Keep our being Open to the Lord to have Proper Spiritual Digestion and Absorb Christ

As believers in Christ who are learning to eat the Lord as the tree of life, we need to have proper spiritual digestion by keeping our being open to the Lord so that the spiritual food would be absorbed into us and we would be constituted with Christ.

The secret to our Christian life, the secret to living Christ and expressing Him, is eating the Lord as the tree of life.

The Lord Jesus said that, even as He lived because of the Father, so he who eats Him shall also live because of Him (John 6:57).

What does it mean for us to eat the Lord? Is it only to read the Bible and read spiritual books?

To eat the Lord, we need to exercise our spirit when we come to the Lord in His word and we need to muse on the word of God.

To muse on God’s word doesn’t mean that we “meditate” on the word of God; rather, it is to prayerfully consider, pray with, contact God with, converse with, and pray and praise with the Word of God.

To muse on the word of God is to enjoy the Lord’s breath, for the whole Bible is God-breathed (2 Tim. 3:15).

If we exercise our spirit when we come to the Lord in His word, we will speak with the Lord, speak with ourselves, and take the word by all means of prayer and petition (Eph. 6:17-18).

This is the way for us to eat the Lord; eating His flesh means eating His words, for the flesh profits nothing but the Spirit gives life (John 6:63).

The more we spend time with the Lord in His word, contacting Him and conversing with Him in His word, the more He loves us, He makes an abode with us, and He comes to dispense what He is into us.

May we learn to open to the Lord and exercise our spirit throughout the day, whether we’re reading the Bible or not, so that we may abide in Him and allow His word to abide in us.

May we learn to simply be open vessels for the Lord’s divine dispensing. If we eat the Lord’s word in the morning, His words become spirit and life to us, and we live because of Him.

He becomes the energizing element in our being, and He becomes the supplying factor for our daily living.

Too many times we try our best to express Christ without enjoying Him.

Too many times we express ourselves instead of the Lord because we lack the supply; we lack the life supply from the tree of life.

When we eat the Lord and are properly nourished, having proper spiritual digestion, we not only have life but also live because of the Christ we eat and enjoy.

Eating the Lord in His word and having a Proper Spiritual Digestion by giving Him the Thoroughfare in our Being

As we eat the Lord by eating His words, we need to have proper spiritual digestion (Ezek. 3:1-4; Jer. 15:16; Rev. 10:9-10).

Sometimes the food we eat is not properly masticated and digested, or maybe there is no thoroughfare in our being, so we have indigestion.

If we have good digestion, there will be a thoroughfare for the food to get into every part of our inward being.

By eating we have digesting, by digesting we have assimilation, and by assimilation, we get the practical nourishment of the riches of Christ into our being (Eph. 3:8, 16-17).

However, indigestion means that there’s no way for the Lord as the spiritual food to get through into our inward parts (Heb. 3:12, 15; 4:2).

When there is no free course for the food to get into our inward parts, we will have indigestion. In Heb. 4:2 we are told that the word heard by some did not profit them.

We may hear the word but it may not profit us; we may even share something of what we have enjoyed and were touched with, but it may not profit us at all.

This is because there’s no continuation of the operation of the word in our being.

The word of God is living and operative, and it can be bread to the sower, grain for food, a hammer, rain, and even as sharp as a two-edged sword.

When we eat the Lord in His word, we need to have proper spiritual digestion; there must be a reaction in our being, a feeling from the Lord, after we eat.

If we do not give the word of the Lord the thoroughfare in our being, we may have an evil heart of unbelief (Heb. 3:12).

If our love for the Lord wanes, our faith will also wane. It is possible that our faith has been weakened through various circumstances.

But when we come to the Lord in His word, we need to exercise our whole being to give Him a free way in us.

If we do not give Him the thoroughfare, if we don’t have proper spiritual digestion, our faith will be weakened, we may not trust in the Lord, we may not have faith in His sovereignty, and we may even lose faith in the Lord and in His recovery. Oh, Lord.

Then, when we try to eat, nothing happens, for we may have just small nourishment but not much happens within.

May we take the Word of God by means of all prayer and learn to say Amen to His word.

When He speaks something within us, may we not argue with His word but simply say Amen.

We need to eat the Word, allow the Word to abide in us, and let the Word divide our soul from our spirit.

May we learn to deal with our heart, remove all the clutter, and dig through anything that blocks His going on in us.

There are so many things that blockade the Lord. Sin hinders Him, and we can breathe out our sin as we muse on the Word of God.

As we breathe in the word of God, we breathe ourselves out with everything that is negative. We just breathe ourselves out and breathe Him in.

Similarly, unforgiven offences can be something that blocks the flow of life in our being.

An unforgiving heart needs to be dealt with in the Lord’s light so that His life would grow in us and flow in our being.

Unfulfilled dreams can also cause our heart to backslide from the Lord and have a blockage toward Him.

May we learn to come to the Lord with all these things, dealing with all the aspects of our heart and inner being under His light, so that we may have proper spiritual digestion by giving Him the thoroughfare in our being.

May we learn to open to the Lord and tell Him again and again,

Dear Lord Jesus, we breathe out our sorrow, our sin, and our dreams, and we breathe You in! We come to You in Your word to eat, drink, and breathe You in. We say Amen to Your word. Have a thoroughfare in our being. Grant us to have proper spiritual digestion so that the word we hear and enjoy would profit us. Dear Lord Jesus, we turn our heart to You again! We take Your word, we eat Your word, and we let Your word saturate our whole being! May we receive more spirit and life as we muse on Your word. May our whole inner being be saturated and permeated with You day by day. Amen, Lord, have the thoroughfare in our being.

