Another excerpt from "Release of the Spirit - The Breaking of the Outward Man" by Watchman Nee
From Chapter V - "The Church and God's Work"
Publisher New Wine Ministries, UK. First British edition 1968.
Copyright. Copied with permission.
 
 
Reading the Bible:  It is beyond question that what we ARE determines what we get out of the Bible.  How often man in his conceit relies on his unrenewed and confused mind to read the Bible.  The fruit is nothing but his own thought.  He does not touch the spirit of the Holy Word.  If we expect to meet the Lord in His Word, our thoughts must first be broken by God.  We may think highly of our cleverness, but to God it is a great obstacle.  It can never lead us into God's thought.
 
There are at least two basic requirements for reading the Bible:  first, our thought must enter into the thought of the Bible; and second, our spirit must enter into the spirit of the Bible.  You must think as the writer - whether Paul, Peter or John - when he is writing the Word.  Your thought must begin where his thought begins, and develop as his develops.  You must be able to reason as he reasons and to exhort as he exhorts.  In other words, your thought must be geared to his thought.  This will allow the Spirit to give you the precise meaning of the Word.
 
Think of a person coming to the Bible with his mind already set.  He reads the Bible to get support for his pre-conceived doctrines.  How tragic!  An experienced person, after hearing such a one speak for five or ten minutes, can discern whether the speaker is using the Bible for his own ends or if his thought has entered into the thought of the Bible.  There is a difference in realm here.  One may stand up and give a pleasing, seemingly scriptural message, but actually his thought is contradictory to the thought of the Bible.  Or we may hear someone preach whose thought expresses the thought of the Bible and is therefore harmonious and united with it.  Though this condition should be the norm, not all reach it.  To unite our thought with the thought of the Bible, we need to have the outward man broken.  Do not think our Bible reading is poor because of a lack of instruction.  The defect is rather in us because our thoughts have not been subdued by God.  So to be broken is to cease from our own activities and from our subjective thinking, and to gradually begin to touch the mind of the Lord and follow the trend of thought of the Bible.  Not until the outward man is broken, can we enter into the thought of God's Word.
 
Now while this is important, we have yet to mention the primary matter.  The Bible is more than words, ideas and thoughts.  Thus the most outstanding feature of the Bible is that God's Spirit is released through this Book.  When a writer, whether Peter, John, Matthew or Mark, is inspired by the Holy Spirit, his renewed mind follows the inspired thought and his spirit is released with the Holy Spirit.  The world cannot understand that there is a spirit in God's Word, and that that spirit can be released just as it is manifested in prophetic ministry . . .
 
There is not only THOUGHT in the Bible; the SPIRIT ITSELF comes forth.  Thus, it is only when your spirit can come out and touch the spirit of the Bible that you can understand what the Bible says.
 
. . . The Spirit who inspires the writing of the Scriptures  is the eternal Spirit, ever present in the Bible.  If our outward man has been broken, our spirit is released and can touch that Spirit who inspires the Scriptures.  Otherwise, the Bible will remain as a dead book in our hands . . .
 
Watchman Nee
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In Christ
Abigail, NZ