Learning to Exercise our Spirit to Contact the Lord in His Word to Receive Spirit and Life

We need to exercise our spirit to contact the Lord and live by the new man, turning from our mind to our spirit as we come to the Word of God so that the Bible would become a book of life and we would receive spirit and life when we come to it.

The book of Proverbs in particular is full of gems and nuggets which can either be used to build up our old man with its natural perfection and man-made integrity, or they can help us in our Christian life of pursuing Christ for the building up of the Body.

The proverbs in this book are excellent, high, and wonderful, but if we approach them in ourselves, seeking to gain more knowledge and to improve ourselves, we will receive the letter of the word, and instead of building up the new man, we will try to improve the old man.

The Bible is not a book full of instructions on how to live our Christian life and how to relate to God and man; the Bible is the word of God, and when we exercise our spirit to contact the Lord in His Word, we will receive spirit and life.

What God wants is not a perfect man full of integrity, a man who is outstanding in his ethics and morality and who is excellent in every way; what He wants is a normal Christian who contacts the Lord and receives Him as the Spirit and life in His word.

Out of this receiving of the divine element by praying over the word of God with the exercise of our spirit, there will be a fruit in our daily living; this will be the fruit of the Spirit, a spontaneous manifestation.

When we contact the Lord in our spirit and exercise our spirit to pray and read His word, when we set our mind on the spirit and live and serve in spirit, we will have a spontaneous fruit in our daily living.

Instead of living by the old man and improving the natural man, we will be full of love, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness, and faithfulness; these are not merely ethical and moral virtues we strive to achieve and improve but a spontaneous living out of the life we enjoy and partake of.

This is really the highest kind of morality and integrity, and we can have this not by our striving or reform but by exercising our spirit to contact the Lord in His word and by living in the mingled spirit.

Even if we would be like Job, having an excellent living with human integrity and perfection, yet in all this our natural man is perfected and uplifted, God will not receive this but rather consider this whole thing as a frustration in the fulfilment of His purpose.

His purpose for us is to take Him as our life, enjoy Him, partake of Him, and express Him; our expression of the highest standard of morality and ethics should be a spontaneous result of our contacting the Lord and living in the spirit in oneness with Him.

Living the Life of the New Man by Putting off the Old Man and Putting on the New Man to do All things by the New Man

We believers in Christ have two men in us – one is the old man and the other is the new man; the old man has been with us since our birth, and the new man is in us since our regeneration.

The old man is of Adam through our natural birth, and it is old and decaying, with no hope of improvement or perfecting to please God.

The new man is of Christ by our new birth, by regeneration, and it is being renewed day by day according to the image of the One who created him (Eph. 4:22-24).

By which of these two men do we daily live? We have to admit that, even though we are believers in Christ and lovers of Christ, we still do not live in and by the new man.

We should live a life of continually putting off the old man and putting on of the new man.

But what we do is mainly choose to do the good and not the evil, and we do our best to live an ethical life by doing what is right and avoid doing what is wrong.

In our married life, in our family life, at work, with our friends, on the street, and in the church life, do we live by the new man, or do we still live by the old man? Do we love our husband or wife in our old man or by the new man?

We may love our spouse very much in our old man, but this kind of love is according to the old dispensation, not according to God’s New Testament economy; such a love is not according to the new creation.

Such love will spoil and eventually become spoiled, and God is not pleased with such love.

When we come to the Bible, do we read it in the new man or in the old man?

We may study the Bible either by the old man or by the new man; when we read the Word in our natural man, according to our old man, we get knowledge from God’s word, but when we read the Bible by the new man, we get spirit and life.

We need to learn to turn ourselves from the mind to the spirit by praying in the mingled spirit (Eph. 6:18; Luke 18:1; Col. 4:2); if we come to the book of Proverbs in this way, we will touch the Word by the new man and we will live by the new man.

We need to learn to put off the old man and put on the new man by the renewing in the spirit of our mind; this takes place by our coming to the word of God with the exercise of our spirit to contact the Lord in His word.

May we be saved from living in our old man and from improving our old man, and may we be brought into a living by the new man so that Christ would live in us.

Hallelujah, we have a choice: we can choose to be renewed in the spirit of our mind and put on the new man so that the old man may be put off and we would do all things by the new man!

In our daily living, in our coming to the Word of God, and in all things we need to contact the Lord through the exercise of our spirit, and we will live by the new man.

When we come to the Lord in our spirit to contact Him, we may even repent for not living by the new man, realizing that it is a sin not to live by the new man but to live in and by the old man.

When we let the new man touch the Word of God and read the Bible in the way of life, we will gain more of Christ in His word, for He will infuse us with Himself; the result is that we will live by the new man.

May we learn to pray in our spirit as we come to the word of God, pray the words in the Bible to the Lord, and remain in the mingled spirit so that we may live by the new man, not by the old man.

