In my own engagement with the Word of God, I generally think of 3 ways of personally looking at Scripture: reading, studying, and meditation. With reading, I think of reading or listening to larger portions of God’s Word – perhaps a chapter, a few chapters, or even an entire book in one sitting. Through a consistent pattern of reading significant portions of the Word of God, I have been deeply blessed. It helps me see the main ideas and themes God is seeking to communicate, and helps me to understand the big picture redemption story. In contrast, study is where we slow down and seek to dig deeper into a specific verse or passage, or into a specific idea or character. Study is often more systematic and analytical and is a great help for understanding the details of God’s Word more deeply and accurately.
Meditation, however, is different from both of these. When Scripture speaks of meditation (most often in the Psalms), it carries the connotation of dwelling at length and pondering the deep truths of who God is and what he has done. In his book Life Together, Dietrich Bonhoeffer speaks of meditation as “going into the unfathomable depths of a particular sentence or word [of Scripture].” In his work on spiritual disciplines, Donald Whitney compares meditation to immersing a bag of tea in hot water “letting it steep until all the rich tea flavor has been extracted and the hot water is thoroughly tinctured reddish-brown.” A core difference when compared with reading or studying is that the purpose of meditation is not the gaining of new information. Bonhoeffer emphasizes this, saying that “it is not necessary that we should discover new ideas in meditation. Often this only diverts us and feeds our vanity. It is sufficient if the Word, as we read and understand it, penetrates and dwells within us. As Mary ‘pondered in her heart’ the things that were told her.”
Meditation is going to the Word of God with expectancy – going to dwell deeply on the Living Word. The truths in God’s Word about who he is and all he has done are radical. As those truths penetrate us and become deeply rooted in the core of our being, they transform our lives and our perspective about everything. But we must admit that it is not possible for us, by sheer willpower or by any amount of intellectual study, to take these truths and transform the deep places of our hearts. This can only be done by the work of God. And this is the core prayer of meditation – “Lord, would you bring a blessing from your Word, would you take your truths deep into our hearts and bring life transformation?” One of my favorite descriptions of meditation is by George Müller (a longer paraphrased excerpt from him on meditation is at the end of this post). He describes meditation as the “feeding of his soul.” He says this about meditation:
The Lord taught me that the first thing to be concerned about each day was not how much I might serve the Lord or how I might glorify the Lord; but the first thing to be concerned about is how I can get my soul happy in the Lord, and how my inner man may be nourished. For if I seek to live as a child of God in this world, and yet am not delighting in the Lord and not nourished and strengthened in my soul, all my service may not be done in the right spirit. I saw that the most important thing I had to do each morning was to give myself to the reading of the Word of God, and to meditate on it, that my heart might be comforted, encouraged, warned, reproved, and instructed. And so, through the Word of God, by meditating on it, my heart may be brought into experiential communion with the Lord.
It is vital to remember, in our times of meditating on Scripture, that it is a pondering of God’s Word filled with trust. It is filled with trust and expectancy because we know God promises to use his Word and his Spirit powerfully in those who draw near to him. It is also an active trust because often we don’t perceive exactly how God is working in transforming us. On this point, Bonhoeffer states that “it is not necessary that we should have any unexpected, extraordinary experiences in meditation. This can happen, but if it does not, it is not a sign that the meditation period has been useless.” As you dwell deeply on the Word of God and on the truth of who he is and all he has done, trust that his promises to bring transformation are true, whether or not you perceive it at the moment.
This brings us to the question of how we should meditate – what practically should we do? There is no one prescribed method in the Word of God. God’s Word gives us the command to meditate, and gives us the psalmists talking about meditation, but never any concrete instructions. In this book, I seek to provide many different activities as means of meditating on God’s Word. My main recommendation is to try out many different styles of meditation and find which one helps you engage most deeply with God’s Word.
Regardless of which activity or method you use, the following attitudes and recommendations may make your time of meditation more fruitful.
Understand the passage. Before you meditate on a passage, it’s important for you to understand what it is actually saying. If you don’t understand the basic message of a passage, it would be more helpful to do some study on it first, before meditating on it. God’s Word is not a magic book where God delivers us messages that don’t relate to the objective things he’s trying to communicate. Meditation is about God taking those truths deeper and bringing transformation, not about giving us secret messages. If your impressions or responses to a time of meditation don’t have anything to do with the message of the passage, you probably need to hold them very lightly.
