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The Word of God – Life to Us and a Revelation of Who God Is

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Verses for Today

Psalm 119:16 I will take delight in Your statutes; / I will not forget Your word.

Psalm 119:140 Your word is very pure, / And Your servant loves it.

Exodus 34:28c And He wrote upon the tablets the words of the covenant, the Ten Commandments.

Fellowship

God’s words are contained in the Bible. When we read a verse, we have to realize that it is God’s speaking. God carries everything out by speaking. His creation was by His speaking; God said, and there was. Today, God nourishes His seekers through His word. The Lord Jesus said that man shall not live on bread alone but by every word that proceeds out through the mouth of God (Matthew 4:4). Even the 10 commandments can become life-giving to us if we take them as God’s words from out of His mouth.

At least thirty-seven times in Psalm 119 the psalmist refers to the law as God’s word. Instead of simply declaring that he loved God’s law, the psalmist declared that he loved God’s word. This proves that he thought of God’s law as His living word. (Life Study of Exodus, Msg 56, Section 2)

In our Christian life, we start out by receiving the many sweet provisions God has for us. This was also the experience of the children of Israel in the first part of the book of Exodus. They were saved from slavery, separated from Egypt, given water to drink and manna to eat. For us New Testament believers, God gave us His only Begotten Son to die for us and forgive us our sins. We were saved from a life of bondage in which we served sin as slaves. God separated us from the world and gave us living water to quench our thirst and living bread that we might have His eternal life. Our salvation experience matches the salvation experience of the children of Israel coming out of Egypt.  In our experience, we are learning how to come to God’s word for life. We have to turn our heart to the Lord and exercise our spirit to contact Him. We can say, “Thank you Lord Jesus for all you’ve done for me!” May all God’s children enjoy God’s full salvation.

In addition to taking care of all our problems and nourishing us, God’s word functions to reveal to us who God is, and this is most important. Let us now get into this.

Concerning the matter of law, there is an important principle: the kind of law a person makes expresses the kind of person that one is. For example, if criminals could make laws, they would legalize crime. Furthermore, a backward country would have rather barbaric laws, whereas a highly cultured society would have highly cultured laws. This principle applies also to God Himself. God is a Law-giver. In giving the law, He would never legalize crime or sin. He would not legalize theft or adultery, for He is not that kind of God. Only the god of witchcraft would legalize such things. A law is always a revelation of what kind of person has enacted that law.

The first function of the law is…to reveal God to us….I wish to emphasize the point that the primary function of the law is to reveal God to us. After God brought His people into His presence to have fellowship with Him, to serve Him, to contact Him, to worship Him, and even to feast with Him, He made Himself known to them. Prior to this time, God had not revealed to His people what kind of God He is….Only when we come to Exodus 20 do we have a revelation of what kind of God our God is (Life Study of Exodus, pp. 592-593).

We get to know our God in His word. His laws, statutes, ordinances, and all His words are not for us to take as lists of dos and don’ts. Rather, they are there that we might know God. He wants to be known. His laws are often referred to as His testimonies, meaning that they are there because God wants to be known by us. Finally, knowing who God is through His word is not for our mere acknowledgement. When the Bible says that God is love, it conveys God as love into us. By our contacting God in His word to get to know Him, who He is gets infused into us, making us the same as He is. Let us, in a pure way, read God’s word to get to know who He is. This is altogether worthwhile.

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The Word of God – The Letter Kills but the Spirit Gives Life

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Verses for Today

2 Cor 3:6 Who has also made us sufficient as ministers of a new covenant, ministers not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.

2 Cor 3:14a But their thoughts were hardened; for until the present day the same veil remains at the reading of the old covenant.

Fellowship

Reading the Bible is a necessary practice for all believers. 2 Timothy 3:16-17 says that, “All Scripture is God-breathed and profitable for teaching, for conviction, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, That the man of God may be complete, fully equipped for every good work.” Therefore, what is found in the Bible is the best content available in the whole world. Do not think that you can scroll on your electronic device until you find something better than what is found in the Bible; you cannot. We wholeheartedly recommend the reading of the Bible.

