The Meetings and Spiritual Exercise of the Local Church

Additional Quotes about the Local Church by Watchman Nee and Witness Lee

Regarding the way to pray-read, Witness Lee shares:

If by the Lord’s mercy and grace we desire and agree to spend more time daily in the presence of the Lord, what shall we do? By what means can we touch the Word of God for nourishment and enjoyment? We must learn to do only one thing—we must mingle our reading with our praying. We must contact the Lord by mingling our reading of the Bible with prayer, and by mingling our prayer with reading. This is why a new word, pray-read, has been used. We must pray-read the Word.

First, begin by spontaneously offering a short prayer to the Lord. Then open your Bible and start to read. While you are reading, spontaneously respond to the Lord with what you read. Do not read too many verses, such as a long paragraph or a long section, before praying. While you are reading, respond to the Lord by praying.

Do not try to pray long sentence prayers, and do not pray for many things, asking the Lord to do something for you. Simply learn to pray with the words you read. The valuable prayer, the prayer which contacts the Lord, is to utter or express what is responding within you as you read the Word.

(Witness Lee, Time with the Lord, 4-5)

Witness Lee speaks on using the Lord’s word as prayer:

I am telling you my experience over scores of years. I am speaking to you not according to theology or to the teaching of Bible teachers. Rather, I am speaking to you according to the word of God and from my experience. You all must know that the Word of God and the Spirit of God are two great means. God gives Himself to us by means of His Spirit and His breathing out. He breathes out and we must breathe in. We breathe in by praying. The best and surest prayer is to use the Lord’s words as you prayer. You do not need to study hard as how to pray; the entire Bible is your prayer book. You can read a sentence or a verse, and then you can pray these words.

(Witness Lee, Living of Mutual Abiding, 81)

While we are pray-reading there is no need for us to compose any sentences or create a prayer. Just pray-read the Word. Pray the words of the Bible exactly as they read. Eventually, you will see that the whole Bible is a prayer book! Not only is the “Lord’s Prayer” a prayer, but the whole Bible is a prayer. Open to any page, any line, any word of the Bible, and start to pray with that portion of the Word. If you will continue to pray-read in this way in the presence of the Lord for thirty minutes, you will see what kind of enlightenment, watering, nourishment, refreshing, strengthening, and satisfaction you will obtain. From these thirty minutes, you will have a spiritual breakfast which will last the entire day!

…What the church needs today is not more knowledge and teachings, but nourishment, and the way the Lord nourishes His Body is by His Word. The Lord is eagerly waiting for a way to nourish us and become our enjoyment. Pray-reading gives Him that way. By this kind of prayer all the riches of Christ will be brought into us and even wrought into us. No teaching, doctrine, or knowledge can work Christ into us to such an extent; it is only by this way of prayer. Therefore, we all must learn to pray in this way. Eventually, we will be brought out of ourselves, saturated with Christ, and permeated with the Spirit.

(Witness Lee, Time with the Lord, 12-13)

In this excerpt Witness Lee tells us how God is added to us through pray-reading the Word:

Reading this Word will save you. Even if you take just ten minutes in the morning, you will find a supply there. If you lack patience, patience will be your portion. If you are short of love, those ten minutes will supply you with love. As you pray-read the Word, you will be cleansed. Because you are still on this earth living in you flesh, in you natural life, you become contaminated. Without realizing it, you will be cleansed by reading the Word, and God, the very essence of the Word, will be imparted to you. You will become a different person.

This nourishment will sustain us. While I speak, the food that I have eaten is upholding me. I may not have noticed what I was eating, and I may be unaware of the nutrients in the food I ate, but nonetheless that food is going into my bloodstream and supplying me with physical strength and energy. We may not understand the Word that we pray-read, but eventually we shall find that it has been light, life, and even an anointing to us.

(Witness Lee, Life Messages, 226-227)

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