And having given thanks, He broke it and said, This is My body, which is given for you; this do unto the remembrance of Me. Similarly also the cup after they had dined, saying, This cup is the new covenant established in My blood; this do, as often as you drink it, unto the remembrance of Me. 1 Cor. 11:24-25
Dear saints, let us pray that the saints would learn to offer thanksgiving and praise to the Lord at His table to remember Him with much exercise of their spirit and by digesting the hymns in their praise, without offering prayers of supplication to Him (1 Cor. 11:24-25).
At the Lord’s table we should not pray by asking the Lord to do things for us, but we surely need to praise. To praise requires much exercise of the spirit. We need to learn how to praise the Lord after we sing a hymn. We may merely shout, declare, and quote things from the hymnal in a mechanical way. But if the saints are richer and stronger, they will not need to merely quote the hymnal. They will praise the Lord with the thought of the hymn, recomposing some of the terms and phrases. We need to learn how to digest a hymn in our praise. This kind of digestion of a hymn is more living and informal.
In the Lord’s table meeting there needs to be more praise. Instead of praising, the saints may merely read from the hymnal. They must learn to go beyond merely reading a hymn to digesting a hymn. Instead of merely reading, “Oh, what a joy! Oh, what a rest!” (Hymns, #499), we can say, “O Lord, in Your life we enjoy the rest. What a rest we enjoy!” We can digest the terms in a hymn and make them a living praise to the Lord. (Collected Works of Witness Lee, 1979, vol. 2, “Basic Lessons on Service,” Lesson 5)
More details via Beseeching.org, day 402.
