Stop our Doing and Focus on Eating and Absorbing God to Gain God and Live out God

As believers in Christ, we need to learn to stop our doing and even our being to just enjoy the Lord, focusing only on eating and absorbing God so that we may gain God and live out God.

Our Christian life is a life of eating and absorbing Christ, and we live by eating Jesus, for He is our life and life supply. Amen!

From the beginning of the Bible to its very end, we see that God’s intention is not just that man would know Him, fear Him, and worship Him but even more that man would enjoy Him.

God wants to be enjoyed by man.

Man, however, is more inclined to do many things for God, thinking that this is the way he can please God.

Cain did this; Cain invented his own religion by bringing the fruits of his own labour to God, while all he needed to do was take the way ordained by God and worship God by offering a lamb to Him.

Christ has done everything for us. He has accomplished redemption for us.

We are saved by believing into the Lord and accepting His redeeming sacrifice.

We are regenerated simply by receiving the Lord as our life, with no effort from our side except opening to Him and being willing to receive Him.

Now as believers in Christ, we need to continually come to the Lord to enjoy Him.

We need to habitually enjoy the Lord in all the details of our daily living.

We were saved by grace and we need to live by grace, that is, live by eating, drinking, and enjoying the Lord.

Especially in this age today when everything is focused on man’s enjoyment, we need to realize that the real enjoyment is in God Himself and is God Himself.

The things of this world are here today but gone tomorrow, but God is our eternal, everlasting satisfaction.

The water that this world offers to us causes us to rather thirst more, for it never satisfies us.

The water that the Lord gives to us, the living water that He as the Spirit is to us, causes us to be satisfied and to thirst no more.

Even more, the water that the Lord gives us becomes in us a fountain of living water springing up into eternal life (John 4:13-14).

When we drink the Lord as the living water, something within us springs up and flows into eternal life, and when we meet with others, this living water springs up and flows out of us into them! Praise the Lord!

May we return to the Lord again and again and learn to stop our being and our doing to just enjoy and absorb God.

We only need to enjoy Him. The enjoyment of Christ will solve all our problems.

As we enjoy the Lord, He has a way to make His home in our heart and to deal with all our problems.

As we enjoy the Lord, He has a way to live in us and do many things in us. May we give ourselves to enjoy the Lord day by day!

The Christian Living is a Life of Eating, Drinking, and Enjoying the Lord for Him to Mingle Himself with us

Gen. 2:9 shows us that, right after God created man, He put man in a garden, and in the middle of the garden there was the tree of life.

This is not just some story that happened many years ago; this is our reality today as Christians.

We are daily placed in front of Christ as the tree of life.

As believers in Christ, our Christian living is a life of eating, drinking, and enjoying the Lord as life so that He may mingle Himself more with us.

The Lord Jesus told us that, when we come together, we need to remember Him by eating Him and drinking Him (1 Cor. 11:24-25; Matt. 26:26-29; Mark 14:22-25; Luke 22:19-20).

Actually, every time we eat food and drink something, we need to remember the Lord by eating Him and drinking Him.

The focus of our remembrance of the Lord is our eating and drinking of Him.

When we come together at the Lord’s Table meeting, we not only partake of the outward signs on the Table, the bread and the wine, but we exercise our spirit to partake of the Lord as our food and drink.

The reality of the Table Meeting is in spirit; we need to exercise our spirit to eat, drink and enjoy the Lord so that He may continually mingle Himself with us.

He gave His body for us and He shed His blood for us; His body is our real food and His blood is our true drink.

This doesn’t mean that we believe in transubstantiation, that is, that the physical elements become something spiritual, or that there’s something mystical going on that is quite strange.

When we come to the Lord’s Table meeting to remember the Lord, we remember Him not merely by meditating in our mind but by exercising our spirit to enjoy and partake of all that He has done for us in spirit.

He has redeemed us. He died for our sins. He took the cup of God’s wrath and obtained for us the cup of God’s blessing.

Now we can simply call on the name of the Lord and praise Him so that we may enjoy all that He has done for us.

The significance of the Lord’s table is that we eat and absorb the Lord, eat and enjoy Him, and eat and drink Him so that He may mingle Himself with us.

And we eat and drink of Him not only at the Lord’s Table meeting but even more, day by day.

The significance of the bread-breaking at the Lord’s table is the meaning of our Christian living.

Our Christian living should be a life of eating, drinking, and enjoying the Lord day by day so that He may mingle Himself with us. Hallelujah!

