God’s word is the divine supply as food to nourish us, for God’s words are good for us to eat; when we come to read the Bible, we must come to the Lord for life so that we may eat Him as the bread of life.
In John 6 the Lord Jesus revealed that He is the bread of life coming out of heaven, He is the living bread, and He is the bread that gives life; if we eat Him, we have part with Him, but if we don’t, we don’t have part with Him.
How can we eat Jesus? Can we eat His flesh and His blood? No!
As John 6:63 says, the flesh profits nothing – it is the Spirit who gives life; the words which the Lord speaks to us are spirit and are life.
The words God speaks to us are in the Bible; when the Lord speaks to us His words, His words are spirit and are life.
This means that, as John 5:39-40 says, we must be willing to come to the Lord Himself as come to the word of God; we should not divorce the word of God from God Himself, but we should come to the Lord for life so that we may eat Him in His word.
The Lord’s spoken words are the embodiment of the Spirit of life; when He speaks to us in His word, when we exercise our spirit and pray over the words of God, He imparts life into our being.
May we be like Jeremiah who found the word of God and ate it; when we eat the word of God, when we exercise not only to read the Bible but also eat the Lord in His word, we will be filled with joy and rejoicing in our heart.
We may be in our feelings, our human sentiments, and in our emotions, but when we pray over the word of God, when we exercise our whole being – especially our spirit – to eat the Lord, we are filled with joy and rejoicing, and we are inwardly nourished and satisfied.
The Bible as the word of God is full of God’s speaking, when we come to the Lord in His word, we will enjoy Him, we will be filled with Him, and He will reconstitute our entire being.
If we were to read any other book, we do not get life; the news or novels or self-help books, all of these are man’s speaking, and they don’t give life, but the Bible is the word of God, the very breathing out of God, and we can breathe God in as we read the word!
God, Christ, the Spirit, and life are all embodied in the word of God, the Bible.
Before we believed into the Lord we may have read the Bible but may have not understood or received much, but now, as believers, we know the secret: the Bible is not merely for our reading but for our eating! Amen! We can eat God in His word!
God’s Word is the Divine Supply as Food to Nourish us, for it is God Himself as our Food
When we read words, we get knowledge; the word of God, however, is different, for it not only imparts knowledge into us but it gives us the food to supply us. God’s word is the divine supply as food to nourish us (Deut. 8:3; Matt. 4:4).
The divine concept concerning the word of God is that it is food by which we are nourished (see 1 Cor. 3:1-2; Heb. 5:12-14). This is a very profound thought in the Bible, embodying the central thought in God’s economy.
In His economy, God wants to dispense Himself into us, and this happens by our eating Him.
So God presents Himself to us as food in His word, and we can take in God’s word as the divine supply to nourish us.
This concept has to revolutionise us. We don’t come to the Bible as we would come to a text book, a history book, a novel, or a reference book, but we come to the Bible as to a plate of food to eat something.
Do we come to the Bible to eat God, or just to do our daily Bible reading, some portions in the New Testament and some in the Old?
Do we come to the word of God just for knowledge, or do we come to the table to eat a plate of food, ready to take God in?
This has to be a controlling thought in our coming to the word of God, especially in today’s world.
Today everything is so accessible via our phone, tablet, laptop, etc, and information can be easily found and read. But when we come to the word of God we need to take our time and take the divine supply into us.
It matters very much what is our concept when we come to God’s word; if we still think it is a book of knowledge, revealing God to us, we miss the most central part of God’s economy.
May we never become too familiar with this thought, however, but may this become a controlling vision in our reading the Bible.
The word of God is both the guileless milk (1 Pet. 2) and the solid food (Heb. 5); may we read the Bible with such a thought.
The word of God is God Himself as our food (John 1:1, 4, 14; 6:33, 51, 57); it is not merely a collection of writings, events, people, and things, but it is God Himself as our food.
If we miss this, we miss everything that the Bible is about. God’s will, His purpose – which is great and essential as revelation – ultimately has to be received by us, internalised by us, and eaten by us.
We have to eat God’s purpose – not just to know about it, but eat it by eating the word of God!
The Lord Jesus Himself took the word of God in the Scriptures as His bread and lived by it.
In Matt. 4, as He was tempted by the devil to turn the stones into bread to eat for He was hungry after forty days of fasting, the Lord said, Man shall not live by bread alone but by every word which proceeds out through the mouth of God (Matt. 4:4).
Humanly speaking, the Lord as a man was hungry, for He was without food and water for forty days and forty nights; yet He told the devil that He was feeding on the real food, the word of God, which has been sustaining Him.
Every word that proceeds out through the mouth of God is spiritual food to nourish us; this is the food by which we must live (Jon 6:51, 57).
God wants us to live Him, and the only way we can live in oneness with Him and we can live Christ is by eating Him in His word.
We need to be nourished and supplied with the divine supply in the word of God, and we will live Christ.