Having said this, we have to know that there are two ways to take the Bible into us. One way results in life and the other way results in death. Let us check our experience. Why is it that we sometimes don’t delight in reading the Bible as much as we should? If the Bible is so rich in content, why is it that it can sometimes even give us a dead feeling? Some ardent studiers of the Bible can even become enemies of God and begin to breathe out threatening and murder. This is because, when taken in for mere knowledge, the letter of the Bible can become death to us.

On the contrary, when we pray to contact Jesus Christ who is the life-giving Spirit, the words of the Bible can become spirit and life to us. We experience something like a flowing river, refreshing us and supplying us. One way is to take the words for knowledge, and this results in death. This is just like Adam and Eve taking from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The other way is to come to the Lord Jesus while we read, seeking to receive life. This is just like man coming to eat of the tree of life.

As Paul said of the Jews, there is a veil upon their heart in the reading of the Scriptures (2 Cor. 3:14). They are veiled by their tradition and by their natural concepts. In their experience the Bible thus becomes a book of dead letters. Like the ancient Pharisees, scribes, and Judaizers, they handle the Word without directly contacting the Lord. Instead of exercising their spirit, they rely on their natural understanding. Furthermore, they are often zealous to maintain their religious tradition. But whenever we come to the Word, we need to contact the Lord. As we come to the Lord in the Word, we need to hunger and thirst for Him and seek to enjoy Him. This seeking after the Lord is well expressed in the lines of hymn 812:

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.

In our reading and pray-reading of the Word, we should seek the Lord’s glorious, radiant face. Then in our experience the Word of God will be a source of life supply and nourishment… (Life Study of Exodus, Msg 56, Section 4)

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The Word of God – And he will be like a Tree

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Verses for Today

Psalm 1:1 Blessed is the man / Who does not walk / In the counsel of the wicked, / Nor stand on the path of sinners, / Nor sit in the seat of mockers;

Psalm 1:2 Rather his delight is in the law of Jehovah, / And in His law he meditates by day and by night.

Psalm 1:3 And he will be like a tree / Transplanted beside streams of water, / Which yields its fruit in its season, / And whose foliage does not wither; / And everything he does prospers.

John 10:10b I have come that they may have life and may have it abundantly.

Fellowship

The Bible surely tells us that God created us and that He is taking care of all our needs. It even tells us that God sent His Son to die for us that we might be saved from our sins. We should always thank Him for all these blessings. We have so much to be thankful for, but let us not just acknowledge this. Let us practice, “Thank you Lord!”. 

By thanking the Lord thus and even praising Him and loving Him, we come to see that the Bible has an even deeper level, revealing to us God’s very heart and plan. God’s plan is altogether wrapped up with you and me; His plan is that we receive His life and live by Him. He wants us not only to have a human life and to be forgiven, but to have His divine life. 1 Corinthians 15:45 tells us that in His resurrection Christ became a life-giving Spirit. As the Spirit, He gives us Himself as God’s life! The Bible’s primary purpose is actually that we might have God’s life.

God’s intention in His economy [plan] is to dispense Christ into us, and for this dispensing there must be some means. The Bible is the means that God uses to dispense Christ into us (The Holy Word for Morning Revival, Topics for New Believers, Week 3, day 1).

Psalm 1 indicates that the law, when taken in a proper way as God’s word, can minister life to us. Those who delight in the law of the Lord and who muse on it day and night are like trees planted by the rivers of water (vv. 2-3)… If we contact the law of God by musing upon God’s word in worship and prayer, in our experience the law will become a river of water, and we shall be trees planted by the water. This is the indication in Psalms 1 that the law can supply us and water us. (Life Study of Exodus, Msg 56, Section 4)

As we come to His word day by day, and practice contacting Him with our spirit, we shall be those who receive more and more of God’s divine life; we shall be like the trees planted by the rivers of water.

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Our Human Spirit – Another Life

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Our Bible study on the human spirit is becoming more personal. We explore the following questions:

What is your understanding of how one becomes a Christian?
What does the Bible call the life of God – which He gives to us?
How can we receive this life?
Where does the Lord live?
Where is the Lord Jesus right now?

We invite you to dive right in as we think that you will really enjoy this Bible study titled: “Another Life”.

Download the full Bible Study in your preferred format:

Another Life – PDF

Another Life – PowerPoint Slides

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Morning Revival Exercises – Pray Reading the Word

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Verses for Today

2 Corinthians 3:17 And the Lord is the Spirit; and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.

John 4:24 God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truthfulness.

