Biblical Meditation: Why it’s essential
With the rise of social media, there is plenty of access to biblical truth. Whether the medium is our phone, computer, or television, biblical truth that theologically informs and devotionally encourages is readily accessible. And depending upon which websites, apps, and subscriptions you have, often you don’t even have to search for it as it will pop up on your feed or be delivered to your inbox. This reality is a beautiful privilege and blessing indeed.
With such access and inundation to biblical truth, there is ample opportunity to grow in Christlikeness.
Yet with such access, there’s also a high probability that many of us are inundated with more truth than we are actually profiting from. More truth than we are actually applying.
One of my concerns is the speed at which we hear, read, and watch biblical content; many Christians are inadvertently training themselves to be great hearers of God’s Word but not doers of it (James 1:22-26). What do I mean by that assertion? Well, traveling the bridge from hearing God’s Word to doing God’s Word takes time. It takes intentionality to move from what God said to why He said it to how I live it out.
This is where Biblical Meditation comes in. In Spurgeonesque fashion, Charles Spurgeon vividly articulates the link between hearing God’s Word and the use of Biblical Meditation in helping to foster application.
“... meditation is the machine in which the raw material of knowledge is converted to the best uses. Let me compare it to a winepress. By reading, research, and study, we gather grapes; but it is by meditation that we press out the juice of those grapes and obtain the wine. How is it that many men who read very much know very little? The reason is, they read book upon book and stow away knowledge with confusion inside their heads until they have laid so much weight on their brain that it cannot work. Instead of putting facts into the press of meditation and fermenting them until they can draw out right inferences, they leave them to rot and perish.”
Spurgeon lived when there was no internet, phones, or TV. His emphasis was on what was read. Today we can very easily say what is consumed via Social media. Edmund Calamy helpfully articulates the importance of Biblical Meditation as it relates to profiting spiritually from the sermons that we hear.
“One sermon well digested, well meditated upon, is better than twenty sermons without meditation.”
Calamy's words, like Spurgeons, are dogmatic and make a strong assertion about the necessity of Biblical Meditation. But as dogmatic as their statements are, the question we must consider is, what do the Scriptures say?
A brief survey of the Scripture helps us see that meditation has always been a discipline in which the follower of God should actively engage.
Joshua 1:8 “This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it; for then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have success.
Psalm 1:1 How blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked,
Nor stand in the path of sinners,
Nor sit in the seat of scoffers!
2 But his delight is in the law of the LORD,
And in His law he meditates day and night.
Psalm 19:14 Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart
Be acceptable in Your sight,
O LORD, my rock and my Redeemer.
Psalm 119:97 O how I love Your law!
It is my meditation all the day.
A New Testament passage that speaks to the importance of Biblical Meditation while it does not use the word is found in Pauls's letter to the Philippians.
Philippians 4:8 Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things.
As you can tell, Biblical Meditation is an essential spiritual discipline to be engaged in as a disciple of Jesus.
In this series of blogs that I’ll write on meditation, I aim to encourage you in your discipleship to see the necessity of Biblical Meditation and understand what it is. It is not, and to know where and how to begin so that you can more fruitfully live ON MISSION for the Glory of God!