Eating the Lord and having a Proper Spiritual Digestion by saying Amen to His Word

As believers in Christ, we need to eat the Lord Jesus in His word by prayerfully considering and reconsidering it day by day, and we need to have a proper spiritual digestion, allowing the Lord to have the thoroughfare in every part of our inner being.

The word of God is not only full of knowledge for us to find our about God and His plan, but it is also our food; as such, we need to exercise our spirit to pray over God’s word and mix it with our prayer and faith so that we may eat the Lord in His word.

To eat the Lord is to receive Him into us so that He may He digested and assimilated by the regenerated new man in the way of life. We need to eat the Lord Jesus every day in His word as our spiritual food day by day so that we may digest and assimilate Him into our inner being.

On the one hand, we need to believe into the Lord Jesus and receive Him, and on the other, we need to eat Him, digest Him, and assimilate Him, allowing Him to be the content of our inner being.

The only way Christ can be lived out in us and expressed through us is by our daily eating the Lord and allowing Him to be assimilated into our being.

When we come to the word of God, we should turn our heart to Him and ask Him to speak to us. He may not speak to us through every word that we read, but there will be some words that He will use to speak to us, and we need to pray back to Him the word that He speaks to us.

Praying over God’s word with much consideration and reconsideration will cause us to taste the Lord and see that He is good.

As we open to the Lord when we read and prayerfully consider His word, He will shine on us, we will repent and confess what His light exposed, and we will have many conversations with the Lord, opening to Him more and more aspects of our being for Him to grow and make His home in us.

Eat the Lord and have a Proper Spiritual Digestion for Him to get into our Inward Parts

As we eat the Lord day by day, we need to have a proper spiritual digestion (Ezek. 2:8—3:3; Jer. 15:16a; Rev. 10:9-10).

When we eat physical food, this food needs to be digested and assimilated into our being by means of the digestive system. However, if we have indigestion, the food that comes into us cannot nourish us, and thus it is of no help to us.

Spiritually speaking, if we have a good digestion, there will be a thoroughfare for the spiritual food to get into every part of our inward being. Eating without having a food digestion will cause trouble. When we eat Christ, we need to also digest him in a proper way.

What does it mean to have a good spiritual digestion? It mean that, as we call on the name of the Lord and pray over His word, we need to allow Him the thoroughfare in our being, opening all the inward parts of our being for Him to spread in us.

Sometimes we may enjoy calling on the name of the Lord and pray reading His word, but after a certain time, we may lose our taste and appetite for it, simply because the Lord had no thoroughfare in our being.

We need to tell the Lord to be merciful to us and keep our whole being with all our inward parts open to Him as we pray over His word. The Lord Jesus is a real and living person, and when we call on His name, He gets into us and fills our inward being.

As we call on the name of the Lord, the practical and living Lord will touch our natural being and expose certain aspects of our being. If we let the Lord touch us and deal with our inward being, allowing Him to make His home in all our inward parts, we will digest and assimilate Christ, being constituted with Him.

But if we don’t allow the Lord to move into other areas of our being by shining in us through His word, we will experience spiritual indigestion, and there will be no assimilation of His word.

By eating we have digesting, by digesting we have the assimilation, and by this assimilation we get the practical nourishment of the riches of Jesus into our being. All the riches of Christ eventually will grow into our organic tissues. Then we become Christ. It is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. To me, to live is Christ. The Christian life is not a matter of imitating Jesus….The Lord’s way is not the way of teaching us to imitate Him. The Lord’s way is the way of life, and the way of life is to eat. (Collected works of Witness Lee, 1972, vol. 1, “The Living and Practical Way to Enjoy Christ,” pp. 205-207)

The key is to be open to the Lord, keeping our whole being with all our inward parts open to the Lord, so that the spiritual food would have a thoroughfare in us.

If we are open to the Lord and cooperate with His word by saying Amen to His inward speaking, we will have a proper digestion and assimilation, we will absorb Christ as our spiritual nourishment, and Christ will become our constituent for the expression of God.

It is a big problem if we eat something but we don’t digest it; similarly, it is a big problem if we eat something in God’s word but we don’t properly digest it and assimilate it into our spiritual being by cooperating with the Lord’s inward speaking. It is good to tell the Lord,

Lord Jesus, we love You, and we want to eat You in Your word day by day. Lord, have the thoroughfare in our being. Speak to us as we read the word and pray over it with much consideration. Gain our cooperation, Lord, by gaining the thoroughfare in our being. May Your word dwell in us richly, and may Your speaking cause Your light to shine in us, expose us, and deal with anything You want to deal with in us. Lord, we allow You to move into every room of our being, make Your home in us, and change things inwardly as You shine in us through Your word!

