RESTRICTING OUR MIND
AND EXERCISING OUR SPIRIT
IN READING THE BIBLE
It may seem difficult to exercise our spirit and not our mind when reading the Bible. This may bother some of us. We may wonder how we can read something without exercising our mind. Nevertheless, we are saying that we should not exercise our mind in reading the Bible. Exercising our spirit and not our mind does not mean that we should absolutely forget about our mind. Rather, it means that we should touch this book with the deepest part of our being and not merely understand or ponder over it with our mind. Even though we use our eyes to read and our mind to memorize, these are not the main organs that we use. The main organ is our spirit; we read the Bible mainly with our spirit.
If we exercise only our eyes and our mind but not our spirit, the words of the Bible will not become spirit. They will not be initiated by the Spirit. The Bible then becomes a book of letters in our hand. It is something dead. This is the meaning of reading with our mind. However, if we touch the words of the Bible with our spirit and not merely read it with our eyes, we will contact the Word with our spirit. Our reading, listening, and memorizing should merely cooperate with our spirit. The main thing is to exercise the spirit. Then the Bible will be spirit and life to us.
Here is an illustration. The Chinese sages say that if a man’s heart is not in what he is doing, he can look but not see anything, listen but not hear anything, and eat but not taste anything. This is what happens when his heart is not in what he is doing. This means that we must look and listen with our whole heart. It is true that we need to exercise our eyes and our ears, but we will neither see nor hear without the exercise of our heart. In order to apprehend something, we need to exercise our heart as well as our eyes and ears. In the same way, when we read the Bible, it is possible for us to “look without seeing, listen without hearing, and eat without tasting.” This, however, is not because our heart is absent; rather, it is the result of not exercising our spirit but casting it aside and studying merely with our mind. This is what it means to read the Bible without exercising the spirit. If we want to read the Bible, we must exercise our spirit. Our spirit must take the lead, and the activity of our mind must be restricted.
The mind is always a bothersome thing. It often wanders to different places and causes us to fantasize. When we are reading Genesis, our mind may wander to Revelation, and when we are reading Revelation, our mind may return to Genesis. It jumps faster than electricity. When we are not reading the Bible, our mind does not wander, but once we open the Bible, the imagination begins to operate and all kinds of thoughts come. Therefore, in reading the Bible, we must restrict our mind, that is, gird our thoughts and exercise our spirit. When reading, we must allow our spirit to take the lead and not be carried away by our thoughts. We must reject our thoughts when we read the Bible. Some may think that this is contradictory, but if we practice, we will realize that it is not contradictory. We can reject our thoughts while we are reading the Bible. We can stay away from our mind and use our spirit.
Many have the problem of reading the Bible with their mind. This is our problem when we study the Word. We think about God instead of eating and drinking Him. In a sense, we are thinking about bread instead of eating it; we even consider our imagining to be our eating. Some people think about the word instead of eating the word. They read the Bible and still feel empty in their spirit.
Some brothers and sisters may try to trap me by saying, “Brother Lee, didn’t you say that we need to meditate? Why are you now saying that we should eat and not think?” If a brother exercises mainly his mind to read the Bible, his mind will wander from the New Testament to the Old Testament and from the Old Testament back to the New Testament. After reading, he thinks that he has obtained something, but what he has received is in his mind, not in his spirit. He has obtained knowledge in his mind, but there is no supply or satisfaction in his spirit. This is the common problem. Either we do not read the Bible, or we fall into the trap of our mind when we read. Most of us do not remain continually in our spirit when we read the Bible.