All meditation has a focus; most focus on inner peace or a state of consciousness. Most are based on Eastern religions or New Age which suggests that you empty your mind. Alternative medicine even recommends meditation for health benefits. Western meditation has a focus on intellect. I have never done much research on meditations that don’t have a Christian focus.
What I want to talk about today is Biblical meditation. First of all, why would we want to meditate.
Joshua 1:8 says, This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night.
Psalms 1:2 says But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in His law he meditates day and night.
And Psalms 77:12 says I shall remember the deeds of the Lord. Surely, I will remember Your wonders of old. I will meditate on all Your work and muse on Your deeds.
Why would God’s word tell us to meditate? Why is it important to develop this discipline?
First of all, God told Joshua that the Children of Israel should meditate on His laws and His ways, in my opinion, because they were slaves coming out of Egypt. They had a slave mentality, they did not see themselves as the children of God, whom God chose to be His people. They needed a mindset change, a new picture of themselves as the “People of God”. Slaves don’t have a very high opinion of themselves. But, could that also apply to us today?
I think we all can agree that we live in a culture where the ways of God are not valued. They are not the primary focus of what we see lived out within our culture. You can watch any news coverage, on any given day, and hear people slander other people and pin motives on someone else’s actions. This has become common place, yet there are scriptures talking specifically against that very action. Proverbs 10:18 says, He who conceals hatred has lying lips, and he who spreads slander is a fool. Just listen to the ads during any political election and every single one trashes their opponent and exposes, supposedly, their motives as underhanded, no matter what it is that they did.
In Isaiah 55 verses 8 & 9, God is saying through the prophet Isaiah, “For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways, My ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts.”
If we want to know how God sees a matter, we have to be intentional to learn what that is. Most of us, if not all of us, have had years of life that have been contrary to truth. Circumstances would like to tell us a different story.
Let me share with you something I learned from Genesis 3:1. Now the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made…
The word Serpent in Hebrew means a snake (from its hiss), to whisper a magic spell, to prognosticate. A synonym of prognosticate is prophecy.
Of course, I didn’t know what prognosticate meant so I looked it up in the dictionary. It means to foretell from signs or symptoms, to give an indication in advance.
I’m sure all of us struggle with thoughts, the “what if’s” that plague us. Did you know that is the work of the enemy? He takes our past, all of the bad things that we’ve experienced, and will cast a “what if” future over our circumstances, based on things that we have walked through, to predict that it’s going to happen again. And most of the time it doesn’t ever happen. I lived my life like that and I’ll bet most of you can identify. Just knowing this can help us identify when the enemy is messing with us. Those thoughts bring fear and worry and preoccupy our minds. I would feel dread, a sense of heaviness and have countless nights of sleeplessness. Once I felt the Lord ask me, “How often do these things ever come to pass?”. When I thought about it I admitted, maybe one tenth of one percent. But it kept me awake at night with dread.
In the natural, though, there’s even scientific proof that this is how our brains work. It’s called neuro-pathways. Using our past circumstances, our brains take the path of least resistance to bring us to a conclusion. Because of what we’ve lived through, we may have a 6-lane highway bringing us to wrong conclusions about our current situation, just because if looks similar to something we’ve lived in our past. If I have rejection issues, I may frequently fight off feelings that you didn’t say hi when I passed by because you don’t like me. When the truth is, you just didn’t see me. I have a 6-lane highway of past rejections that tell me this is true, and only a foot path of the truth that you were busy corralling your children to the play area and just didn’t notice me. I just came to an alternate conclusion based not on proof, but a “what if”. A prognostication.
This is where Biblical meditation is useful.
Biblical meditation is filling our minds with something different, something true.
Romans 12:2 says “and do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect”.
Ephesians 4:23 says , “and that you be renewed in the spirit of your mind”.
In both of those scriptures the word renew is the Greek word which means renovation. A few years back we did a kitchen renovation. Before the new kitchen could be done, we tore out carpet, kitchen cabinets, we even took out the door, cut a hole in the wall and put in a sliding glass door. When we were done it was a whole new room.
That’s what the Lord wants to do with our minds. And we use the word of God to let it do the work. Wrong mindsets get torn out as we learn a new way to think, a new way to process information and, even as we ask the Lord to give us His wisdom, to see a problem from His perspective.
Let’s use the example of fear to show you how to do this.
First, look up scriptures on fear.
Joshua 1:9 says, “have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not tremble or be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go”.
Proverbs 29:25 The fear of man brings a snare, but he who trusts in the Lord will be safe.
2 Timothy 1:7 For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power, love and discipline, or a sound mind.
When you meditate on these verses and eventually memorize them, when fear comes your way you identify your enemy because God’s word says fear is not from Him. You know where it’s coming from. Being able to identify the enemy is the first step. It’s been said that the Vietnam war was the hardest war to fight and win because our soldiers didn’t know who the enemy was. There were Vietnam folk on both sides and fighting for both sides.  We have to know what the enemy is to know whom to resist.
But then I take the second step. If we aren’t supposed to fear, what is it we should be doing? So, let’s look at a couple of scriptures on trust.
Psalms 37:3-5 Trust in the Lord, and do good. Dwell in the land and feed on His faithfulness. Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the Lord. Trust also in Him, and He will do it.
Do you know what the word trust means here? It means to hie for refuge. Hie means to go quickly, hasten or hurry. So basically, trusting in the Lord is running to Him quickly for refuge. This is relational guys and unfortunately, without some intention on our part, not our first choice usually. And guess what guys? The word refuge means “safe”, an inaccessible place like a crag in the rock, high up. God is a safe place for us, and protects us.
