Regardless of what people say, we love to call on the name of the Lord. This is really to drink the living water. If we are in darkness, the best way to get out of that darkness is to call on the name of the Lord. If we are in trouble, the best way out is to call on the name of the Lord. If we would just call for three minutes, we would be in the third heavens! The best way for us to overcome our temper is not to try to overcome it. The more we try to overcome our temper, the more it will overcome us! The best way to deal with our temper is to call, “O Lord Jesus, O Lord Jesus, O Lord Jesus!” Eventually, our temper is gone. This is not something superstitious. The next time you have a problem try calling on the name of Plato: “O Plato, O Plato!” Nothing will happen. But when you call on the name of Jesus, there is the real comforting, strengthening, and refreshing. This is because the name of Jesus is the Person. The name represents the Person, and the Lord Jesus is a real, living, nigh, present, and available Person! Whenever we call on Him, He is right there to be our supply.
We must also learn to eat the Lord in the Word. This means that we must not simply read the Bible, but pray-read the Bible. It is so nourishing to pray over the Word. Some people have condemned us by saying that pray-reading is not in the Bible, but I do have a portion of the Word for them. The King James Version does not have the proper translation, but in the Greek, Ephesians 6:17-18 says, “Take...the word of God by means of all prayer, praying at every time in spirit.” These verses tell us clearly that we need to pray the Word of God. When we simply read the Word, we only get the knowledge into our mentality. But when we pray the Word of God, we get the Spirit of the Word into our spirit. This gives us the nourishment. Jesus said, “The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life” (John 6:63), They are not doctrine or knowledge, but spirit and life. As they are spirit and life, we must take them into our spirit, not into our mind. How can we do this? It is not by thinking, reading, or understanding; it can only be done by praying. When we exercise our spirit to pray the Word, we receive the Spirit of the Word and we get the life.
If we will daily eat and drink Christ by pray-reading the Word and calling on the name of the Lord, we will have the growth in life and the transformation. Then we will not only be in the church, but be built into the church. It is very difficult to take anything away that has been built in. The New Jerusalem is a building with precious stones. It is not a piling up of stones, but a building up. This can only come through transformation.
In order to have a building, there is the need of the proper site. If we build a house on the wrong site, we will lose it. Therefore, the site or the ground upon which we build is very important. For the building up of the church, we need the proper ground. We know that there are some real Christians in the Catholic church. They are our real brothers and sisters because they are also born of our Father. But could we go into the Catholic church to be built up with them? This would be impossible, because they are on the wrong site. The same principle is true with all the denominations. There are thousands of real Christians there, but can you go into their denomination to be built up with them? No, for they are also on the wrong site. Then what about the free groups? Today, especially in this country, there are hundreds of free groups meeting in their homes and in many other places. They are real brothers in the Lord, but can we go and be built up with them? Again, the site is wrong.
People are always telling us that we are narrow because we take care of the ground of the church, the site for the building. But we must take care of it, because the building must be on the proper ground of unity. In the Catholic church, there is no possibility of having the proper unity because the ground is wrong. The same thing is true with the denominations and the free groups. In typology, the temple of God could only be built in Jerusalem. If you were to build the same temple in Babylon, that would be wrong. Therefore, we need the proper ground, the proper site for the building of the church. We know that the proper ground is not in the Catholic church, the denominations, or the free groups. Then where is the proper ground? Again we must come back to the pure Word of the Lord. The pure Word tells us that the church is one. How many bodies does Christ have? Universally speaking, the Body of Christ is one. And this one Body comprises all the saints. But we know that all the saints are not in the same place at the same time. Some are scattered in this city, and some are scattered in another city. But wherever we are, we must come together to be one and to be built up with the saints in the city where we live. This is the local church, the church that, according to the pure Word, is built upon the ground of unity in the locality where we live.