Lord Jesus, we want to learn to put off the old man with its old manner of life and be renewed in the spirit of our mind so that we may put on the new man! Amen, Lord, we exercise our spirit to turn from our mind to our spirit and live not by the old man but by the new man! Forgive us, Lord, for living so much in our old man. Forgive us for not turning to You and not living by the new man. Oh Lord, thank You for being in us, in our mingled spirit; we turn to You and we want to live in this organic union with You to live by the new man! We exercise our spirit to contact You in Your word so that we may live in the new man and by the new man.

We Reject Self-cultivation and Exercise our Spirit to Contact the Lord in His Word to receive Spirit and life

Before we believed into the Lord, we may have been a person who either cared very much for the improvement of their behaviour or we simply ignored it.

However, after believing into the Lord, we may think that we need to improve ourselves, make ourselves better, and behave in a more ethical way, so that we may please the Lord.

We may come to the word of God with the intention of obtaining some spiritual and ethical teachings to improve our daily living, and in particular, in coming to the book of Proverbs, we may read this book and try to get more knowledge and self-help in our Christian life.

It is true that there are many gems and nuggets in the book of Proverbs, but these are not for the improvement of our natural man but for us to receive wisdom from God through contacting God.

We must reject self-cultivation and come to the word of God with the exercise of our spirit to contact the Lord so that we may receive more spirit and life in His word.

We must condemn the building up of the natural man in the old creation and reject self-cultivation; instead of cultivating our self and building up our natural man, we need to deny the self and put off the old man, exercising our spirit to contact the Lord in spirit (Matt. 16:24; Rom. 6:6; Gal. 2:20). Amen!

The book of Proverbs can either be the letter of the law to us for us to keep and obey, or it can be a book of life causing us to receive more spirit and life as we exercise our spirit to contact the Lord in His word.

May we learn to open our being to the Lord and contact Him in His word so that we may not seek to gain more knowledge in God’s word but rather, receive more of the divine element!

When we come to the word of God we can contact God, receive God, and be infused with God; God in Christ as the Spirit is concealed in His Word, and when we exercise our spirit to contact the Lord in His word, we will be infused with God!

However, if we accept the gems and nuggets in the book of Proverbs and are successful in trying to keep them, we will only build up ourselves to be a perfect man by cultivating the self; such a person is unacceptable and displeasing to the Lord.

The Lord said that whoever wants to follow Him must deny himself; we need to deny ourselves and come to the word of God as those who are approaching God.

As we come to the word of God, we should always allow Him to conform us to the death of Christ by the power of His resurrection (Phil. 3:10).

May the Bible be to us a book of life, a life-giving and life-dispensing book, not a book that teaches us to cultivate the self and to build up the natural man!

May we exercise our spirit to contact the Lord in His word so that the Bible would become a book that is full of life, spirit, spiritual nourishment, and spiritual enlightenment!

When we do this, when we exercise our spirit to contact the Lord, we will experience the tearing down of our self, the breaking of our natural man, and the supply of our new man with the Spirit.

May we learn to exercise our spirit every day in our daily life, and especially may we learn to exercise our spirit in our reading of the Bible and in our Bible study.

This means that we need to learn to turn from our mind to our spirit by praying in our spirit; we need to learn to exercise our spirit to contact the Lord in His word and throughout the day, touching Him and touching the Word by the new man.

Lord Jesus, we want to learn to exercise our spirit to contact the Lord in His word so that the Bible would become a book of life to us. Amen, Lord, we reject self-cultivation and we condemn the building up of our natural man. We simply turn to You and contact You in spirit, exercising to be one spirit with You in all things. We come to Your word in the way of life to receive spiritual nourishment and enlightenment. May the Bible become a book of life to us as we exercise our spirit every time we come to it. Save us from trying to improve ourselves or build up our natural man as we read the Bible; may the excellent words in the Bible become spirit and life to us as we exercise our spirit to contact You and abide in You!

References and Hymns on this Topic

• Sources of inspiration: the Word of God, my enjoyment in the ministry, the message by Minoru Chen for this week, and portions from, Life-study of Proverbs, msgs. 4, 6, by Witness Lee, as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, Crystallization-study of Job, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes (2020 winter training), week 9, Reading the Book of Proverbs with a Praying Spirit So That It Will Render Us Nuggets and Gems to Strengthen Our Life of Pursuing Christ for the Fulfillment of God’s Economy.
• Recommended reading:
  – What is it to Exercise Our Spirit? via LSM radio.
  – Learning to exercise our spirit to contact Christ, via ministrysamples.
  – Do You Know How to Exercise Your Spirit? via Bibles for America.
• Hymns on this topic:
  – Our spirit we must exercise / To take the Word most inwardly, / And then to give the Spirit forth; / The two as one with us should be. / Lord, may Thy Word in me become / The Spirit as my life supply, / And may Thy Spirit in Thy Word / My true expression be thereby. (Hymns #815)
  – Teach me to exercise my spirit, Lord, / Thy Word to study, so to contact Thee, / That Thou, the living Word, with Scripture, too, / As one my daily manna e’er may be. (Hymns #801)
  – When the Word of God I study, / I must touch the Lord; / If in mind and not in spirit, / Dead is the Word. / O what riches, O what glory / In the Spirit shine! / When I exercise my spirit, / All are mine. (Hymns #612)