Find the Lord’s Words and Eat Them: the Words the Lord speaks to us are Spirit and Life

The Word of God, the Bible, is our divine supply to be our food; the Bible is God’s speaking, the word that proceeds out of is mouth, it is the embodiment of God in Christ as the Spirit, and the words spoken to us by the Lord are spirit and life.

This week we come to another great crystal in the books of Jeremiah and Lamentations, which is, God’s Words – the Divine Supply as Food.

This is a matter very much missed in Christianity today, but the book of Jeremiah shows us that God’s word is the life supply for us, His people.

In the midst of such an apparent negative situation as the one described in Jeremiah and Lamentations, with God’s judgement, His chastisement upon His people, and the captivity of the children of Israel, even the prophet was discouraged and in distress, yet we have this wonderful matter of God’s words being our supply.

The word of God can be the life supply and the food to us. Hallelujah! We need that the word of God would strengthen and supply us as our food through all the trials, judgements, and dealings.

We thank the Lord that He is still speaking to us. In such an abnormal situation as the coronavirus pandemic, with so many limitations and all kinds of turmoil around us, it is easy for us to become discouraged, disheartened; but praise the Lord, He still speaks to us, and His word is our divine supply.

In these days of great limitation, God uses His word to supply us; without His word we are left in our distress and discouragement, but when we hear His word, we are enlightened, supplied, and nourished by the word of God, which is our food.

May we freshly open to the Lord and touch what is in His heart; He doesn’t want His people merely to worship Him and know Him, but to take Him in as food, to eat Him in His word.

It is vitally necessary that we daily eat the Lord in His word, and this cannot be overlooked, neither should we think that we know this, we’ve been there and done that.

May we never get too familiar with the matter of eating the Lord but may we realize that it’s not about having more knowledge but whether we have eaten God in His word or not.

Unless we as the Lord’s people learn to eat the word of God and take God in, the Lord’s recovery will become yet another system, a Christian movement, and it will all over with us.

The Lord wants us to eat Him; He doesn’t want us merely to know what Jeremiah and Lamentations are about, but that we eat His word.

The Lord’s recovery is an eating recovery, and God’s word must be internalised in our being by our eating and partaking of Him.

May the Lord shine His light on us; may we live our Christian life and church life with a deep realisation that we can’t live and be without eating the Lord in His word, for His word is our divine supply.

Finding the Lord’s Words and eating them; God’s Speaking in the Bible is the Word that Proceeds out of His Mouth

In Jer. 15 we see how Jeremiah was expressing his inner feeling that the Lord would visit him and avenge him of his persecutors, for it was for His sake that he bore his reproach.

While he was under persecution by the children of Israel, Jeremiah was in distress and was discouraged; he was asking God for His visitation and comfort, and he even asked God to avenge him because of his persecution.

Such a natural sentiment was similar to that expressed by David and other psalmists, who wanted God to avenge their persecutors.

But then, in Jer. 15:16, he suddenly said, Your words were found, and I ate them…Wow!

It seemed that God intervened with something of His thought; Jeremiah was asking God for comfort, encouragement, and even avenging, but what he really needed was God’s word.

So as he was expressing his natural sentiment to God, the thought of God was imparted into him, and he ate God’s word. Wonderful!

This is not a common word or an ordinary thought that Jeremiah had; even after that, he went back to his speaking, saying that he didn’t sit in the assembly of mockers, but was filled with indignation.

He was still filled with his human sentiment, but as he was expressing it, God imparted His thought into him, and he found God’s word, ate it, and was supplied.

This matter of eating the word of God is also expressed by Ezekiel in Ezek. 3:1-3, where God asked him to eat the scroll so that he can prophesy, and in Rev. 10:9-10 where the Lord asked John to eat the scroll of God’s economy and he devoured it, thus being able to prophesy.

In the Bible we first have God, and then we have God’s speaking; the speaking of God is the word that proceeds out of His mouth (Gen. 1:1, 3; Matt. 4:4).

The first and foremost matter in the Bible is God Himself, and then we see His speaking; He created by His speaking, He did everything through His speaking, and His speaking can be seen everywhere.

Our God is not a “dumb God”; He is a speaking God. God doesn’t merely conceive ideas or does things – He speaks!

All Scripture is God-breathed; the words in the Bible are the words that proceed through the mouth of God (2 Tim. 3:16).

The word of God is not merely words in black-and-white letters on a page; it is God’s breathing, the breathing out of God.

A man’s breath contains something of that person’s being; similarly, when God speaks, His word comes forth, and that word is His breathing out – something of God Himself is released from Him.

The Bible as the Word of God is the embodiment of God, Christ, the Spirit, and life (see John 1:1, 4; 6:63; 14:6, 17, 20; 15:7; 1 John 1:1; Rom. 8:2).

When we come to the Word of God, we should not merely come to read it but even more, we should come to find the word of God, breathe God into us, and receive the divine supply, the element of God, contained in the Word.

God is embodied in Christ, Christ is realized as the Spirit, and the Spirit is experienced and enjoyed by us as life; when we experience and enjoy the Spirit, we get life.

The word of God is the container of God, Christ, the Spirit, and life; when we come to the Word of God with an open heart and an exercised spirit, we receive the divine supply.

Lord Jesus, we come to You in Your word to eat You and to receive the divine supply. May we find Your words, eat them, and be richly supplied with the Spirit as our bountiful supply. We open to You, dear Lord, and we pour out our heart, our feelings, our sentiments, and all that is within us; we breathe ourselves out and we breathe You in! Amen, Lord, Your word is our food. We exercise our spirit to contact You as we come to Your word. Breathe Yourself into us, Lord. We want to pray over the word and take in the word by means of all prayer and petition so that Your word would be the joy and rejoicing of our heart!

