A Time with the Lord

Andrew Murray wrote in his book on prayer about one time in a conference someone asked a question: “Everyone here who prays 30 minutes every day, hold up your hand.” Of all the people in the room, only one person raised his hand! Then the man asked again for everyone who prays 15 minutes a day. Half of people in the room raised their hands. When he asked how many pray for 5 minutes a day. Everyone in room raised their hands. That same for us today? We all must ask ourselves this question: “How much time I pray with the Lord every day?” The most important need for Christians today, what? They need to have time with Lord every day reading and praying in His presence.

Every day we need to eat food to feed (nourish) our bodies. In same way in our spiritual life we need to eat spiritual food. Today many Christians know how to study Bible, memorize Bible verses, and think about the words of the Bible and search the Bible for knowledge. But only a few Christians know how to open their hearts to God’s Word to enjoy the Lord Jesus and to eat spiritual food from the Bible.

Because we have God living inside us, we need to decide a time during the day to read God’s Word to enjoy God, to eat God as our food, and to eat spiritual food for nourishment. We learned from other Christians’ experience and testimony that we need to have 30 minutes every day with the Lord Jesus. What for? contact Him and to get strength from Him. What do we need to do for 30 minutes? We need to read the Bible and pray. To pray and read for 10 minutes is not enough time. We need longer time with the Lord so we can read God’s Word and pray to Him in a proper way. 30 minutes to read Bible and pray to Lord is not long enough, but every day we can go ahead have 30 minutes with the Lord to pray-read His Word. When is the best time to do this? The best time is in the morning, when we wake up from bed.

In these 30 minutes we must forget about knowledge, sermons, work or anything else. We must forget everything and focus strong to have proper amount of time in the Lord’s presence. As God’s sons this is the first experience we need every day. Every Christian must be helped to do this. For 30 minutes each day we must learn not to think too much about things, problems etc, instead we must be simple and exercise our spirit when we pray-read God’s Word. Any Christian who does not have 30 minutes in the Lord’s presence every day, it is impossible for him to be spiritual and healthy. This is strong principle (rule). Can you be healthy and strong without eating food every day? No!

If we are faithful every day to pray and read for 30 minutes with the Lord, He will work inside us to change us. Our experience of Jesus Christ will become deeper and we can help others in a strong way. Our life will be changed in wonderful way. This does not happen through teaching, studying and telling people what to do, but how happen? through contacting and talking to the Lord Jesus.

We must willing pay cost to have 30 minutes time with Lord Jesus why? for our spiritual growth happen. In the morning, we must not love sleeping in bed for too long. Watchman Nee one time tell us that if we love our bed, we cannot love the Lord Jesus. That is difficult struggle for us to choose the Lord instead of choose stay in bed sleep longer.

Through the Lord’s mercy and grace; if we decide to have 30 minutes every morning with the Lord, what should we do? How do we touch God’s Word for food and enjoyment? We must learn how to mingle (mix) our reading of the Bible with our prayer. We must contact the Lord how? mingle (mix) our reading with prayer, and mingle (mix) our prayer with reading. That is why we have a special word “pray-read”. We must pray-read the Word.

First thing to do is simple pray a short prayer to the Lord. Then open your Bible and read it. While you are reading the words of the Bible, in normal way talk to the Lord with the words you read. Do not read too much, simple read a short verse then pray. When you pray do not pray long prayers, don’t pray for many things that you want the Lord to do for you, don’t do that. Simple way is to use the words from the Bible in your prayer. Prayer that touches the Lord is valuable prayer, that means, the best prayer is to say something that you feel inside to the Lord when you read the Bible.

Every day for 30 minutes in the morning don’t waste time asking the Lord to do many things for you, instead talk with Him and enjoy Him. The more we enjoy Him, the more happy He is. If we pray asking Him to do things that we want Him to do, He will say “Foolish child, you do not need to ask Me to do all those things. I already take care of that. Instead I want you to enjoy Me.”

In New Testament, the Lord Jesus tells us that God’s Word is spiritual food. In Matthew 4:4 says; “But He [Jesus] answered and said, It is written, ‘Man shall not live on bread only, but on every word that comes out of God’s mouth’.” Every word that comes from God’s mouth is spiritual food to feed and nourish us. The Bible tells us in three different stories about people who ate (finish-eat) God’s Word. One person is called Jeremiah, he said: “Your words were found and I ate them…” (Jeremiah 15:16). This sentence is not the way we think and understand about things. If this sentence was not in the Bible we would not think that we must eat God’s Word. This is a new idea to us. Instead we think that we must learn about God’s Word and study God’s Word. Maybe better way we say that we receive (get) God’s Word. But we would not think to use the word eat! Jeremiah ate God’s Word. This means he received God’s Word into him, assimilated (digested) it and made it become part of himself. [This is same as when we eat food into our stomach and it is digested and becomes part of our body.]

In same verse Jeremiah also said: “Your word became to me the rejoicing and joy of my heart.” This is enjoyment. After we eat God’s Word it makes us feel joy inside and causes us to rejoice. Joy is what we feel deep inside, and rejoicing is what we do to express (show) our joy we feel inside. [Rejoicing happens when we say “Hallelujah! Praise the Lord!”] God’s Word is an enjoyment. When we take God’s Word into us and let it become part of us, it turns into joy inside us and rejoicing that we express outside of us.

Other verses also show us the same idea. King David said, “How sweet are Your words to my taste! Sweeter than honey to my mouth!” (Psalms 119:103). God’s Word is an enjoyment, and it tastes sweeter and more pleasant than honey to our taste. These verses show us that God’s Word is for us to taste, eat, enjoy and digest. It is not only for learning.