Allowing Christ as the Spiritual Food to get into our Inward Parts by saying Amen to God’s word

In Eph. 3:17 Paul prayed that the Lord would make His home in our heart through faith, and in Col. 3:16 he said that we should let the word of Christ dwell in us richly. The Lord making his home in our heart is the word of Christ dwelling in us richly.

Only a person can dwell – a table cannot dwell in a house, but a man dwells in a home. We need to enjoy the Lord in His word daily so that His word would dwell in us richly.

We need to LET the Lord make His home in our heart – He needs our permission, and we need to allow Him, give Him our consent, to make His home in our heart.

How can we give the Lord our consent for him to make His home in our heart? It is by saying Amen to His word.

For example, in 2 Sam. 7:25, after David heard God’s word that it will be his son who will build God a house and not him, he responded by saying, Lord, do as You have spoken. He may have not agreed with God’s word, and he himself may have wanted to build God’s house, but he said amen to God’s word.

In Luke 1:38, after Mary heard the news from the angel that she will be the mother of Jesus, the son of God, she said, Behold the slave of the Lord, may it happen to me according to Your word. She gave the Lord her consent, and the Lord had a vessel through which He could move.

Furthermore, in Heb. 3:15 we are told that, if today we hear the Lord’s voice, we should not harden our heart but say Amen to His word. We need to mix the word which God speaks to us with our faith (Heb. 4:2) through our saying amen to His word.

If we don’t say Amen to the Lord’s word, His word will not profit us. If we don’t say Amen to the Lord’s word, allowing the word to operate in our being, the Lord cannot make His home in our heart, and we miss the profit coming from the word of God, with nothing remaining as long-term nourishment.

We need to keep our entire inner being open to the Lord so that He may make His home in our heart and become constituted into us.

By eating the Lord and saying amen to His word, we have an inward digestion of the word of God, and by this digesting we have an assimilation going on; by assimilation we get the practical nourishment of the riches of Christ into our being, and these riches grow into our organic tissues (Eph. 3:8).

If we as believers in Christ receive the divine dispensing of the Divine Trinity by eating, digesting, and assimilating the Lord Jesus, we will live because of Him (John 6:57).

And because we all partake of Christ as the one bread, we are one Body – the one Body of Christ, the corporate Christ, to carry out God’s administration for the fulfillment of His eternal purpose (1 Cor. 10:17; 12:12; Eph. 3:11; 5:30).

Seeing that there is one bread, we all partake of the same bread; we all have the same constitution, and it not possible for us not to be one.

Just as the members of our physical body have no problem with one another because they have an identical constitution, so we are one with the Lord as the Head and with one another as we enjoy the Lord and take Him as our food in His word.

Lord Jesus, we say Amen to Your word! May it be done to us according to Your word. Keep our heart turned to You and our spirit exercised as we come to Your word to be nourished by You and have You digested and assimilated into our being. Lord Jesus, we love You! We don’t want to harden our heart when we hear Your voice but mix the word You speak to us with prayer and with faith so that this word would profit us by changing us within and reconstituting us with God! Lord Jesus, thank You for becoming the one bread of which we all can eat to become the one Body of Christ to carry out God’s administration for the fulfilment of His eternal purpose!

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, The Living and Practical Way to Enjoy Christ, ch. 6 (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, O living Word of God, / Wash me and cleanse me with Your blood / So You can speak to me. / Just let me hear Your words of grace, / Just let me see Your radiant face, / Beholding constantly. / Jesus, living Word, / My heart thirsts for Thee; / Of Thee I’d eat and drink, / Enjoy Thee thoroughly. (Song on eating the word of God)
  # O Lord, do nourish us; You are the food we need; / As we are eating You, we’ll be transformed indeed; / We’re fully satisfied as on Yourself we feed, / So nourish us, O Lord, we pray. / O Lord, do nourish us today / As all our self You wash away. / Not only purify, / But fill and satisfy; / O Lord, do nourish us today. (Hymns #1135)
  # When to messages I listen, / I must pray them in; / Thus the word will be digested / From within. / When the Word of God I study, / I must touch the Lord; / If in mind and not in spirit, / Dead is the Word. (Hymns #612)