Messages

Delight in scripture meditation

Scripture: Psalm 1:1-3

The difference between Christian meditation and other meditations:

Through Christian mediation we fill our mind with the scriptures. While other meditations encourage people to empty their mind. Bible says let my people think. Our thinking and feeling of the scripture should be led by the Holy Spirit. Before reading the scripture, Psalm 119:17-18; should be our prayer. Only thinking will lead to intellectualism by which knowledge puffs up pride in our head. Only feeling the scripture will lead to emotionalism. We should exercise both our heart and mind under the influence of the holy Spirit.

What is meditation?

The Bible uses the word meditate 29 times in the new testament to describe the believers devotional life. Meditate means rumination or chewing the cud. Rumination is what a cow does when she chews her cud. She rolls her cud over and over in her mouth. Cow eats the grass, chew it up and send it to their stomach pretty quickly, there it lies in the stomach, soaking up all of those acids and chemicals. Then after a while, the cow burbs it back up with a renewed flavor, chose on that grass and some other grass and repeat the whole process again. This process continues for an average time period of 8 hours. They get every ounce of nutrition out of the grass. Same way scripture meditation is thought digestion. God wants us to get every ounce of spiritual nutrition out of His word.

Some practical ways of meditating the Bible:

• Visualize the scene of the narrative in your mind. Example Gospels.
• Emphasize the words in the passage under study. Psalm 23:1; Phil 4:13
• Paraphrase the passage under study. Ex. Living Bible and message Bible
• Personalize the passage. John 3:16
• Reflect yourself on the passage.
• Pray

When we do like this the word of God

• inspires our prayer. James 5:16-18.
• Informs our prayer. Acts 4:24-26
• Incarnates our prayer. John 17:17; John 8:32

Blessing of meditating scripture day and night

• Fruitful – yields its fruit in season.
• Durable – leaf does not wither
• Prosperity – life lasts for ever. Ps 34:19; Acts 14:22

Interpretation without application is abortion. Howard G Hendricks.

Where should we meditate?

Gen 24:63; Isaac in open field.

Enoch walking with God.

Paul in prison.

Anywhere anytime.

When meditation becomes a discipline in our life, then the word of God shapes our life. Remember, there is no mediation without feeding our mind and heart with scripture. When our mind is empty there are chance of hearing 3 voices,

• Our voice
• Others voice
• Devils voice.

But when we meditate on God’s word on a regular basis we will start learning to discern all voices and tune our self to God’s voice.