“Many of you have testified regarding your enjoyment of the Lord, but all that I have heard pertains to your eating, your enjoyment in sowing. You have not yet reached the level of eating with regard to harvesting. The initial sowing is easy, but the final harvesting is not so easy. After the seeds are sown, whether or not there will be a harvest is still a question. Up until now, your eating of the Lord for enjoyment has been in the initial stage, the sowing stage.

Therefore, I have to make it clear to you, brothers and sisters, that you should not stop at the enjoyment of sowing, but go on to the enjoyment of harvesting. When you sow, you simply bury the seed into the ground. After sowing, you still need to take care of the sprout that it may grow and bear fruit. Only then can you have the enjoyment of the harvest. In our enjoyment of sowing, we receive something of the Lord into us. Whenever we call on the name of the Lord and pray-read His word, we receive a portion of the Lord as a seed into us. Whether this will result in a harvest depends upon our willingness to let the seed grow. If we let it grow, it will surely yield a harvest. Otherwise, nothing will happen.

…Today I want to check with you all. Do you as sowers truly have seeds? Do you as eaters really have bread? Perhaps you have only half a bowl of rice, which is not enough even for yourself. If you cannot feed yourself adequately, how will you be able to take care of others? What is the reason for this? It is because you sow the seed, yet you do not labor to let the seed grow.

We all know that when a farmer labors on a field, he has to remove the stones, eliminate the weeds, water the soil, add fertilizer, and sometimes apply some pesticides. What do you do? You have done very well eating the Lord and pray-reading His word, but you do not remove the stones, nor eliminate the weeds, nor water the soil, nor add fertilizer, nor apply pesticides. In the end you might as well have not sown at all. If you do not sow, your seeds will remain intact, but once you sow, you lose the only seeds you have. There are some people who indeed have a reserve of a small portion of the Lord before pray-reading the Word, but after they gained the Lord through pray-reading and then are disobedient by not laboring, they lose the presence of the Lord. The Lord went farther away from them.

…Let me ask you, brothers and sisters, what do you eat today, manna or the produce of the good land? Some say they eat manna; others say they eat manna as well as the produce. This is true. However, I hope that those who eat manna will gradually stop eating it. Do you know where manna was eaten? It was eaten in the wilderness. Therefore, eating manna is a strong proof that you are a wanderer. Where was the produce of the good land eaten? It was eaten in Canaan! Moreover, the top tenth of the harvest of the land — the firstborn of the herd and of the flock and the firstfruits of the grain — were not to be eaten at home. They had to be brought to the temple and eaten before God. This shows that their wandering had ceased. Do you want to be a Christian who eats manna or a Christian who eats the produce of the good land? Everyone wants to be a Christian who eats the produce of the good land. True, manna is good; but it is not good enough because it is the diet of those who wander about in the wilderness.

…To obtain manna does not require our laboring, but to get the produce of the land of Canaan does. While we are enjoying the Lord and receiving Him into us, He often raises up circumstances and allows many things to happen for our good, so that the seed in us can grow and produce something. For example, a sister, whose husband always makes things difficult for her, prays every day, asking the Lord to cause her husband to love Him as much as she does. However, the more she prays, the less he loves the Lord; the more she calls “O Lord, Amen!” and the more she pray-reads, the more her husband is annoyed…. Let me tell you that all those things that happen are the Lord’s raising up the north wind to blow upon you (S.S. 4:16). Instead of asking the Lord to change your husband, pray that the Lord will grow in you: “O Lord, make me willing to accept Your dealing. O Lord, subdue me from within. O Lord, cause me to submit myself under Your hand and take the breaking.”

…Twenty years ago, when I saw brothers who had good character and proper behavior and who gave good impressions wherever they went, I greatly appreciated them. However, now in retrospect those brothers with good character and proper behavior did not bear any good fruit. On the contrary, some careless and sloppy ones were able to bring people to salvation. The church life, the testimony of the church, is not a matter of behaving well or not behaving well, nor is it a matter of being or not being above reproach. The church life, the testimony of the church, is a matter of eating the Lord as the seed and allowing this seed to grow. Like a farmer, you remove the stones, eliminate the weeds, water the ground, add fertilizer, and apply pesticides so that the Christ in you will gradually grow into a harvest. This is not a matter of being well-behaved or not; it is a matter in a totally different realm. Behaving and not behaving are in the realm of good and evil. What we are speaking about is the realm of Christ. You are full of Christ, and you bring in your topmost portion before God to enjoy with the saints in the meeting. This is our proper meeting today. The emphasis in the meeting is not on singing, praying, praising, speaking in tongues, or functioning; the emphasis is on bringing in the topmost portion of the Christ that you have produced. I bring my portion, and you bring yours. Apart from any forms, we all present our Christ.

…Now we all have learned to eat. We have learned that there are two kinds of eating. One is the eating in sowing, and the other is the eating in harvesting. The eating in sowing cannot constitute our worship; we need the eating in harvesting. When you bring the eating in harvesting, that will constitute the true worship and the genuine church life. The church needs this. We have to look to the Lord and open up to Him that we all may learn to be exercised in the matter of eating.”

(Eating the Lord, chapter four)