As we’ve considered the different ways for you to grow in your relationship with God by hearing, reading, studying, and memorizing His Word, we’ve actually also been meditating on His truth, which is the focus of this lesson. Meditating involves taking a prayerful, serious approach to reflecting on a specific verse or passage.
As you’ve learned how to listen and read and study and memorize, you’ve also been meditating. But in this lesson, we’re going to specifically focus on meditation as its own discipline.
There really is no better way to grow in your relationship with Christ than to meditate on God’s promises throughout the day. Whenever something stressful happens (and it will), you can think about a verse that applies to your situation.
Meditating means you are giving extended, careful thought to God’s Word with the intent of conforming your life to His will. Meditating on God’s Word will result in knowing Him intimately and being obedient to Him in everything. Meditating means you are giving extended, careful thought to God’s Word with the intent of conforming your life to His will.
Two questions to consider whenever you are meditating on a passage of scripture:
1. What is the meaning of this verse or passage based on its context?
2. How can/should this verse or passage affect my life?
Use these two questions right now as you consider Philippians 4:6–7:
“Do not be anxious about anything. Instead, in every situation, through prayer and petition with thanksgiving, tell your requests to God. And the peace of God that surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.”
Q. What is the meaning of this passage based on its context (look it up!)
Q. How can/should this passage affect my life?
Power Over Bondage
In 1977, New York City was in turmoil because a troubled twenty-four-year-old man, David Berkowitz, who the media labeled “Son of Sam,” went on a killing spree. His target was young women, and before he was finally caught, five young women and one man were dead.
During his time in prison, David was approached by a young prisoner named Ricky Lopez. Ricky told David that regardless of what he had done, Jesus loved him and died for him.
Ricky gave David a Bible. As David Berkowitz read the Bible, God’s power began breaking him of his bondage to sin. In time, the Word of God brought him to a point of complete repentance—and the “Son of Sam” surrendered his life completely to Christ. Today, as he continues to serve his life sentence, David Berkowitz is the chaplain’s assistant at Sullivan Correctional Facility. (Read this, and other stories of God’s transforming power, in Fresh Power, by Jim Cymbala.)
David Berkowitz was transformed because he replaced his human viewpoint of life with God’s viewpoint.! He meditated on God’s truth! There really is no better way to grow in your relationship with God than to meditate on His promises throughout the day.
Psalm 1:1–3 says, “How blessed is the one who does not follow the advice of the wicked, or stand in the pathway with sinners, or sit in the assembly of scoffers! Instead, he finds pleasure in obeying the LORD’s commands; he meditates on his commands day and night. He is like a tree planted by flowing streams; it yields its fruit at the proper time, and its leaves never fall off. He succeeds in everything he attempts.”
Make sure your roots are deeply planted in God’s Word … just like a tree that survives and grows and bears fruit because its roots tap deep into the soil below.
Q. What are you presently doing to help your roots grow deep into God’s Word?
In Psalm 119:97–105, what promises are made to the person who continually meditates?
“O how I love your law! All day long I meditate on it.
Your commandments make me wiser than my enemies, for I am always aware of them.
I have more insight than all my teachers, for I meditate on your rules.
I am more discerning than those older than I, for I observe your precepts.
I stay away from every evil path, so that I might keep your instructions.
I do not turn aside from your regulations, for you teach me.
Your words are sweeter in my mouth than honey!
Your precepts give me discernment. Therefore I hate all deceitful actions.
Your word is a lamp to walk by, and a light to illumine my path.”
Q. Promises________________________________
Luke 6:45 says,
“The good person out of the good treasury of his heart produces good, and the evil person out of his evil treasury produces evil, for his mouth speaks from what fills his heart.”
Q. What important lesson does this verse communicate about our meditation on God’s Word?
Meditating means thinking deeply about something. To meditate is to focus your thinking on something specific. It means to focus, contemplate, reflect, or think deeply about. You do it long enough that something changes (attitude, purpose, conviction), and then you have the perspective and wisdom to get up and make changes. In other words, meditation causes life change!
Q. What do you most often meditate on?
Q. What do you need to do in order to make God’s Word the focus of your meditation?
It is important to think rightly and to have God’s perspective and discernment about everything, including money, Jesus, sin, marriage, sex, divorce, obedience, kids, work, honesty, trouble, yourself, the future, and a host of other things. Think like Jesus thinks, have His mindset. Meditation on God’s Word will help you to do that. But …. it will take planning and time. If you don’t plan it, it won’t happen.
J. I. Packer wrote: “Meditation is the activity of calling to mind, thinking over, dwelling on, and applying to oneself the various things that one knows about the works, ways, purposes, and the promises of God. Its effect is to humble us as we contemplate God’s greatness and our own littleness—to encourage and reassure us as we contemplate the unsearchable riches of God as displayed in the Lord Jesus Christ” (Knowing God).
So meditate, but don’t meditate on your problems, your irritations, your hurts, and/or your enemies. Rather, meditate on the truth of God’s Word! The purpose is of meditation is a life change. You want to experience God! Meditate until you not only understand a passage of God’s Word but until can’t wait to apply it!
Application
Q. What in this lesson on meditation is most meaningful to you?
Choose a verse or passage of scripture to meditate on … and then do it!