Psalm 119:147 I anticipated the dawn and cried out; I hoped in Your words. (148) My eyes anticipated the night watches, that I might muse upon Your word. John 15:7 If you abide in Me and My words abide in you, ask whatever you will, and it shall be done for you.
The two passages above clearly show us that these two matters, prayer and reading the Word, go hand in hand. In Psalm 119 there is a seeker of God who lives before Him. He matches his seeking for the Word of God with his calling ["cried out"] , that is, his prayer, before God. In John 15, speaking of the promise of answers to prayers, the Lord shows us from another aspect how we should match our prayer with the reading of the Word. The Lord's Word shows us that a prayer will be answered on the basis of two things: one is that we abide in Him, and the other is that His words must also abide in us. He promises that if these two basic conditions are present, we may ask whatever we will and it shall come to pass to us. Hence, here it speaks of matching prayer with the reading of the Word. Brothers and sisters, to a normal Christian, these two things, reading the Word and praying, are the two aspects of his living; both are indispensable. For instance, I have two legs which make it very convenient for me to either stand or walk. When we walk, we must use both feet simultaneously in order to maintain our balance. We should not walk twenty steps with our right foot and only two steps with our left foot. As a Christian living before God, we also need to read the Word and pray simultaneously, thus keeping the balance. Nevertheless, some brothers and sisters enjoy only reading the Scriptures, but not praying. When they read the Bible, they may bury their head in it from morning to evening; the more they read it, the better it tastes. But strangely, they pray very little, and sometimes even when they are moved by the Holy Spirit, they still will not pray. On the other hand, there are some who just enjoy praying. The minute they kneel down they are moved to tears, and may sing spiritual songs. They feel so marvelous and energetic when they pray. If someone reads the Bible more than he prays he will often fall into letters and regulations which bring a dead, dry spiritual condition. But one who leans to the other side and prays more than he reads the Bible will become spiritually unbalanced. If we want to maintain a normal Christian life, we must give equal attention to both reading the Word and prayer. Just as we use both feet equally when we walk, we should always both read and pray, pray and read. (c) Living Stream Ministry.
Bible verses are taken from the Recovery Version of the Bible and Words of Ministry from Lessons on Prayer by Witness Lee, pp. 7-9. Both are published by Living Stream Ministry, Anaheim, CA. Please visit us at www.emanna.com. Send comments to: [email protected].
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