Through the word of God as our food, God dispenses His riches into our inner being so that we may be constituted with His element. So why not tell the Lord even right now,
Lord Jesus, change our concept concerning Your word; may we come to Your word as to a plate of food to eat and be supplied! Hallelujah, every word that proceeds out through the mouth of God is spiritual food to nourish us, and this word is the food by which we must live! Amen, Lord, may our concept be changed; may we not merely seek knowledge in the Bible but seek the Lord, eat the Lord, and be inwardly nourished and supplied with Christ as we come to the word of God. We open our being to You, dear Lord Jesus, so that we may receive the dispensing of God’s riches into our being as we come to the word. May our inner being be reconstituted with the element of God as we read and pray, pray and read, over the word of God in the Bible!
God’s Words are Good for us to Eat – we need to Eat, Digest, and Assimilate God in His Word
Man is not a machine operating and running non-stop, 24/7, without any break or supply.
Rather, God ordained that man would eat a few times a day for him to survive, and man needs to take in food in order to continue to live.
Man is not a perpetual machine, just running constantly; we may wish we don’t have to eat so much, for it is quite troublesome to cook the food, set the table, eat, clean up, do the dishes, etc.
Whether we like it or not, God ordained man to live by eating; eating is a tremendous matter in our human life.
According to the entire revelation in the Holy Bible, God’s words are good for us to eat, and we need to eat the word of God (see Psa. 119:103; Matt. 4:4; Heb. 5:12-14; 1 Pet. 2:2-3).
God desires that we as His people – actually, that all men – would eat Him, digest Him, and assimilate Him in His word (John 6:50-51, 57).
When we eat, we don’t just gobble up the food and we’re satisfied; rather, there are many processes going on with eating.
To eat is to contact things outside of us and to receive them into us, with the result that they eventually become our constitution (Gen. 2:16-17).
We contact organic matters, things that supply life, and we take them into us; we chew them, swallow them, digest them, and assimilate them into our being.
First, there’s the union: the food becomes one with us, even becomes part of us.
To eat is to take food into us for it to be assimilated organically into our body (John 6:48, 50).
There has to be the process of digestion and assimilation, so that the food may be assimilated and absorbed into our being.
If our digestive system is not that good, the food comes in and it also goes out; but when the digestive system works properly, the food is digested and assimilated into our being to become our cells, the very building blocks of our being.
God’s words as food which are eaten, digested, and assimilated by us actually become us; this is the word of God becoming our constitution (Matt. 4:4; Col. 3:16).
We are constituted with what we eat, what has been taken into us.
For example, inorganic items such as cars take in gasoline, but it doesn’t become part of the car. But the food we take into us not only makes us happy and satisfies us, but it also constitutes us, it becomes our building element.
The food we eat nourishes us; when we eat God’s words, we are nourished and supplied.
First, the word becomes one with us and becomes part of our being, then it is digested and assimilated, it becomes our constitution, and nourishes us.
This means that, whenever we come to read the Bible, we should come to the Lord for life; we need to eat the bread of life in the word, that is, eat Christ Himself in His word.
May we not be like the religious Jewish people who had the Lord as the embodied Word of God standing before them yet they read the Scriptures without coming to Him; may we come to the Lord as the living word to eat Him as we read the written word of God (John 5:39-40).
Before we read the Bible, as we read the Bible, and even after we read the Bible, we need to stop and take a minute to pray.
We may tell the Lord that we come to His word to eat Him, we open our spirit and whole being to Him, so that He may infuse us in His word. It makes a big difference when we pray before, during, and after we read the word; we get not just knowledge, but nourishment.
Before we come to the word of God, we may tell Him,
Lord Jesus, we come to read Your word and even more, to eat Your word. We are here not just to gain knowledge from the Bible – we want to eat You, digest You, and assimilate You, so that You may become part of us and constitute our inward being with Yourself. We open our spirit to You; we want not only to read the word of God with our eyes and repeat it with our mouth, but absorb You and receive You in our spirit. Amen, Lord, we come to You as we read Your word; give us life, give us the divine supply in Your word, and give us to eat the bread of life as we read and pray over Your word! We love You, Lord Jesus!
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, 1965, vol. 2, “The Tree of Life,” pp. 175-176, 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:
– Thou art the Word with God’s fulness in Thee, / Thou too the Spirit that God my life be; / Thee in the Word I enjoy as my food, / Thou as the Spirit art water to me. (Hymns #811)
– Man shall not live by bread alone, / But by each word which doth proceed / From God’s own mouth”; these we must eat / And let them be our life indeed. / Not just a body we were made, / But body, soul, and spirit too; / The inmost part the spirit is / To contact God and Him pursue. (Hymns #814)
– The Word reveals Thyself to me / And knowledge of Thyself imparts; / The Spirit is Thy substance true / Whereby I touch Thee as Thou art. / Thou art my life, my light, my way, / My food, my strength and guaranty; / By Word made known, as Spirit these / Become experience to me. (Hymns #802)
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