The Words spoken by the Lord Jesus are Spirit and Life: they Eliminate the Negative things in us and Supply us with Life!

In John 6 the Lord Jesus spoke concerning Himself being the bread of life, the bread that came out of heaven, the living bread, and the bread of God; He said that His flesh is real meat and His blood is real drink.

Such words were very strong and many of those who followed Him left Him when they heard this.

But the Lord also said that the flesh profits nothing – it is the Spirit who gives life, and the words that He speaks are spirit and are life (John 6:63).

This means that it is not our eating of His physical flesh and blood that profits, but it is our eating or feeding on the Spirit and life contained in His spoken words that gives us life. Hallelujah!

The words spoken by the Lord Jesus are spirit and life.

The word of God is like a container: it embodies Christ, God, the Spirit, and life; it is the Spirit who gives life, and this life-giving Spirit is embodied in the Word of God.

The Lord’s spoken words are the embodiment of the Spirit of life (Rom. 8:2); Christ is now the life-giving Spirit in resurrection and the Spirit is embodied in His words (1 Cor. 15:45b; 2 Cor. 3:17; John 1:1, 4; 6:63).

When we exercise our spirit in our reading and praying over the words in the Bible, we receive the Lord’s words into us, and we get the Spirit, who is life.

May we not come to the word of God merely for knowledge but may we come to the Word by exercising our spirit to contact the Lord, coming to Him as we come to His word (John 5:39-40).

When we come to the word of God, we receive not merely letters or knowledge but Spirit and life if we exercise our spirit over God’s word.

It’s like a match which has phosphorus to catch fire; when we strike the phosphorus against the matchbox, we light the match and the fire is produced.

If you strike the match on anything else but in the right place, nothing will happen.

The phosphorus is like the Spirit in the word of God; if we strike the word of God with our spirit (the right place where we can receive Spirit and life), we catch the divine fire.

If we read the word of God merely with our mind, however, we will not receive life – we need to read the Word of God with the right organ.

Our whole being needs to be exercised when we come to the word of God: our body is exercised to read the word, our soul is exercised to understand it, receive it, and love the Lord, and our spirit is exercised to receive the divine supply.

Most importantly, however, is that we exercise our spirit!

The nature of the word of God is not merely something for knowledge in our mind: it is the breath of God, it is spirit and life!

The Bible as the Word of God is composed of three elements – Christ, the death of Christ, and the resurrection of Christ (Phil. 1:20-21; 2:16; 3:10-11; 4:13).

This means that, when we come to the word of God and exercise our spirit to touch God in His word, what happens is that His word kills the negative elements in us, the germs, the natural things, and the things of the self, the flesh, and the old man.

In the word of God there’s the death of Christ, which operates to eliminate anything negative in our being.

Furthermore, there’s an element in the word of God that imparts the resurrection life into us, causing us to rise up from any dead situation, from any deadness, and from anything of death; we can overcome our temper, our disposition, and the things in our environment by the element of resurrection received through praying over the word of God.

When we come to the Bible, we see that it is all about Christ; Christ is seen in every book, on every page, and the revelation concerning Christ is everywhere.

The more we read the Bible, the more we know Christ, we enjoy Christ, and we receive Christ.

Along with Christ, His death is also operating in us to kill, destroy, and put down what doesn’t belong to Him and what is not compatible with Him.

As we pray over the word of God with the exercise of our spirit, the element of Christ’s death operates in us to remove anything of the love for the world, the self, the flesh, and the old man.

At the same time, the word of God has the element of resurrection, raising us up, bringing us out of depression, discouragement, and death. Only the word of God can do this.

We may read the newspapers, we may read many blogs, we may watch the news, or we may read novels and self-help books, but none of them can give us life, and none of them can enable us to overcome the negative things or have more of the divine life.

The news, the papers, the novels, the blogs, etc all these make us more depressed and irritated, but the word of God brings us to experience Christ, His death, and His resurrection. Hallelujah!

Hallelujah, the words spoken by the Lord Jesus are spirit and life! Amen, Lord, we come to Your word with the exercise of our spirit to receive not merely knowledge but life and spirit! Infuse us with Yourself, Lord, as we come to Your word. We want to “strike the word” with our spirit so that we may “catch the divine fire”. Amen, Lord, we exercise our whole being, especially our spirit, to contact You as we come to Your word. We open to Your inner work through Your living word; we allow You to remove and deal with anything negative and which doesn’t belong to You in us. We open to the operation of Your living word in us; may all the negative elements be removed and eliminated, may our whole being be brought into resurrection, and may Christ increase in us as we read and pray over Your word!

References and Hymns on this Topic

• Sources of inspiration: the Word of God, my enjoyment in the ministry, the message by James Lee for this week, and portions from, Collected Works of Witness Lee, 1978, vol. 3, “The Healthy Word,” pp. 213-214, 177-178, as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, Crystallization Study of Jeremiah and Lamentations, week 4, God’s Words — the Divine Supply as Food.
• Hymns on this topic:
  – God’s own Word must not be taken / Just as knowledge but as life, / Not alone God’s thought conveying, / But Himself to us as life; / Not alone God’s mind revealing, / But His Christ as life within, / Not alone the teaching giving, / But experience of Him. (Hymns #816)
  – Thy Word in Scripture is expressed, / Thy Spirit, the Indwelling One; / Thy Word is spirit and is life / When to my spirit it doth come. / If I Thy Word would understand, / I must Thy Holy Spirit touch; / Not only grasp it with my mind, / But with my spirit, praying much. (Hymns #802)
  – Christ is the Word and Spirit too, / And as the Spirit in the Word; / And all the words He speaks to us / Are life and spirit thus conferred. (Hymns #815)