Keeping our being Open to the Lord so that we may Absorb Christ and be Constituted with Him

When we come to the Lord in His word to eat Him, He speaks to us and touches us.

As He does this, as we feel the sense of life within us moving and speaking to us, we need to go along with the inner sense.

If we do, we will have proper spiritual digestion, and the Lord will have a way to constitute His element into us.

But if we disagree with the Lord, if we argue with the inner sense after eating the Lord, we will have spiritual indigestion, and the word we hear and enjoy will not profit us. Oh, Lord.

If we respond to and go along with the inner sense, our appetite for the Lord will come back and our spiritual digestion becomes proper.

Then the riches of Christ are wrought into our being to become our cells, our cells will grow into organic tissues, and we will grow in the Lord unto maturity.

This will cause us to be strong in the Lord and stand firm in Him, not backsliding.

May we be such ones, the grown-up ones who have a good spiritual digestion to assimilate all the nourishment from the spiritual food we eat.

The key to our growing in the Lord is simple: we need to keep our being open to the Lord.

We need to keep our whole being with all our inward parts open to the Lord so that the spiritual food will have a thoroughfare within us (Eph. 3:16-17).

If we do this, we will have proper digestion and assimilation, and we will absorb Christ as our spiritual nourishment (Col. 3:4, 10-11).

The result will be that we will be constituted with Christ to express God. In the physical realm, we need to eat the food, and then there’s a process of digestion, assimilation, absorption, and eventually constitution for expression.

God gets His expression by our eating, digesting, and assimilating Christ as the tree of life. Our heart, therefore, is very important in this process.

We need to till the ground of our heart and deal with our heart so that it may be a good ground for the Lord to grow.

He is faithful to speak to us, and He moves in us by His word. However, it is up to us if we cooperate with the Lord’s move and speaking in our being.

He may touch us concerning a particular matter in our daily life, such as the way we dress, but we may argue with Him.

The more we argue with Him, the weaker the sense of life becomes. He may touch us concerning the way we spend our time online and the kind of things we watch on our mobile phones.

But if we argue with that inner sense, if we tell the Lord that you will do it later, there will be spiritual indigestion. We need to simply say Amen, Lord.

We need to go along with the inner sense of life in our spirit. When He speaks to us, we simply need to open our being and say, Amen, Lord.

We may even add, Lord, I can’t do it, I’m so much into this and I like doing this, but I open to You.

We can confess our shortcomings and weaknesses, and as we do this, He infuses us with His riches and strength.

Little by little, our appetite for the Lord will increase. If we deal with one thing before the Lord today, and another thing tomorrow, and another thing the next day, our appetite for Him will grow, and we will have proper spiritual digestion.

We simply need to cooperate with Him by having our whole being, with all our inner parts, open to Him.

As we eat and digest the Lord, He will be assimilated into our being, and we will be constituted with Christ to become part of His corporate expression.

The riches of Christ we enjoy and are constituted with will eventually be expressed in our living of Christ.

We will no longer be the ones who live but Christ lives in us, and for us to live is Christ.

May we learn to open our being and keep our being open to the Lord to give Him the thoroughfare in our being as we eat Him in the word. May we tell Him with all our heart,

Dear Lord Jesus, be merciful to us. Cause every part of our being to be open to You. Have the thoroughfare in our being. May we remain open to Your divine dispensing and say Amen to Your word by faith. Lord, keep our being with all the inner parts of our heart open to You. We come to eat You in the word, dear Lord; we say amen to Your speaking within. Save us from having spiritual indigestion. We want to eat, digest, and assimilate You in Your word so that You may be constituted into us. Amen, Lord, constitute us with Yourself. Work Yourself into us until it is no longer we who live but Christ who lives in us! Grant us the grace that we would go along with the inner sense so that we may have an increased appetite for Christ as the tree of life!

References and Hymns on this Topic

• Sources of inspiration: the Word of God, my enjoyment in the ministry, a sharing by brother Ricky Acosta in the message, and portions from, Collected Works of Witness Lee, 1972, vol. 1, “The Living and Practical Way to Enjoy Christ,” ch. 6, as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, Taking the Way of Enjoying Christ as the Tree of Life (2022 Memorial Day Weekend Conference), week 5, entitled, The Secret of Living the Christian Life to be an Overcomer – Taking the Way of Eating and Enjoying Christ as the Tree of Life.
• Hymns on this topic:
  – Feeding and drinking, Lord Jesus, of Thee, / Feeding by reading, and drinking by prayer; / Reading and praying, I eat and I drink, / Praying and reading-Lord, Thou art my fare. / Here, O my Lord, may I feast upon Thee; / Flood with Thy Spirit and fill by Thy Word; / May, Lord, Thou be such a feast unto me / As man hath never enjoyed nor e’er heard. (Hymns #811)
  – The Lord Himself is food to me, / He is my life supply; / He will my pure enjoyment be, / None else can satisfy. / I freely eat this living tree, / For eating is the way / To put God’s life inside of me, / To live by Him today. (Hymns #1143)
  – Eating is the way to live Christ today, / Of the eating there should be no lack. / As the churches eat, they become complete, / Eating Christ will bring the Bridegroom back. / Eating, eating, / Of our eating there must be no lack. / Eating, eating, / Eating Christ will bring the Bridegroom back. (Hymns #1144)