Now that we have seen that we need to come to the Word daily, we need to go on to see the way to come to the Word. According to our experience, there are three ways to come to the Word. The first way is the way of being nourished, which is to spend at least ten minutes to read the Word and five minutes in prayer. We should take three or four verses each time to read and then pray-read. To pray-read is to make reading and prayer one thing, mingling our reading of the Word with our prayer.
In our times of coming to the Word in the way of being nourished, we should not pray for our relatives, our friends, or any situation. Rather, we should simply praise the Lord for His many wonderful attributes and virtues, give Him thanks, or talk to Him from our heart, confessing our real situation. We may pray, “Lord, You are so good. I just love You. Lord, I am sorry that I am cold toward You. Lord, stir up my love for You; kindle the fire within me.”
We do not need to compose prayers, for we already have a wonderful prayer book—the Bible. The words of the verses we read may be used to compose our prayers. If we use the words of the Bible for our prayer, we will touch God, Christ, the Spirit, and life. Moreover, we will be watered, enlightened, sustained, supported, supplied, strengthened, and nourished. Everyone can spend at least ten to fifteen minutes each morning to come to the Word in this way.
We should not read the Bible in a random order but consecutively from the first verse of a book to the last. We should first ask the Lord to show us which book of the Bible we need to read at the present time. If the Lord leads us to the Gospel of John, we should read and pray-read a few verses from John every morning, beginning with John 1:1. If we pray-read through the whole book of John, verse after verse, there will be a great difference in our life because we will be nourished every day.
I recently heard that some saints hold the concept that the more they sleep in the morning, the more spiritual they will be. This concept is absolutely wrong. If we are not already spending time every morning in the Word, we need to begin to rise up at least fifteen minutes earlier to make time to do so. Early rising will make us healthy, not only spiritually but also physically and mentally. By rising fifteen minutes earlier, we can spend time in the word of our heavenly Father and thereby absorb all His unspeakable riches. This is not a one-day matter; it is a lifelong matter. If every morning we spend at least fifteen minutes in the Word, we will be satisfied. This is the way to be nourished by the Word.
Spending fifteen minutes in the Word in the way of being nourished each morning is to have our spiritual breakfast. If we do not do this, we are like a naughty child who refuses to come to breakfast. Mothers know that in order to have healthy children, they must feed them a healthy breakfast every day. The mothers of children who refuse to eat their breakfast may discipline them in order to encourage them to come and eat. Many dear saints have been disciplined by the Holy Spirit for remaining in bed too long and not spending time in the Word.
If we will rise up only fifteen minutes earlier, we will receive a great blessing. Everyone can do this. By the Lord’s mercy and grace, every day for the past fifty-four years I have spent time in the Word. I will never regret this; rather, I will always be thankful to the Lord for this. I cannot describe what abundant blessing I have received from the Word. If we come to the Word daily, we will never regret it. If we do not do this, we will suffer a great loss in our life. Spending time in the Word every day is crucial.
Every morning we need to spend at least ten to fifteen minutes in the Word, but thirty to forty minutes is better. We should never think that we do not have the time to read the Bible; this is not true. We know that this is not true because when we receive a phone call, we always have time to talk, sometimes for almost an hour. If we receive no phone calls for two days, we will wonder why. Our ears are always itching for a phone call. We need phone calls to tickle our itching ears, but we may think that we have no time to read the Bible. We may say that we cannot spend time in the Word because we are busy doing laundry and cleaning our house, but if a phone call comes, we have plenty of time to talk. We should not allow our time on the phone to replace our time in the Word, even if our conversations are about spiritual matters. There is nothing more important than spending time in the Word. We need to change our habits. We all need to pray, “Lord, rescue me from my unnecessary occupations and strengthen me to spend more time in the Word.”