Our Christian life needs to be filled with eating the Lord and enjoying Him.

As we eat and absorb God, as we eat, enjoy, and drink the Lord, we live because of Him (John 6:57).

Our Christian living should be Christ living in us, not us trying to live or do things.

How can Christ live in us? First, He needs to get into us, and then, He needs to increase and grow in us so that He can be expressed through us.

We need to do what the Lord Jesus did: the Father sent Him to do His work, and He lived by enjoying the Father so that He may live because of the Father.

So we today as the Lord’s disciples, His continuation and reproduction, need to eat Christ and live because of Him (John 6:32-35).

He is a spiritual rock that follows us to give us to drink (1 Cor. 10:4) and He is the living bread for us to partake of and live by.

May we practice to daily enjoy the Lord, eat Him, drink Him, and partake of Him so that we may be mingled with Him and He would have a way to live in us.

May our daily Christian living be a life of eating, drinking, and enjoying the Lord in all things!

Lord Jesus, remind us to eat You, drink You, and enjoy You. May our Christian living be a life of eating, enjoying, and drinking Christ so that God may be mingled with us more each day! Amen, Lord Jesus, we open to You today! Mingle Yourself more with us today. May there be more mingling of God and man going on in our being. Thank You for doing everything for us. Thank You for dying for us to redeem us and for obtaining the cup of blessing for us to drink. Amen, Lord, we want to daily eat You and drink You. We want to eat Christ and live because of Christ in our daily life. We open to You as the spiritual rock following us to give us the living water. Amen, Lord, give us to eat and drink of You today. Only You satisfy our hunger and only You quench our thirst. We want to eat and drink of You day by day and even moment by moment so that we may be mingled with You and live because of You!

We need to Stop our Doing and Focus on Eating and Absorbing God to Gain God and Live out God

We need to have a change in our concept from thinking that we need to do many things for God to simply be those who are eating and absorbing God to gain God and live God.

God’s intention is not primarily that we do things for Him; rather, He wants to give Himself to us for our enjoyment.

He comes to us as the tree of life, which is like a vine spreading wherever we are for us to obtain its fruit and eat.

He comes to us as living water, flowing out of the smitten rock (which rock is Christ) for us to drink and be satisfied.

He is even the living air for us to breathe, and He is breathing Himself into us as the Holy Spirit for our daily living (John 20:22).

Whatever we need, He is. The secret of our Christian life is not how much we work for God but how much we enjoy Him.

We need to learn the secret of the Christian life by simply turning our inner being to enjoy God.

As we pray and enjoy God, we gain God, and He has a way to do all things in us and for us.

Many times, however, we focus on our problems such as an illness or a painful situation; we have a “Lazarus” who is sick, and we desperately want the Lord to come and heal us.

Like Mary and Martha, we may send word to the Lord that our Lazarus is sick, but the Lord may be silent for many days until our Lazarus is dead for three days and is even stinking. Oh, Lord Jesus!

The more we pray for a situation or a person, the more fervent we ask the Lord about our problems, and the more it seems that He does not respond.

He wants us to stop our doing and focus on eating and absorbing God so that we may gain God and live God.

He knows that our “Lazarus” is sick and will die, and He is resurrection life and power to raise our Lazarus from the dead; He simply wants us to focus on eating and absorbing God.

The more we insist, the more He waits, until our Lazarus finally dies, is buried, and begins to stink. He has no intention for us to do anything for Him.

We may try to help God to take care of this or do that, but He doesn’t need our help. He only wants us to enjoy Him.

We may be like Martha, always busy for the Lord, always assuming that she knows what the Lord meant, and always ready to put forth her opinions related to the Lord, the Lord’s word, and even concerning our fellow brothers and sisters.

The Lord wants us to stop our doing and our being and simply enjoy and absorb Him.

We may need to take care of many things, and we think that many people and situations depend on our service and our work; God, however, is not after this work and service primarily: He wants us to be those enjoying and absorbing God to gain God and live because of God.

We need to come to the Lord again and again and just enjoy Him.

We need to eat, drink, and enjoy Christ until we are filled with Him.

Not only in the morning but even throughout the day, we need to stop and just enjoy Christ to be filled with Him.

When we’re filled with the Lord, our face will be shining!

When we are filled in spirit, we don’t need to try to do this or that for God, and we don’t need to strive to take care of this one or that situation; we simply live Christ, and He has a way to meet all the needs.

