We need to eat Jesus by calling on the name of the Lord. But after we eat, we also need a good digestion. We do not want to have indigestion. Indigestion first causes stomach trouble and then it may cause a stomach ulcer. This could even lead to stomach cancer, issuing in death. Eating without a good digestion will cause trouble. When we eat Christ, we also need to spiritually digest Him in a proper way. If you have a proper digestion, the food you eat can get into every part of your physical being. There is the thoroughfare for the food to get through. Indigestion means that there is no thoroughfare for the food. The food cannot get through, so you will have problems.
Now we need to consider how this applies to us in a spiritual sense. Some dear saints may enjoy calling on the Lord and pray-reading the Word at first. But after a certain time, they lose their taste and appetite for this. This is because after taking in the Lord Jesus, something happened within them. There was indigestion. There was no thoroughfare for the Lord Jesus to get through. After calling on the Lord Jesus and pray-reading His Word, we have to say, "Lord, be merciful to me. Keep my whole being with all my inward parts open to You."
I am not speaking something doctrinally, but something which is very practical to us in our Christian life. After you call on the Lord, I have the full assurance that He gets into you. But the problem is this—after your calling on the name of the Lord, after the Lord gets into you, you probably would not be so open to Him. You may be open to Him in a little part of your being, but most of your being is closed to Him.
The Lord Jesus is real, living, and practical. When you call, "Lord Jesus," He gets into you and fills you up. While you are calling "Lord Jesus," this practical and living Jesus will touch your natural being. But many of you would say, "No, Lord. Don’t touch me here. Stay where You are. You are my guest and You must stay in the living room. Don’t get into my private bedroom. That’s for me, not for You." This means indigestion. There is no way for the Lord as the spiritual food to get through in you. There is no free course for the food to get into your inward parts, so you have indigestion.
Today’s Christianity has many teachings, but we do not need these doctrinal teachings. We need to eat the Lord and enjoy the Lord. Suppose I invited you to a dinner, and instead of allowing you to eat and enjoy the food, I taught you about the food. This would be terrible. We do not need the teaching; we need the real nourishment. We need the riches of Christ to get into our being. We can get the riches of Christ into our being simply by calling on Him—"O Lord Jesus." But after calling on Him, the Lord works and moves within us to touch us in our inward being.
After calling on the Lord, a young brother may eventually have some sense within him that he needs to deal with the way he cuts his hair. If he is slow to respond to this sense, this means that he is not allowing the Lord Jesus to get through. Thus, you have to be on the alert. After calling on the Lord Jesus, if you have any sense within you, any feeling within you, that means the Lord Jesus is moving, and that means the digestion within you is going on. You have to go along with this inner sense. If you go along with this sense, you will be joyful and have a better, bigger, deeper, and higher appetite for Christ. This is because a good digestion brings in a better appetite. If you argue with the inner sense, this will result in indigestion. Then you will not be so eager to pray-read the Word, and calling on the name of the Lord will not be so sweet to you.
But when you respond to and go along with the inner sense, your appetite for the Lord Jesus comes back and your spiritual digestion becomes proper. Then the riches of the Lord Jesus become your cells, and these cells grow into your organic tissues. This causes you to grow in the divine life and makes you strong in the Lord. It is easy for you to stand and not easy for you to backslide, because you are growing in the Lord. It is hard for the grown-up ones to fall down. This is because they have a good digestion to assimilate all the nourishment from the spiritual food they eat.
(The Living and Practical Way to Enjoy Christ, Chapter 6, by Witness Lee)