EFFECTS OF RECEIVING THE WORD
If you really touch the Word, you will find life. You will know there is life in the Word because you will be enlightened. Even in small things the light will shine brightly. You will have no place to hide. Whenever you come to the Word, you should experience this light searching and exposing. If you do not, you must pray, “Lord, have mercy upon me. Why do I not sense the light? Take away the dullness, the numbness, the blindness, and the veils, that I may sense Your light.”
Besides being enlightened, you will experience being nourished and strengthened. The Word first comes as light, then as nourishment and strengthening. Eventually it does a killing work. Once the light exposes and the nourishment strengthens, you will say, “Lord, I am willing. Take this away. Cut it off.” In receiving the Word, you will find it does much killing within you. It will kill your natural concepts about your husband or wife, about the brothers and sisters, about the church and the elders. It will kill your carnal desires and fleshly lusts. You will find yourself praying, “Lord, kill my pride. Kill my natural humility. Kill my performed meekness. Kill my hypocrisy. Kill my politics with the brothers and with my wife.” If you build up the habit of getting into the Word, you will have this experience daily.
Eventually you will find this Christ so close and so precious to you. You will begin to breathe Him and to live Him. By taking the Word in this way, you will live Him, grow Him, and produce Him. You will have the soil of your heart cultivated by the Father to grow Christ. He will cultivate the soil of your conscience, which is the gate. He will cultivate also the soil of your emotion, your will, and your mind. This will make a way for the vine to spread into every part of your soul.
If you will all go to the Word in this way over a period of time, the outcome will be a genuine revival in the church life, brought about from within, without any stirring up, promotion, or performance. This is what the Lord’s recovery needs today.
Do not correct or adjust yourself. Just come back to the Word and to abiding in the vine by abiding in His words. When it says in John 15:7, “My words abide in you,” in Greek “words” is rhema, the present, instant speaking. We digest the logos, and it becomes the rhema to us. Then we get the enlightening, the nourishing, the strengthening, the killing, and the living of Christ.
HOW TO TOUCH THE SPIRIT
We have the Bible in our hands and the Holy Spirit in our spirit. Whatever our condition—weak, backsliding, or wrong—thank God we do have these two legacies. The Spirit and the Word are inseparable. As you read, the Holy Spirit cooperates with the Word. In contrast, if you try to exercise the spirit in reading the Los Angeles Times, there will be no inward response. But every time you come to the Bible, in the name and under the blood, something inside works in coordination with what you are reading outside. That is the corresponding Spirit.
Obedience is the only way to touch the corresponding Spirit. You may be weak, but you cannot deny that the dear Spirit of our God is in you. You may grieve Him, but He will never leave you. This is why, whenever you have a heart to come to the Lord in His name and under His blood, the Spirit within will echo what you read in the Word. Then the more you say amen to this speaking, the more the responding Spirit will work within you. You will be either rebuked to the depths of your being or rejoicing in the heights. You will never be indifferent.
THE SPIRIT AND THE WORD WORKING WITHIN
With the Word occupying and saturating your mind and the Spirit dwelling in your spirit, you will live, grow, and produce Christ. You will have the fragrance of Christ, which others will sense without any advertising. How does this come about? By receiving the Word into your being time after time, the Spirit has wrought Himself, even Christ, into you. Your mind will be possessed by the Word and your spirit permeated with the Spirit.
The Word is a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path (Psa. 119:105). The Word that occupies your mind will shine before your feet, lighting your way. You will not be walking in darkness because the mind-occupying Word will shine over your steps.
At the same time the indwelling Spirit will keep speaking to you, comforting and nourishing you all day. It is like the food we take in; we may finish a meal in thirty minutes, but for several hours afterward that food sustains us.
May we take Christ as our food through His Word and drink Him as our water through the Spirit. Thus we shall live, grow, and produce Him, fulfilling the Father’s desire.
(Life Messages, Vol. 1 (#1-41), Chapter 6, by Witness Lee)