Trust God. Ponder the Word of God, resting confidently in the promise that God wants to work and will work in you. God has something he wants to say to you and transform in you through his truth.
Less is more. Remember, the goal is to dwell deeply on the Word of God. Meditation often takes the form of dwelling on a single paragraph, a single verse, or even on a single phrase of Scripture. With this comes the need to slow down. Don’t rush through a time of meditation.
Engage authentically with God. If no our goal is to dwell deeply on the truths of Scripture and ask God to bring transformation, this necessitates a sense of surrender to God. In meditation, we not only dwell on the truth of Scripture, but we hold up our lives, our minds, our hearts — all of us before the Lord, willing for him to speak into whatever part he deems best.
Be self-aware. As we ask God to take his Word deeper into our souls, is important for us to notice how God’s Word is impacting us. As we read it and ponder it, does it bring encouragement or conviction? How does it interact with our minds and what we believe to be true? How does it stir up our hearts – does it bring joy, sadness, anger, disappointment, frustration, or peace — or perhaps do we feel emotionally numb as we read God’s Word?
Pour out your heart to God. No matter how our hearts, minds, and souls respond to dwelling on the Word of God, bring these responses to God in prayer and talk honestly with him. If doubts arise, talk to him about your doubts. If you feel joyful and encouraged, praise God for the specific ways he is bringing hope. If you feel sad or angry, don’t hide these from your good father. He already knows everything that is in our hearts and minds, and if emotions arise as we read God’s Word, it probably means we have a need to talk to God about it. And even if the response of your heart is to feel nothing, bring this before the Lord, too. It is not our strength or our methodology that will transform our hearts. God welcomes us to cry to him for grace and mercy, and this includes the grace and mercy that we need from God when things feel dry.
Connect your meditation time to your life. As God brings home the truth of his words deeper into our hearts and minds, the only response that makes sense is that this would deeply impact our lives. As you walk out of your time of meditation, what does it mean to continue to live in those realities that you were pondering? Richard Foster emphasizes this point very clearly in Celebration of Discipline – he points out that, whenever the Bible speaks about meditation, “there is stress upon changed behavior as a result of our encounter with the living God. Repentance and obedience are essential features in any biblical understanding of meditation.”
The following excerpt has been helpful to me as a practical example of daily meditation lived out in a vibrant way.
From The Life of Trust by George Müller (paraphrased)
The Lord taught me that the first thing to be concerned about each day was not how much I might serve the Lord or how I might glorify the Lord; but the first thing to be concerned about is how I can get my soul happy in the Lord, and how my inner man may be nourished. For if I seek to live as a child of God in this world, and yet am not delighting in the Lord and not nourished and strengthened in my soul, all my service may not be done in the right spirit. I saw that the most important thing I had to do each morning was to give myself to the reading of the word of God, and to meditate on it, that my heart might be comforted, encouraged, warned, reproved, and instructed. And so, through the word of God, by meditating on it, my heart may be brought into experiential communion with the Lord.
So I began to meditate on the New Testament from the beginning, early each morning. After a brief prayer, asking the Lord’s blessing upon his precious Word, I began to meditate on the word of God, as if searching into every verse to get a blessing out of it; not for the sake of ministry, but that I might feed my own soul. Almost always this resulted in my soul being led to confession, thanksgiving, intercession, or supplication. Though I did not initially give myself to prayer, yet it turned almost immediately into prayer. And then, after a time of confession, intercession, or thanks, I go on to the next words or verse, turning all I read into prayer for myself or others, as the word may lead. All this time I kept before my eyes the goal of feeding my own soul by meditation on God’s word.
As our physical bodies are not fit for work for any length of time without food, so it is with our souls. Now what is food for the soul? It is not prayer, but the word of God. And it is not a simple reading of the word of God, so that it only passes through our minds like water through a pipe, but considering what we read, pondering over it, and applying it to our hearts. In meditation on the word of God we find our Father speaking to us, to encourage us, to comfort us, to instruct us, to humble us, to reprove us. While prayer requires some level of strength and godly desire, we can fruitfully meditate, as God blesses, even when we are weak spiritually. In fact, the weaker we are, the more we need meditation for the strengthening of our souls. By the blessing of God through this practice, I have received help and strength to pass in peace through deeper trials than I ever had before.