Joshua 1:8(NKJV) 8This 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.
Yesterday we began to look at the elements we use when we meditate in the Word of God. The first thing pointed out in Joshua 1:8 is the central place the Bible holds in what we are talking about. God tells Joshua “this book of the Law” shall not depart from your mouth. The Bible is the only standard for anything we receive from this process and it is what we are “reprogramming” our minds with.
Second, he tells Joshua to keep the word in his mouth. Part of the process of meditation is to “mutter” the Word or speak it to ourselves. As we do, the Holy Spirit begins to help us unlock the truth of the passage. We come to the place where we not only know the verse or verses intellectually, but we see the truth as revelation. At that point faith is released and our lives change.
Today I want to look at the next phrase in Joshua 1:8 to see the other part of meditation in the Word that God gave to Joshua. He says meditate on the Word “day and night.” It is important to understand that this is not a process that can be done in a few minutes or once a week on Sunday. He indicates that it is a continual thing. Does this mean that we cannot think of anything but the Bible all day long? Of course not. That is impossible. It does mean that the awareness of the Word should be with us all the time. It should be the foundation of our thinking and there must be a commitment to keep it in the center of our lifestyle.
For many Christians, the Bible is something they pay attention to in church or Bible study. They may spend a few minutes a day in a reading plan. However, when that is over they do not think of the Word of God again until the next meeting or the next day’s “devotional” time. This will never bring us to revelation and the renewing of the mind.
Although we cannot spend every waking moment thinking about the Word of God, I believe we can make a decision to keep it in the center of our thinking. If we do, it will be there when we have time to think. How often does our mind drift to other things than those upon which we are currently focused? I am not saying that every spare moment of “brain time” must be spent on the Word, but if we have a commitment to meditate on the Word our minds will use more of that “idle” thinking time to think on the truths we may be building into revelation in our lives.
How do we actually meditate in the Word of God? Aside from “muttering” the Word, the other mechanism we use is the imagination. To meditate means to ponder. Webster defines this as to “think about something carefully.” The implication is that we keep the thought in our minds until we get the full understanding. There is an interesting illustration that shows how this process works.
A cow has a particular element to its digestive system that works much like meditation should work in our minds. The cow takes a mouthful of grass and begins to chew. She continues chewing for some time. Finally, she will swallow the ground up grass. However, that is not the end of the process. She will regurgitate the grass and begin chewing it again. She may repeat this process several times until every bit of nutrition is so broken down that it is easy for her to receive the nourishment in the grass.
Meditation works very much like the cow “chewing its cud”. We study the Word, we mutter the word and then we begin to think on the Word. We ponder it in our minds. We may be driving to work and all the time our minds are working on what we have been reading and studying. We ask questions. “What if this was really true? How would that effect my life?” We ask other questions in our minds concerning things we may not understand. “How can that be? Are there other scriptures that say the same thing?” We may go back later and try and answer those questions or we may just let them set in our minds being “digested” by the meditation process.
As we progress through our day, we think on other things. We work or deal with our families. We may have recreation or fellowship time, but at some point, like our cow, we bring the scripture we are meditating on to the surface of our thinking again. We may ask other questions. We may picture the action of the scripture. We may use our imagination to picture ourselves the way the verse says we should be. This process continues as long as it takes for something to be revealed to our minds by the Holy Spirit.
Many of us have no idea how to meditate, but we do know how to do something else with our minds. We know how to worry. We play out every negative scenario about a situation until we “see” them so clearly we often think they have already happened. Our minds run on the problem seeking a solution. We cannot seem to go to sleep because the thoughts keep coming so rapidly that we cannot shut our minds off.
Although worry is negative and meditation is a positive placing of the Word of God in our minds, the mechanism is the same. We even tend to mutter when we are worried. Take a moment to think about how you worry. The same processes you are using to worry are the processes you will use to meditate in the Word of God.
You will find that worry is almost automatic. Meditation in the Word will require some effort and commitment. You will have to drag your mind away from the tendency to worry in order to meditate in the Word, but my point is, you already know how to do it.
One final thought about this process. This is not something you are doing alone. The whole point of meditation in the Word of God is to understand that the author of the Word is living in you. The Holy Spirit will get involved with this process. He wants to give you revelation. As you meditate on the Word, he will begin to speak to you. That is why at least some of your meditation time requires quiet.
One of the best times for this is when we are alone in the car. If you have a commute or any time you are driving alone, turn off the radio the MP3 player or whatever you may use to occupy the time. Instead use that time as meditation time. Think on the Scripture you read that morning. Mutter the verses you have been meditating on. You will find the Holy Spirit will begin to talk to you. He will begin to show you things that your mind did not originate.
This is a process that takes time to master, but you can do it. Make a commitment to meditate on the Word of God. Have a regular time of Bible reading, but do not get caught up in quantity. Many of us get our reading in and think we have done our work. We walk away feeling good about our discipline but we never think about what we read for the rest of the day. This does very little good. Read less and meditate more. In the end you will renew your mind. You will begin to walk in the spirit and your life will be transformed in ways you cannot imagine.
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