The Art of Meditation

It seems as Christians we have lost the art of meditation.  No, I’m not talking about the Eastern Religion kind where you empty yourself, I’m talking about the kind that fills you and brings success to whatever you may be facing.  I call it an art because just like any other kind of art it takes discipline and time to perfect it.

We’ve become so used to a barrage of information all at once that we can approach the Bible that way as well, and want to take in as much as we can in a short amount of time.  Many of us have taken to listening to podcasts, or audiobooks, or maybe listening to a broadcast to get the Word of God in us.  Then we feel we’ve put in our “devotional” time and now we can rush off and do whatever else it is we were wanting to do that day.  There is nothing wrong with podcasts and audiobooks, but there is something more important that’s much deeper and richer, and that’s meditation of the Word.

So what is the difference, you may be wondering?  It’s doing more with less over an extended period of time.  Let me explain.

Meditation is often centered on one scripture, or one small section of teaching and spending time unwrapping it, thinking about it, speaking it to ourselves, and talking to God about it.  It’s taking enough time to allow that scripture or section of scriptures to become planted deep into our hearts.  We can read, and read, and listen to 100 audio books, and watch 50 broadcasts, but most of the time all that’s doing is filling your head with a lot of knowledge.  I’m not knocking knowledge!  But all knowledge is just a bunch of information.  It takes wisdom and skill added to that knowledge to make it most useful.  Then we can begin to act on the knowledge we have heard.

The bridge between hearing the word and doing the word is meditation.  Meditation of the word is cultivation, and it’s cultivation waters and feeds your faith.

Let me show you a few things in the Bible to explain further.

Did you ever hear or read a scripture, and you know it’s true and you want to believe it because God said it, but that spark, that knowing, that “Yes! I’ve got this now, and I can do this!” Is just not there?

Maybe that scripture was a spark to you once upon a time, but today it just doesn’t seem to “speak” to you that same way?

That just means that word is not alive in your right now.  This is where the cultivation of meditation comes into play.  This is what makes that word begin to come alive IN you.  This cultivation helps spark the faith that is in you so that you are empowered to act on it.

One of the best scriptures about meditation is found in Joshua 1:8

“This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate in it day and night, that you may observe to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success.”

God tells us to keep the word in front of us day and night THAT we may observe to DO it.

God is telling us to think about it, go back to it, read it, speak it, and do this often throughout the day and throughout the week.  This is how we keep it in front of us so we can keep it inside of us.

Observe: This is the word Shamar in the Hebrew and it means to hedge about, guard, keep, preserve.

Once we get to the place where we can keep it in us, we are ready to do it and make our way prosperous.

Two other versions of this scripture, the Amplified and Young’s Literal adds this:

“then you will deal or act wisely and have good success”.

Meditation of the word brings wisdom to go with the knowledge. It’s not enough just to have knowledge of what the word says, we have to know the wisdom that it contains and how that wisdom may pertain to you personally.

We’ve often heard the phrase “blind faith”, but that is not true.  Faith sees clearly, and it sees clearly because faith carries the wisdom of God.  It’s the how to DO what we now KNOW.  We have to spend enough time meditating on the word we know until the wisdom comes on how to do it. Until the instructions are lit up on the inside on how to carry out what God has said.

Meditation is much easier and simpler if we just take one piece at a time instead of trying to meditate on a whole book of the Bible.  It’s much more fruitful if we take time to meditate on even just one scripture until it gets in us, then try to shove 12 different scriptures about 12 different things inside of us.

The bottom line is…TAKE YOUR TIME!  The word of God cannot be rushed through to understand it and do it!  Read your chapter each day…but spend more time on that one scripture that God highlighted to you, that one scripture that spoke to you until it gets in you.  Don’t try to understand it all at once. the Bible is not Google or TikTok!  It’s an ANCIENT book that takes OLD FASHIONED means to glean out of it what God intends, so that we can live the way God intends.

John 15:7-9 NKJV

7 If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you. 8 By this My Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit; so you will be My disciples.