This thirty minutes daily should be spent not asking the Lord to do many things, but simply staying in communion with Him and enjoying Him. The more we enjoy Him, the more He will be pleased. If we ask Him to do this and that, He will say, "Foolish child, it is unnecessary for you to ask Me to do all those things. I can take care of that; you must only enjoy Me."

In the New Testament, the Lord Jesus speaks of God's Word as spiritual food: "But He answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that proceeds out through the mouth of God" (Matt. 4:4). Every word which proceeds out of the mouth of God is spiritual food to nourish us. The Scriptures reveal at least three cases of those who ate the Word of God. One is Jeremiah, who said, "Your words were found and I ate them..." (Jer. 15:16). This statement is not according to our human concept. If it were not written in the Bible, we would never have thought that we must eat the Word of God. We might say that we must learn about the Word and study the Word. The most we would say is that we must receive the Word of God. But we would never use the word "eat"! Jeremiah ate the word of God. This means he received the Word into him, assimilated it, and made it a part of himself.

In the same verse Jeremiah also said, "Your word became to me the joy and rejoicing of my heart." This is a kind of enjoyment. The Word, after being eaten, became a joy and also a rejoicing. Joy is experienced within, and rejoicing is expressed without. God's Word is an enjoyment; after being taken into us and assimilated into our very being, it becomes joy within us and rejoicing without.

There are also a number of other verses which reveal this same thought to us. David said, "How sweet are thy words unto my taste! yea, sweeter than honey to my mouth" (Psa. 119:103). The Word is an enjoyment, and it is even sweeter and more pleasant than honey to our taste. From all these verses we realize that the Word of God is not only for us to learn, but more for us to taste, to eat, to enjoy, and to digest.

Then in 1 Peter 2:2-3 we see that to eat the Word is to taste the Lord. "As newborn babes, long for the guileless milk of the word in order that by it you may grow unto salvation, if you have tasted that the Lord is good." In verse 2 there is the eating of the Word, and in verse 3, the tasting of the Lord. When we eat the Word of God as our spiritual nourishment, we taste the Lord. Therefore, like Jeremiah, we must eat the Word; then we will enjoy the Lord and receive spiritual nourishment.

Another important verse is 1 Timothy 4:6b: "You will be a good member of Christ Jesus, being nourished with the words of the faith." Perhaps you have been in Christianity for many years. Have you ever thought that we must be nourished in the Word of God? As a rule, we always think that we must be "taught" in the Word, by the Word, and with the Word. But how many Christians have noticed the word "nourished"? And how many have ever heard a message stressing the importance of being nourished in the Word?

But the concept of the apostle Paul was that God's Word is food to nourish God's children. We must be nourished in the Word, not merely taught. Praise the Lord, nourished! Hallelujah, we must be nourished with the Word, not just taught with letters! Paul's emphasis is not that we should be taught with knowledge, but that we should be nourished with the riches of the Word.

What is our intention when we come to read the Scriptures? Has not our intention for many years been to know, to learn, or to understand something? Our concept has been that the Bible is a kind of teaching, a book full of doctrines. So we came to the Word, intending to understand and to know something. However, we should not just exercise our wonderful mind with our mysterious understanding to understand the Word of God. We must forget about this. We should not appraise our mind and appreciate our understanding so much. We need to be blind men and even fools, simply coming to the Word to exercise our spirit to pray-read. Forget about the old, traditional way!