Ephesians 6:17 And receive the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which Spirit is the word of God,

Ephesians 6:18 By means of all prayer and petition, praying at every time in spirit and watching unto this in all perseverance and petition concerning all the saints,

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.

Fellowship

The goal of morning revival is to get revived and we can get revived by touching the Lord. Because 2 Corinthians 3:17 tells us that the Lord is the Spirit, we know that we have to use our own human spirit to contact Him. Our human spirit corresponds to the Lord as the Spirit. The Lord Jesus even instructs us in John 4:24 to use our human spirit to contact Him!

Did you know you had a human spirit? This is a spiritual organ deep inside you. When you call on the name of the Lord you are exercising your spirit. When you tell Him you love Him you are exercising your spirit. Essentially, whenever you turn your being to the Lord and direct your heart and your speaking to Him, you are exercising your spirit. Reading only with our eyes and our mind, like we do for school, is not enough for us to touch the living Christ who is the Spirit today. What we need is to pray to contact our dear Lord Jesus all the time, even while reading His word.

Here are some examples. If you reply to the Word of God with an “Amen Lord,” that is to contact the Lord. If you begin to read a verse with, “Oh, Lord Jesus,” and then read the verse, then this is also an excellent way to contact the Lord, that is, to touch the Lord through prayer as you read. 

There is not one way to pray-read. Ephesians 6:18 shows us that we should receive the Word by means of all prayer. This means all kinds of prayer. When pray-reading, you can be calling on the Lord, confessing, or petitioning the Lord. All prayer is good. In fact, using John 6:63 as an example, you can say to the Lord, “Lord, It is the Spirit who gives Life; Lord, You are the Spirit and You give life. Lord, give life to me!”

Those who have tried pray-reading have discovered that it is one of the quickest ways to get out of our selfishness and into the enjoyment of God. God has put His very thoughts into the Bible. By praying and reading the Bible, His selfless, loving, and pure thoughts get into us and can even become our thoughts. This is a part of sanctification. By pray-reading, we are being sanctified! Moreover, John 6:63 tells us that the Spirit gives life. Therefore, whenever we pray-read, we not only receive God’s thoughts, but even His life.

Do practice contacting the Lord while reading His word. If there are several verses that you read, pick one and linger there, praying with the words from that verse, and contacting the Lord Jesus. This is an excellent way to be revived morning by morning. 

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Weekly Video – The Vision of The Body of Christ

 

This week we see how the church is the Body of Christ. God became a man and died for us; this we might already know. But did you know that He gave us His very life? By having His life we become the members of His Body. 

Continue reading “Weekly Video – The Vision of The Body of Christ”

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The Tree of Life – A day in Your courts is better than a thousand

A-Day-In-Your-Courts-is-Better-than-a-Thousand-Cropped

Wednesday, September 20, 2017, 6pm.

A-Day-In-Your-Courts-is-Better-than-a-ThousandJesus said to them, I am the bread of life; he who comes to Me shall by no means hunger, and he who believes into Me shall by no means ever thirst. (John 6:35)

As the living Father has sent Me and I live because of the Father, so he who eats Me, he also shall live because of Me. (John 6:57)

And out of the ground Jehovah God caused to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food, as well as the tree of life in the middle of the garden and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. (Gen. 2:9)

Use these verses (above) to describe God’s intention for man.

They are saturated with the fatness of Your house, / And You cause them to drink of the river of Your pleasures. (Psa. 36:8)

With You is the fountain of life; / In Your light we see light. (Psa. 36:9)

In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. (John 1:4)

Again therefore Jesus spoke to them, saying, I am the light of the world; he who follows me shall by no means walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life. (John 8:12)

In My Father’s house are many abodes; if it were not so, I would have told you; for I go to prepare a place for you. (John 14:2)

What does the “house” in the verses above refer to? How do these verses relate to each other?

One thing I have asked from Jehovah; / That do I seek: / To dwell in the house of Jehovah / All the days of my life, / To behold the beauty of Jehovah, / And to inquire in His temple. (Psa. 27:4)

A day in Your courts is better than a thousand; / I would rather stand at the threshold of the house of my God / Than dwell in the tents of the wicked. (Psa. 84:10)

Is there something in these two verses that touches you?

Further reading: The Tree of Life, chapter 4, published by Living Stream Ministry