Meditation and Prayer

“What you think about in your unguarded moments reflects what your mind dwells upon. To keep your thoughts pure, you must guard what goes into your mind. The things you allow your mind to dwell on will be revealed by the way you live. If you focus on negative things, you will inevitably be a negative person. If you fill your mind with thoughts of Christ, you will become Christlike. What you fill your mind with is a matter of choice. Choose to concentrate on the magnificent truths of God, and they will create in you a noble character that brings glory to God (Philippians 4:8). Henry Blackaby

Learning to meditate on God’s Word is essential for a powerful prayer life. Meditation guides us into a deeper life with God, enabling us to pray on-target prayers and helping us to know in a greater dimension the ways of God. Meditation is often a lost art because of the busy and noisy world we live in. It is a big key to a life of spiritual fruitfulness. It also keeps us from dwelling on the bad things we hear day after day in the newspaper and on the television news.

Meditation is different than reading, studying or memorizing Scripture. It is the digestive faculty of the soul. It builds us up, refreshes and feeds our souls. Biblical meditation is taking a phrase, verse or passage of Scripture and pondering upon it with expecta-tion and faith, and allowing the Holy Spirit to make it alive. Meditation is focused thinking on God’s Word.

The Value of Meditation

“The main purpose of Christian meditation is for us to know God, not about Him. Jesus said, ‘Now this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent (John 17:3).

To get to know God – This goes beyond just knowing about Him. We get to know Him personally.
To hear God’s voice – We are then able to pray on-target prayers.
To change spiritually and walk in obedience – We will always grow and change through meditation. Meditation will help us to obey God and do the right thing in a sudden moment when we need to make the right choice.
To have something to share with others – Often the very Scriptures that we meditate on are the very ones someone else needs to hear and the ones we need to pray.
To grow deeper into a prayerful lifestyle – As we ponder Scripture, we naturally grow deeper in our prayer life and are led more fully into prayer.
To comfort, gain strength, understanding and success – We gain spiritual strength when we meditate on Scripture. Joshua 1:8, Psalm 119:23, 39:3. ”Oh, how I love your law! I meditate on it all day long. Your commands make me wiser than my enemies, for they are ever with me” (Psalm 119:97-98).

How to Meditate

“Do not let this Book of the Law depart from your mouth; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful” (Joshua 1:8).

Read through a passage of Scripture.
Let the Holy Spirit bring your attention to something in the passage.
Paraphrase the verse.
Make it personal.
Try picturing what the verse is saying.
Relate the verse or passage to other verses you know.
Write something down.
Respond.

Meditation should always result in a response to God whether it is repentance, thanksgiving, worship, obedience, a change in attitude, etc. It would be good to read Psalm 119 that speaks over and over again about meditating on God’s Word. Meditation on the Scriptures will cause us to understand something of the mind and heart of God.

“When you think about a problem over and over in your mind, that is called worry. When you think about God’s Word over and over in your mind, that’s meditation. If you know how to worry, you already know how to meditate! You just need to switch your attention from your problems to Bible verses.” Rick Warren

By Debbie Przybylski Intercessors Arise International IHOPKC

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