking the word to ourselves, and praising the Lord.

The practice of praying over God’s word is like chewing the cud, which shows us that we need to receive the word of God with much consideration and reconsideration. We need to consider and reconsider God’s word, chewing on it and masticating it until we receive the nourishment from the Lord through His word.

4. We need to pray over what we understand. As we read the word and prayerfully consider it, something will enlighten us, touch us, and impress us; this is what we need to eat and pray over.

Such a prayerful consideration and reconsideration of the word of God is very personal, for this kind of musing may involve some repenting, confessing of our sins, and using the word of God to contact the Lord.

Our prayerful consideration of God’s word implies applying that word to our situation and condition, repenting before the Lord, confessing our need for Him, and receiving His supply to advance in our spiritual life with Him.

Lord Jesus, we want to learn to eat, digest, and assimilate Christ daily to allow Him to become the content of our being. We want to learn to be nourished and inwardly supplied every time we come to Your word. Speak to us as we prayerfully consider the word of God in the Bible. We don’t want to take all in at once but to be supplied and nourished so that we may eat, digest, and assimilate Christ in our spiritual inner being. Lord, increase our prayerful consideration and reconsideration of Your word, applying the word to our situation and condition, and opening to You in all the aspects of our life and living so that You may have a way in our being.

References and Hymns on this Topic

• Inspiration: the Word of God, my enjoyment in the ministry, the message by brother Mark R. for this week, and portions from, Truth Lessons—Level Two, vol. 3, pp. 80-81 (by Witness Lee), as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, Crystallization-Study of Ezekiel (1), msg. 10 (week 10), Eating the Scroll — Eating and Digesting the Word of God.
• Hymns on this topic:
  # Jesus is the living Spirit / And the living Word; / When we touch Him by pray-reading / We receive this Lord. (Hymns #1142)
  # Thy Word in spirit we must eat / And to our inmost part receive; / ’Tis by our spirit’s exercise / To pray with what our minds perceive. / Thy Word remaining in our mind / Is only knowledge burdensome, / But when it to the spirit goes / Then life and spirit it becomes. (Hymns #814)
  # Every verse reveals Yourself to me, / Every line conveys reality. / When I pray the words that You breathed out / You become so real to me. / As I read, I pray, as I pray, I read, / Mingling both as one spontaneously. / You respond within with words so sweet, / I repeat these words to Thee. (Song on reading the Bible)