The verses in the Scripture Reading above show us how to deal with the word in a balanced way. Psalm 119:147 speaks of rising in the morning, saying, “I anticipated the dawn and cried out; / I hoped in Your words.” Simpler translations, such as the New American Standard Version, render the first phrase as, “I rise before dawn.”
There are two kinds of reactions to the message in the previous chapter concerning reading the Lord’s word by exercising our spirit to take it as food. This is because there are at least two categories of people among us. One reaction is to say, “Hallelujah, praise the Lord! This is a release from burden and bondage.” Another reaction, however, is to be bothered by that message. Those who are bothered may not say anything, but their mentality is turning, and they ask, “Is there no need to know the word? Is there no need to understand the Scriptures?” I sympathize with both kinds of brothers and sisters.
Consider how many ears we have. We have two ears, one on each of the two sides of our head. Is one bigger and the other smaller? No, they are of equal size. Likewise, we have two eyes of equal size and two nostrils of the same size. We also have two shoulders, two arms, and two hands, each on two sides. They are all balanced. We stand solidly and strongly because we have two legs and two feet. If we were made with one leg and one foot, we could not stand for long and we would be shakable. We are not shakable, though, because we are balanced on two legs, not one. We can apply this principle to almost all things. In almost everything in the universe there is the principle of two for balance.
In contacting the Lord by reading the word and by prayer there is also the balance. Some say that the morning is the best time to come to the word and pray, while some say that the evening is better. In this also there is a balance; we need the evening to balance the morning and the morning to balance the evening. In the previous message I stressed that we should not exercise the mind but exercise the spirit to pray about what we understand in the word. I did this because people in Christianity have gone too far in one direction in an unbalanced way. That is why we must first do our best to bring people back.
Many brothers and sisters have gone too far in one direction in dealing with the word of the Lord. In Christianity many are careless about the word of God, so they are dead. A small number of Christians, however, care for the word so much that they are unbalanced. In their Bibles there are many notes and marks in different colors. I too have a number of Bibles like this. In a sense this is good, but in another sense it is not so good. Many have been spoiled by coming to the Bible in this way. Hosea 7:8 says, “Ephraim is a cake / Not turned.” The sisters who cook know they must turn a cake. To cook the cake is good, but too much cooking on one side spoils it. Some younger believers are proud of the marks and notes in their Bible and are willing to show them off. Those notes, however, simply show that they are cooked too much on one side. They exercise their mind too much in reading and understanding the word, and that spoils them.
Cooking is necessary, but it must be proper. Too much on one side spoils the cake. Have you realized that you may be cooked too much on one side? You may read much, but you do not pray much. You know the word so much, but you do not pray much about the word. You may read the word, understand it, study it, and search, even research, it much by exercising your mind, but you may not pray much by exercising your spirit. Therefore, you are unbalanced. There is too much cooking on one side with respect to the word.
Some Christians give up the Bible and leave it on the shelf. They do not touch it or even bring it to the meeting. They are unbalanced in this way. The Bibles of certain persons, however, especially of those who have a background of one-sided cooking, may have many notes and marks. They think, consider, and meditate on the verses. They are unbalanced in another way, and they may need to exchange their Bible for a new, clean one with no notes and marks. I say again, to cook a cake is not only right but necessary, but to cook it too much on one side is wrong. This is a “cake not turned.”
How many hours have we spent in reading, studying, searching, and researching the word? And how many hours have we spent in prayer? If in our Christian life we have spent ten thousand hours in reading, studying, searching, and researching the word but only one hundred hours in prayer, we are in debt. We have a credit on one side and a debit on the other side, and the balance is wrong. If someone would say that he has spent ten thousand hours for reading and eleven thousand hours for prayer, I would praise the Lord for that. This is a small imbalance, but it is a credit, not a debit, of only one thousand hours. Some brothers, though, have no desire, no burden, and no “bondage.” They are one hundred percent “released” and “free.” They have a blank account with no credit and no debit. They say that it is too much to carry both a Bible and a hymnal, but they themselves carry neither a Bible nor a hymnal.
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