MEDITATION

Oh, how I love Your law! It is my MEDITATION all the day – Psalm 119: 97

Reflections are most rewarding in the atmosphere of MEDITATION. Biblical meditation is integral to our spiritual growth and our overall prosperity: “This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall MEDITATE on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous” (Jos.1:8). Meditation is a marvellous means of God’s grace in the Christian life. It involves deep thinking on Scriptural truths and spiritual realities for the purposes of understanding, prayer, and application. We were made to meditate. God designed us with the capacity to pause and ponder. He means for us to not just hear Him, but to REFLECT on what He says. It is a distinctively human trait to stop and consider, chew on something with the teeth of our minds and hearts, roll some reality around in our thoughts and press it deeply into our feelings, to look from different angles and seek to get a better sense of its significance.

The setting of Joshua 1: 8 was the Call of Joshua after the death of Moses, with Israel on the borders of the Promised Land. With the invasion and all its attendant battles ahead, we might expect the Lord to give Joshua detailed instructions on warfare techniques, battle plans, or some other strategy in order to guarantee Israel’s success. However, such things, while important, could not guarantee the victory of God’s people. Instead, Joshua was to have the “Book of the Law” on his tongue so as to meditate on it around the clock. The “Book of the Law” as it was given at Sinai, was the only portion of Scripture that Joshua had at that stage in redemptive history. It is therefore synonymous with Scripture. Authentic meditation, then, is not an attempt to empty your mind and expunge all desires in order to achieve some kind of mystic experience or blending with the transcendent. Rather, it is to fill your mind with biblical substance. Meditation breeds revelation and revival!

Biblical meditation is to consider and ponder God’s Word. It is the self-repetition of the text – the reading and rereading of a passage so that its meaning might take root. To keep God’s law from departing out of the mouth refers to the audible confession of Scripture, which helps ensure the text is not forgotten. Studying the depths of God’s Word is important, but at times we can leave such study and not remember much of what we have read. Meditating on the text helps gets it deep in our spirits and souls so that we might never forget what it teaches. We meditate on Scripture not simply to fill our minds with knowledge, but to prepare ourselves to act rightly even when the text is not before us. Joshua’s mind was to be exercised upon God’s Word with a specific purpose and practical end: not simply to rest in contemplation, but in order to be regulated by its precepts, through their serious inculcating upon his heart. This should be our goal.

Joshua’s heart and mind were to be captivated by the Word and his life built on its truths. God’s Instructions were to saturate his life, give him direction, shape his mind, form his patterns, fuel his desires, and inspire his actions. Meditation means having “the words of Christ dwell in you richly” (Col.3:16). It is feeding your mind His words and digesting them slowly, savouring the texture, enjoying the juices, and cherishing the flavor of such rich feast. True Christian Meditation is guided by the gospel, shaped by the Scriptures, reliant upon the Holy Spirit, and exercised in faith. Man does not live by bread alone, and meditation is to slowly relish the meal. Isaac accessed blessings as he “went out to meditate in the field toward evening” (Gen.24:63). Meditation saturates Psalm 119 and its celebration of God’s “precepts” (vv.15, 78), “statutes” (vv.23,48), “wondrous works” (v.27). Beloved, let the Words of God warm your heart by the Fires of Meditation for supernatural release of revelations!