Eph. 6:17 And receive the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which Spirit is the word of God.
Christ Becoming the Life-giving Spirit as the Life-giving Breath
If Christ had never become the life-giving Spirit, He could not be available to us. However, because He has become the life- giving Spirit, He is available to us. As the life-giving Spirit, Christ is the life-giving breath (John 20:22). Nothing is more available than the air that surrounds us. Today Christ is the life-giving air, the life-giving breath. Second Corinthians 3:17 says, “The Lord is the Spirit.” We are now in a new age in which the Lord is the Spirit.
The Lord, Who Is the Spirit, Being with Our Spirit
Furthermore, the New Testament clearly reveals that this Lord, who is the Spirit, is with our spirit (Rom. 8:9-10, 16; 2 Tim. 4:22). Christ is the Spirit, and we have an organ with which to breathe this Spirit. If we did not have a nose and a mouth, even though the air is so available, we would not be able to breathe it. God created us with a breathing organ. In a spiritual sense, our breathing organ is our spirit.
We may feel that we do not know how to pray; nevertheless, it is easy for us to say four words to the Lord: “O Lord, Amen, Hallelujah.” As long as we have been born of God, we can say these four words from deep within. There is no need for us to shout. The main thing is not whether we shout or are silent; the important thing is the exercise of our spirit. As long as we say something to the Lord from deep within, we exercise our spirit, and we breathe the Lord.
Exercising Our Spirit to Receive the Lord as the Spirit through the Word
The Lord is the Spirit for our enjoyment. Although this is one of the most vital points revealed in the Bible, it has been greatly missed and neglected by most Christians. We need to realize that the Lord wants us to enjoy Him; He has no intention to ask us to do something for Him. We should not think that we can do anything for Him. Actually, we are not qualified to do anything for the Lord. However, we are all qualified to eat Him. We should be encouraged by this. Even if we are not capable in doing things, we are all very capable in the matter of eating.
We need to make the matter of eating the Lord very simple and practical. The Lord is not only the Spirit but also the word (1:1; Rom. 10:6-8) According to John 4:24, God is Spirit, and according to 6:63, the words spoken by the Lord Jesus also are spirit. The life-giving Spirit is embodied in the Lord’s words. Furthermore, Ephesians 6:17 says that the Spirit is the word of God. Thus, the Lord, God, the word, and the Spirit are one. In order to eat the Lord, we must receive the Spirit, and the way to receive the Spirit is to receive the word of God in the Bible.
Pray-reading the Word without Trying to Understand It
The whole Bible is a storehouse of food. All the riches of the divine supply are in the Bible. Every portion of this book is full of food. Whenever we open the Bible and read a few words with a praying spirit, we are nourished. The best way is to read and pray without trying to understand. God’s word is not the tree of knowledge but the tree of life. We need to drop the old concept of merely knowing the Scriptures in an objective way. We should never be tempted to merely understand the Bible but should simply exercise our spirit to eat the word (Jer. 15:16).
The Best Way to Receive the Lord’s Living Word Being to Pray-read
According to my experience, the best way to receive the Lord’s living word is to pray-read. We should exercise our spirit to read the Bible with a praying spirit. We should not try to do anything for the Lord. We should forget about doing, working, and serving and simply learn to eat. We must learn to enjoy the Lord as the Spirit and the word. Through our pray-reading, the divine riches in the Bible will enter into us and be assimilated into us. Then we will be living, fresh, and powerful Christians who are full of impact. (CWWL, 1967, vol. 2, “Enjoying the Riches of Christ to Become the Body as His Fullness”, ch. 3)
Once the brothers and sisters start to pray-read, they do not want to give it up. They acquire a taste for it, and they receive much benefit from the Word as they pray it back to the Lord. When they pray-read, the Word becomes rich, living, satisfying, watering, and enlightening. When we pray-read the Word, we enjoy the Lord through the Word. Thus, one of the best ways to enjoy the Lord is to enjoy the Word, and the simplest way to enjoy the Word is to pray-read the Word. “Reading and praying, I eat and I drink, / Praying and reading—Lord, Thou art my fare.” (CWWL, 1969, vol. 2, “Practicing the Church Life by Exercising the Spirit”, ch. 8)
