Thus far, we have seen that we are vessels of God and that God as the all-inclusive Spirit is the content to us. The way for us to take Him in is to call upon His name. Now we want to see that calling upon Him is likened in the Bible to drinking and eating. Isaiah 55:1 and 6 show that the way to drink and to eat is to call upon Him.
Isaiah 55:1 says, "Ho! Everyone who thirsts, come to the waters,/And you who have no money;/Come, buy and eat;/Yes, come, buy wine and milk/Without money and without price." This verse is somewhat complicated because it says we come to the waters and yet we eat. Do you come to the waters to eat or to drink? Mothers feed their newborn babes with milk. When the little babes are drinking milk, they are also eating. Eating is included in drinking. We come to the waters and buy and eat. Then this verse says that we buy wine and milk. Both wine and milk are liquids, but the nourishment of food is included in them. Thus, to drink wine and milk really means to eat something for nourishment.
Verse 6 says, "Seek Jehovah while He may be found;/Call upon Him while He is near." This verse advises us to seek the Lord. To seek the Lord means to come to the waters. The Lord is the waters, and the seeking is the coming. To drink and to eat is to call upon His name while He is near. Thus, seeking the Lord equals coming to the waters. Calling upon Him equals drinking and eating. This is the way that we take in the Lord. The spiritual things are often hard to define. But there are the shadows given by the Lord through the material things, the physical things, to illustrate the spiritual things.
We have pointed out that we are vessels to contain the Lord, and the Lord is the content. The vessels need to be filled up with this content. We are filled with the Lord as our content by eating and drinking Him. This is an organic infilling, which causes the growth in life and the transformation in life. When we receive the proper drink and food, something organic gets into us to cause us to grow and be transformed.
To put water into a cup is simply to fill it up. This is not organic. But when we take something into our stomach by eating and drinking, we are not merely being filled up. By digestion what we eat is assimilated into our being. Thus, after eating we need the digestion and assimilation. By digesting and assimilating what we eat and drink, we absorb all the nourishment into our blood. This nourishment, after getting into our blood, becomes our cells. Then after a certain time all the cells become our organic tissues, our very being.
If I put water into a cup, it is just filled up. There is no digestion, assimilation, growth, or transformation. The water can never become the very element and essence of the cup. It is different with us human beings. How can a turkey be put into a human vessel? The only way is for this person to eat the turkey. Then the turkey becomes this person's essence and element. Jesus said, "He who eats Me, he also shall live because of Me" (John 6:57b). A person is full of energy because of what he has eaten. We live by what we eat. We eat Jesus, so we live by Jesus.
What we eat obviously gets inside of us to become our content. Then it is digested by us. By being digested, the nourishment and the riches of what we eat are assimilated into our system to become our cells. Then the cells grow into our organic tissues to become us. Thus, we are what we eat. A man lives by what he eats and eventually he is what he eats. If we eat Jesus, eventually we are Jesus. This is why Paul said, "It is no longer I .. but it is Christ who lives in me" (Gal. 2:20a); "for to me, to live is Christ" (Phil. 1:21a). If you eat turkey all the time, you could say, "For to me, to live is turkey." You eat turkey, so you live by turkey and for you to live is turkey. When we eat Jesus, we live by Jesus and we are Jesus. For us to live is Jesus!