Higher Ground | Day 10
EXERCISING OUR SPIRIT TO PRAY WITH THE WORD
John 6:63 – It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing; the words which I have spoken to you are spirit and are life.
Matt. 4:4 – But He answered and said, It is written, “Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that proceeds out through the mouth of God.”
Jer. 15:16 – Your words were found and I ate them, and Your word became to me the gladness and joy of my heart, for I am called by Your name, O Jehovah, God of hosts.
John 6:63 says, “The words which I have spoken to you are spirit and are life.” The word has to be spirit in order to be life to us. Therefore, we must know how to transfer the word we have understood into the Spirit. If we come to the Bible only by exercising our eyes and mind to understand it, the word is still only the word. The way to transfer the word into the Spirit is by exercising our spirit to pray.
The right way to receive the word is to take it as the breath of life from God (2 Tim. 3:16). This is the life food by which man lives, not by bread alone but by every word that proceeds out from the mouth of God (Matt. 4:4). This is food for the spirit, so we have to exercise our spirit to take it. To receive food for our physical body, we have to exercise our mouth, but to receive spiritual food for our spirit, we have to exercise our spirit. Whenever we come to the word, we need to realize that it is spiritual food. We must exercise our spirit to eat it, not merely to know it. We should forget about knowing and simply eat Christ. This word is the written word of the living Word. It is the expression, the revelation, of the living Word, who is Christ. He is our food, our bread of life, so whenever we come to the Bible, we come to food, not for the body but for the spirit, so we must use our spirit to take it. This is clear to us, but we have to practice to receive the word in this way, not merely to read the Bible for knowledge but to read it for feeding on it. (Enjoying Christ as the Word and the Spirit through Prayer, pp. 31-33)