In the Gospels we see that the Lord Jesus retreated in the desert or on a mountain to spend time with the Father, sometimes spending the whole night in fellowship with the Father.

We may think that, since the Lord Himself was God, He did not need to do this, but as a Man, He had to do it.

There were so many people, situations, and problems around Him, and He brought everything to God in prayer.

He fed on the Father, He lived because of the Father, and His primary business was to be in the Father’s presence, one with the Father, expressing the Father, and enjoying the Father.

As believers in Christ, we need to come to the Lord in the morning to behold His beauty, absorb Him, receive Him, and enjoy Him.

We need to tell Him to infuse us and work Himself into us, and we need to remain in His presence as we read the Word of God.

Then, our face will be shining, for the Lord will be our joy. The joy of the Triune God is becoming our joy as we enjoy God.

If we do not enjoy God, our face will be sad when we meet some saints we do not like or we don’t think highly of.

But when we enjoy God, when we give ourselves to the Lord to be those eating and absorbing God to gain God and live God, we don’t need to try to be joyful: the joyful One will be expressed through us!

Lord Jesus, may we realize that Your intention is not for us to do things for You or work for You but to just enjoy You and absorb You to gain You and live because of You. Amen, Lord, we give ourselves to You to be those eating and absorbing God all throughout the day! May our daily living be filled with enjoying the Lord and partaking of His riches. Grant us the grace to learn to stop ourselves, stop our work, and even stop our being to enjoy God! Save us from focusing on our problems and losing sight of You. Oh Lord, may we learn to put our problems aside and just come to enjoy You until we’re filled with You! May we put our burdens aside, let our difficulties remain and simply enjoy You in Your word until we’re filled with You! Fill us, Lord Jesus! Fill us with Yourself right now! We want to gain You and be filled with You until we live Christ and express Christ!

References and Hymns on this Topic

• Inspiration for this article/sharing comes from the Word of God, the enjoyment in the ministry, a sharing by James Lee in the message for this week, and portions from, Collected Works of Witness Lee, 1958, vol. 1, How to Enjoy God and How to Practice the Enjoyment of God, ch. 7, as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, The Enjoyment of Christ and our Growth in Life unto Maturity (2023 Thanksgiving Blending Conference), week 2, entitled, The Joy of the Triune God Becoming our Joy.
• Similar articles on this topic:
  – Eating, drinking, and breathing Christ, a portion from, The Fulfillment of God’s Purpose by the Growth of Christ in Us, Chapter 2, by Witness Lee.
  – The Bible Is Our Spiritual Food, article at, Bibles for America blog.
  – Eating and drinking the Lord to receive the Lord, a portion from, The Crucified Christ, Chapter 10, by Witness Lee.
  – There is Nothing more Wonderful on the Earth than the Church Life, via, Living to Him.
  – The tree of life, article via, Affirmation and Critique.
  – Christ is the Tree of Life, a new song via, Hymnal.net.
  – Planted into Christ, how God gives the growth, one spirit with the Lord, a portion from, Life-Study of Colossians, Chapter 52.
  – Eating the Tree of Life Eternally, via, New Jerusalem blog.
  – The all-inclusive Christ in Revelation, article by John Campbell in, Affirmation and Critique.
  – God Wants to Change Your Diet, via, Holding to Truth in Love.
  – What is the Enjoyment of Christ? Read more via, LSM radio newsletters.
• Hymns on this topic:
  – My heart is hungry, my spirit doth thirst; / I come to Thee, Lord, to seek Thy supply; / All that I need is none other but Thee, / Thou canst my hunger and thirst satisfy. / Feed me, Lord Jesus, give me to drink, / Fill all my hunger, quench all my thirst; / Flood me with joy, be the strength of my life, / Fill all my hunger, quench all my thirst. (Hymns #811 stanza 1 and chorus)
  – I come to Thee, dear Lord, / My heart doth thirst for Thee; / Of Thee I’d eat, of Thee I’d drink. / Enjoy Thee thoroughly. / Just to behold Thy face, / For this my heart doth cry; / I deeply long to drink of Thee / My thirst to satisfy. (Hymns #812 stanzas 1-2)
  – Let us eat Jesus every day, / Eating His flesh in such a way / That in the trials great or small / He as a Man will be our all. / Eat, eat more of Jesus! / Eat, eat more of Jesus! / Why should we undernourished be / When we have His humanity? (Hymns #1146 stanza 1 and chorus)