Psalms 40:4 How blessed is the man who has made the Lord his trust and has not turned to the proud nor to those who lapse into falsehood.
Proverbs 3:5 Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him and He will make your paths straight.
And then a few verses to learn what God’s heart is towards us:
2 Chronicles 16:9 For the eyes of the Lord move to and fro throughout the earth that He may strongly support those whose heart is completely His.
Psalm 18 says, In my distress I called upon the Lord and cried to my God for help. He heard my voice out of His temple, and my cry for help before Him came into His ears. THEN… the earth shook and quaked, the foundations of the mountains were trembling… He bowed the heavens and came down … and the rest of Psalm 18 tells of what all God did for David after he cried out for help.
As we feed ourselves with God’s intentions for us, we begin to have tools from His kingdom to use against our familiar patterns. You can do word studies if you buy the Strongs Concordance app for your phone or tablet. As you look up certain words in the verses you are memorizing, a visual picture begins to form of just what those verses are saying. You can journal about what you are learning as you study them. You can write some of the meanings in your Bible so when you look at that verse again you have the meanings right there.
Then when you are bombarded with a problem that begins to bring fear, you have weapons of truth to use in battle. Because 2 Corinthians 10:3 says, For though we walk in the flesh we do not war according to the flesh for the weapons or our warfare are not of the flesh but divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses. We are destroying speculations (those what if’s) and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ.
Ephesians 6:12 says, For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.
Once we have some weapons for our battle, we begin to pray using our new understandings from a place of faith that our God, our Father, loves us and wants to give us help in our troubles. Here is an example.
Lord, I’m fearful…worry is consuming me and I can’t sleep. But your word says to be strong and of good courage and not let fear knock me down. I know fear is not from you because 2 Timothy says you don’t bring fear but power, love and a sound mind. So, right now, I refuse fear in Jesus name because it’s my enemy and it’s not from you, Lord. I will not give fear a place any longer, instead I run to You because I trust you. Your word says you are a safe place and I take refuge in you. I trust this problem to you because you have the answer. You will show me your perspective on this. You are full of wisdom, your ways are not my ways, so I run to you for wisdom. Show me your perspective on this. Your word says that if cry out “help”, that you will come to my rescue. I cry out “help” right now, Lord…I need what only you can give. Show me how to pray, show me how to lay this at your feet and wait for You. Your word says that we don’t fight a physical battle, show me what to address in this situation from your perspective.
(then listen). He will show you, maybe instantly, maybe in the days ahead, how to pray, how to navigate through your situation. He’s always faithful and James 1:5 says if any man lack wisdom to ask and He’ll give it in abundance.
Now this prayer example is not Biblical meditation but I included it to show you, if you get God’s word in your life, and start believing it, by mulling it around, by memorizing it, it will come back out of you at the times you need it most.
Now.let me tell you the most exciting part of my word study on meditation. Back to Joshua 1:8; this book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night.
The word meditate in Hebrew is the word hagah, which means, to murmur, to ponder, study, imagine, mutter, roar… Roar?? Interestingly enough, Isaiah 31:4 has the same word in this verse; As a lion or the young lion roars, over his prey….that word roars is the same word hagah.
So let this image form in your mind. You are that young lion…you are learning Heaven’s truths…who you are in Christ, how He wants you to fight, what He wants you to believe, how much He loves you. All of these truths are like the prey of the lion and you growl or roar to keep away the predator’s; The enemies that want to snatch them away. The lies that come and try to drain away your faith and your focus. You roar to guard what you intend to keep. You murmur and mull God’s truths in your mind until they stick, and you roar to keep away the birds of prey that want to snatch it away. Just like that lion who is NOT going to let his prey be snatched away by some other animal.
It makes this verse out of Proverbs make a lot more sense. Proverbs 4:23 says Guard your heart with all diligence for from it flow the springs of life. That word guard means keep, watch, to protect, maintain, preserve. And the word diligence also means to guard and comes from the root word “to hedge about as with thorns”. This sounds like a lion guarding its prey to me. It’s an “oh no you won’t” attitude.
I believe God is wanting us to be intentional with ourselves. To identify what is robbing us and renew our minds and then to guard with determination to protect what is growing there.
I have one more example to share with you. I heard a story about a man who was going to pilot school. As he was learning about the gauges on the dash board, there was one called an altimeter and he noticed there were two of them. He learned that an altimeter shows whether you are upside down or right side up. Evidently many small planes crash if you can’t see the horizon and you lose sense of whether you are right side up or upside down. A pilot will drive a plane into the ground fully believing they are climbing in altitude. There are two altimeters to prove that you can trust the gauge because both are saying you are right side up, where if there was just one you could convince yourself that it had malfunctioned. In times like that you HAVE to trust the gauge not your own feelings.
God is our altimeter. He’s our gauge when life feels out of control. If we’ll trust Him, He’ll keep us from crashing into the ground.
So growl!! It’s time to choose life for ourselves, to make some time for investing in ourselves. And that investment will spill out to our families. Start with a verse that speaks to you and begin to memorize it. Write how it speaks to you in a journal. Ask the Lord to give you His insights from it. Look up some key words from it. It’s like a treasure hunt and you will find great treasures from it just for you. And then stand your ground and tell the enemy, “Oh no you don’t”!