What practices enhance a believer's spiritual life and make up the Christian life?
Feeding on the Word of God, maintaining fellowship with fellow believers, and devoting time to prayer are the practices that nourish the inner man and strengthen the spirit. These disciplines must be constant rather than occasional, because spiritual survival requires regular nourishment, just as physical survival requires regular food. Together they make up what is called the Christian life.
Les teaches that the Christian life is a warfare between old Adam and the new. Victory comes when the believer starves old Adam and feeds the spirit side. He illustrates this with the little dog that is fed the best being the one that is victorious: if old Adam is fed the lustful desires of this world, old Adam wins; if Adam is kept starved and the spirit is fed, victory comes. That is why believers must stay in the book. People cannot maintain Christianity by attending church twice a year; just as no one survives physically eating twice a year, no one survives spiritually that way. The inner man, the spirit of God, needs constant refurbishing or nourishing, and this is done from the book. Feeding on the Word of God, fellowship with fellow believers, prayer time, and similar things enhance the whole spiritual life and make up what is called the Christian life. Les also points to the apostle in chapter 7, verse 15, who says, 'That which I do, I allow not,' showing the struggle: what he lets old Adam do, the spirit side says is wrong, while the thing he does not want to do is what he does.