Practice Spiritual Eating (2)
The Bible is God’s Word and Jesus Christ is God’s Word (Rev. 19.13). The Bible is God’s written Word outside of us and Jesus Christ is God’s living Word inside of us. The Lord coupled the two together in John 5:39-40—we should search the Scriptures (the Bible) and at the same time come to Him.
Second Timothy 3:16 begins, “All Scripture is God-breathed.” A note* on “God-breathed” says:
This indicates that the Scripture, the word of God, is the breathing out of God. God’s speaking is God’s breathing out. Hence, His word is spirit (John 6:63), or breath… The Spirit is therefore the very essence, the substance, of the Scripture… We must strike the Spirit of the Scripture with our spirit to catch the divine fire.
Thus to eat God’s word as our spiritual food is to exercise our human spirit as we come to the Bible. Repeating Ephesians 6:17-18 from the prior post, “receive…the sword of the Spirit, which Spirit is the word of God, by means of all prayer and petition, praying at every time in spirit.” This is pray-reading, and it is a big help to prepare us for New Jerusalem.
Pray-reading was a great beginning and has been an on-going sustainer for my long Christian life. Exercising my spirit while repeatedly praying the words of a verse or a few verses is a joy and also results in memorizing verses without conscious effort. And it is spiritual nourishment for our growth unto New Jerusalem.
* This is part of footnote 2 on 2 Timothy 3:16, in The Holy Bible, Recovery Version, published and © by Living Stream Ministry, Anaheim CA, 2003.
For more on the practice of praying with the Word, get the small printed booklet Pray-Reading the Word from livingstream.com or download an e-version from lsm.org/booklets.
Posted by Don on March 27, 2026
https://newjerusalem12.wordpress.com/2026/03/27/practice-spiritual-eating-2/