Then in 1 Peter 2:2-3 we find that to eat the Word is same as to taste the Lord. “As new born babes, hunger for the pure milk of the word, why? that you may grow unto salvation, if you tasted that the Lord is good.” In verse 2 is the eating of God’s Word, then verse 3 talks about tasting the Lord. When we eat God’s Word as our spiritual food, we can taste the Lord. That means, same as Jeremiah ate the Word, we must also eat God’s Word, then we can enjoy the Lord and get spiritual food.

Another important verse is 1 Timothy 4:6: “You will be a good minister of Christ Jesus, being fed (nourished) with the words of the faith.” Maybe you have been a Christian for many years. Have you before thought that we must be fed with God’s Word? We often think that we must have someone to teach us God’s Word. But how many Christians see (noticed) the word fed (nourished)? Have you heard a message (sermon) telling you that you need to be fed with God’s Word?

The Apostle Paul’s concept (idea) was that God’s Word is food to feed God’s children. We must be fed with the Word, not just taught about it. Praise the Lord, feed (nourish)! Hallelujah!, we must eat the Word, and not just learn about the word like in school. Paul strong say that we should not only be taught knowledge of God’s Word, but we should be fed (nourished) with the riches of God’s Word.

Why do we open the Bible to read it? Was it to learn about it and get more knowledge about it, or to understand it? Our way of thinking was the Bible is for us to learn about it, to teach others about it, and that it is a book of doctrines (teaching). That means in past we open Bible to read it only to try to understand it and learn something from it. But we should not only try to understand the Word of God. We must forget that. We should not try to use our mind too much to try to understand the Bible. We need to become the same as fools and blind people, simple open the Bible to exercise (use) our spirit to pray-read the words of the Bible. Forget about old way to only read Bible for knowledge.

Because we don’t know how to pray-read, we tend to pray like this: First, we wake up early in the morning, and we feel that we must pray. Then we pray this way: “Lord, I thank You that You are very good. I thank You for giving me peace. Thank You for protect me from danger.” Then we remember we are going to travel to some place, we then pray and ask “Oh, I am about to travel… Lord give me safe travel, save me from any car accident.” Then later on we are not sure what to pray, so we then pray “I have a friend in Vietnam… Lord remember my friend also remember Tom, Lord protect Tom.” Now we ask ourselves honestly what does praying in that way do for us? This is the way many Christians pray. But do they get spiritual food? Do they become full of joy inside and show rejoicing? No!

What is the right way to pray? First open your Bible to pray-read it. You don’t need to close your eyes. Look at the words in the Bible while you pray. There is no verse in the whole Bible that say we have to close our eyes to pray. But there is a verse that tells us that Jesus looked up to the heavens, when He prayed to the Father (John 17:1). He was looking at heaven while He was praying! Of course, we not care about arguing about which way is better, but we need to realize we don’t need to close our eyes to pray. Now simple look at the words on the page that says: “In the beginning…” (John 1:1). Then with your eyes looking at the words pray in this way: “O Lord, in the beginning! Lord, I praise You ‘in the beginning was the Word’. Yes I don’t know what the Word is, the Word was there ‘in the beginning’. I praise You Lord! ‘In the beginning!’ Hallelujah! ‘In the beginning!’ O Lord, ‘In the beginning was the Word and the Word was God, and the Word was with God.’ ” Try to pray this way. Maybe you read another verse for example, Romans 8:1; “There is now then no condemnation (punishment)” “O Lord, ‘There is now no condemnation’ O Lord, ‘Now no condemnation’ Amen. ‘Now’ O Lord. ‘Now’. Amen! ‘Now no condemnation’ Praise the Lord! Hallelujah! ‘No condemnation’…etc

When we pray-read we do not need to think about what to say to make a prayer. Simple pray-read God’s Word. Pray the words of the Bible same as they are written. Eventually, you will discover that the whole Bible is a prayer book! Not only is “The Lord’s Prayer” a prayer, but the whole Bible is a prayer. Open any page, any line, any word of the Bible, and start to pray-read it. If you faithful continue to pray-read in the Lord’s presence for 30 minutes you will discover that you will get enlightenment (light for understanding), watering (the Spirit pour ‘water’ inside you), food (nourishment), refreshing (feel fresh inside), strength, and satisfaction. Those 30 minutes will be same as a spiritual breakfast for you and will last (continue) all day!

Maybe you don’t understand what the verses mean, but you feel fed (nourished) inside. Why? because in His Word there is something of God. God’s Word is His real breath. 2 Timothy 3:16 says that “All Scripture (Bible) is God-breathed.”

Do not only try to learn about the Bible. We must realize that the Bible is a book of life. It is not a book of knowledge. This book has the living Spirit inside it, and He is Life. The right way to use the Bible is not only to study and learn, but to contact the Word, how? by exercising our spirit to pray-read. Thousands of Christians have found this is the right way. This way of using the Bible has strongly changed their lives. If you try this way for five mornings you also will be changed. Your idea about the Bible will change in a strong way. Maybe when you try it the first time it not work well, but the more you practice this way you will touch the living Spirit.

Today the church needs not more knowledge and teachings. The church needs feeding (nourishment). The Lord feeds (nourishes) His Body. How? Through His Word. The Lord is eagerly waiting to feed (nourish) us and He wants us to enjoy Him. Pray-reading the Bible is the way for Him to feed (nourish) us. Through this kind of prayer all of Christ’s riches will be put into us and worked into us. Only praying by reading the Word can put Christ into us. Teachings, doctrines, or knowledge cannot do this. Therefore, we must learn to pray by using God’s Word in our prayer. Then eventually we will be rejoicing, soaked (saturated) with Christ, and filled with the Spirit spreading inside us.

© 2013 Bible Truth for Deaf

Text based on “Basic Elements of the Christian Life” © 2003 Living Stream Ministry