Not only do the New Testament saints call on the name of the Lord. Even the ancient psalmists in the Old Testament called on the Lord as well. David said in Psalm 119:147, “I prevented the dawning of the morning, and cried: I hoped in thy word.” The crying here is to call by saying “O Lord!” It is also to pray and to speak to the Lord. To cry unto the Lord is to call on Him and to speak to Him. We cannot call on Him without praying to Him, and we cannot say His name without speaking to Him. The longer we speak to the Lord, the better it is. The calling plus the speaking to the Lord is like a man’s deep breathing. When you speak out all that you have, you are breathing out. When you take in the grace of the Lord, you are breathing in. We breathe out carbon dioxide, and we breathe in the oxygen from God. In this cycle, spontaneously we are cleansed within, and our whole being becomes healthy.
After this crying, David said that he “hoped in thy word.” In hoping in the Lord’s word, it is better that we do not speak, lest we interrupt the Lord’s speaking. David said again, “Mine eyes prevent the night watches, that I might meditate in thy word” (v. 148). This shows us that in the experience of the Old Testament saints, there was the prayer, the hoping in the Lord’s word, and the meditation on the Lord’s word. Today, for us, the New Testament believers, the quickest way to receive the Lord’s word is not to meditate on His word; rather it is to pray-read His word. It is easy for the mind to receive the Lord’s word with its mental faculty. But in pray-reading the Lord’s word, there is the crying and the calling, and it will be spontaneous and natural to turn the Lord’s word into prayer.
For example, you may have read Genesis 1:1 in the morning, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” If you consider these ten words, you may wonder what is the beginning. The beginning is surely the start. But it is the start of what? For you to do this is to meditate on the Lord’s word. If you would turn these ten words into pray-reading, you would say, “Lord, in the beginning. Lord, in the beginning. Without You there is no beginning. With You there is the beginning.” When you speak to the Lord this way, your spirit will be full of feeling. Perhaps you will say, “Lord, may my wedding engagement have You as the beginning, and may my wedding have You as the beginning. May my future home have You as the beginning, and may my childbearing also have You as the beginning.” Following that, you will pray-read, “God created.” You may say to the Lord, “God, it is not by imagination or by illusion, but by creation. Only You can create. We cannot create. The most we can do is but to manufacture.”
If we have tasted the pray-reading, we will treasure every word of the Bible. If I had the time, I could pray-read Genesis 1:1 for a whole day. The more we pray, the tastier it becomes. “O God, You have created the heavens. We cannot create the heavens. Today we can only enjoy the heavens. You have done too marvelous a work in creating the moon, the stars, and the sun in the heavens. Not only have You created the heavens; You have created the earth as well. All things on earth are created by You!” This kind of pray-reading will fully mingle the Lord’s word with our spirit. It will give our spirit the greatest exercise.
When you have thoroughly pray-read the Lord’s word in the morning, during the day this word will speak and work within you, and your spirit will spontaneously be strengthened. In the evening, you will be filled with the Lord’s word, and when you come into the meeting hall, you will spontaneously cry, “Hallelujah! In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” There will be no need for anyone to remind you. You will spontaneously stand up in the meeting to speak. The reason there is nothing to say in the meeting is that there is not enough pray-reading in our daily life. If a saint has pray-read enough, he will surely have a lot to speak when he comes to the meetings, because there is too much to speak about. The twenty-seven books of the New Testament alone provide us with enough to pray-read. If we would call on the Lord and pray-read His word every morning, our whole being will be filled with the Lord’s word spontaneously throughout the day.
Hence, our time in the morning is most precious. It is best for us to spend as little time as possible on other things and to spend this time instead on pray-reading. In order to save time, when I am dressing in the morning, I begin to call on the Lord and pray-read His word. If your wife is not awake yet, you should not shout and cry aloud. You can pray from within. While you are putting on your shirt, you can pray-read the verse you read yesterday: “In the beginning...God... created...the heavens...and the earth.” While you are washing up, you can also pray-read. You can do two things at one time. Perhaps at the beginning you do not feel comfortable doing it. But after a while, you will feel comfortable. If you would spend half an hour or even fifty minutes there praying and reading the Lord’s word, and finally mingling the praying with the reading, your spirit will be enlivened. With such a morning, your whole being will have a revival.
The Christian revival does not occur in the afternoon or at sunset. Rather it occurs in the morning. The Christian life is not a sunset. Rather it is a dawning of the sun. In fact, we ourselves are the sun. Judges 5:31 says, “Let them that love him be as the sun when he goeth forth in his might.” Proverbs 4:18 says, “But the path of the just is as the shining light, that shineth more and more unto the perfect day.” A Christian’s life should be one that follows the moving of the sun. When the sun rises, we should rise with it. We keep rising until the perfect day, which is noon. The Christian life does not have afternoons. Whether we are among the worldly people, or in the church meetings, we should bring the shining light to others. For this reason, it does not matter how busy we are, we have to spend some time to exercise our spirit.
In today’s world, there is no one who is not busy. We have to use our time just as we use our money. There must first be a budget. We have to devote the first part of our time to the Lord. The first thing we do every morning when we rise up is to exercise our spirit, because today the Lord is in our spirit. For us to enjoy the Lord, to receive Him, to gain Him, and to experience Him is altogether a matter of the spirit. If our spirit is not functioning today, our relationship with the Lord is through. For this reason, every morning when we wake up, the first thing we must do is exercise our spirit. We have to call on the Lord. If circumstances permit, we have to take up the Bible and pray-read. If it is inconvenient to do so, we have to pull out some verses from our memory and pray-read with them. Whatever we do, we have to spend some time pray-reading. This way of exercise is like having a thorough bath from inside out in the Lord’s word. It is like taking a spiritual shower; we are washed from head to toe in the Lord’s word, and our whole being is fully refreshed.