01. Meditation
Key Takeaways
Remember that we are not learning these disciplines just to learn them! But we are committing to practice them! So make time each day to practice the discipline of meditation.
Meditating entails: listening to, reflecting on, rehearsing, and ruminating on God’s words and works. It sends us into our ordinary world with greater perspective and balance.
It is very simple. Christian meditation is the ability to hear God’s voice, and obey His word.
It is through meditation, a continual familiar friendship with Jesus, that His perpetual presence becomes a radiant reality in our lives—marked by intense intimacy and awful reverence. The inner reality of the spiritual world is available to all who are willing to search for it.
It is not the same as eastern meditation. This is very important to know. The devil is the ultimate copycat and what he copies, he perverts. Eastern meditation attempts to completely empty the mind and detach from the world, whereas Christian meditation serves to fill the mind with the word of God and attach more richly to God.
Sanctifying the imagination! The imagination is an incredible gift from God, and can bear a lot of really good fruit when submitted to Him.
Slow down. We must resist the temptation to pass over many passages superficially. Our rushing reflects our internal state and our internal state is what needs to be transformed.
Oh, how I love your word! It is my meditation all the day…
- Psalm 119:97
“Meditation is a way to rest detached from the world so we can have time and space to think on the word of God and what He has to say.” - Tosin Ojo, Ashford member
“Meditation is allowing Christ to create an inner sanctuary in my heart. And disconnecting from the disarray around us to anchor in Christ alone.” - Gwen Garrido, Ashford member
Bible Examples
King David talks about meditation throughout the whole of Psalm 119! And in Psalm 63, “I think of you upon my bed, and meditate on your in the watches of the night.”
Isaac. “And Isaac went out to meditate in the field in the evening” (Gen 24:63).
An invitation to all in Psalm 1, “Blessed is the man…whose delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night.”
Eli and Samuel in 1 Samuel 3:1-18
Elijah, discerning the still small voice of Yahweh in the wilderness (1 Kings 19:9-18)
Jesus often withdrew to a place apart from everyone else to be with God—to seek, listem to, and commune with the Father (Matt 14:13; Matt 4:1-11; Luke 6:12, and more)