I would just like to be credited with the content. Read the Sermons and Meditations. Notify me of followup comments via e-mail. Optionally add an image JPEG only. Previous post: 1. Introduction to the Short Stories. Next post: 3. Your email:. All rights reserved. Original illustration by Sonya Shannon. Meditation is that habit of pondering, picturing, personalizing, and practicing Scripture. Anytime we have a few moments free we start quoting Scripture to ourselves. So meditation is that habit of thinking and pondering about Scripture every possible time we can.
MW: So walk us through practically, how does that weave its way into how you do your sermon prep every week? Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. So I just tear it apart at my desk. Sometimes the beginnings of a sermon outline accumulate in my mind and I will jot them down on a legal pad or on a document.
Very often I go on the greenways walking. And I thought, Well, God is unseen, he is invisible. No one has ever seen God. Jesus is unseen but he is not invisible. He is out of our range of vision right now. The Holy Spirit is invisible.
The angels are in a different dimension; they are invisible to us. And then I thought, The promises of God are invisible in terms of their fulfillment. I made a list in my mind of seen things that were unseen. So when I finally crafted the sermon, none of those things were in the commentaries. But as I walked and mulled over the text and I came back and built a sermon that was based on that paragraph it ended with that list of things we are to focus on.
RM: Yeah, you have to let it saturate your mind. Preaching is overflow, sermons are overflow. We have to fill ourselves with Scripture and get it saturating our minds, and then we visualize it.
This is what I think happened with Psalm 1. I think that he thought to himself, What does that look like? If I were to take verse and visualize it then what do I see, what kind of painting do I paint with the oils in my mind?
So I think the Bible itself gives us clues as to the importance of doing this. Do you have a notepad? Do you write it down, do you put it in your voice recorder?
RM: No, I do. And you know, this is a very old and precious art. This literature lacks a lot of detail that we would typically look for if it was a narrative. But it is not a narrative. It is literature that is highly intelligent and poetic, and we are to focus on every detail and to meditate on what the author is saying.
To understand Scripture properly, we must first understand what the Jewish Meditation Literature is and how to actually meditate on it. We can look to the Ancient Jews to understand completely how we are to treat this literature. Today, we read a majority of the Bible in the wrong way for which it was intended. Meditation comes early in the Bible, in the very first book of Genesis. Arguably, meditation was at the central foundation of the Christian faith.
For Jews throughout the centuries, meditation was a form of learning the Torah and integrating the teaches from it into their own lives. The actual idea of meditation literally is to ponder, dwell on, and mutter the Scripture to ourselves so that it starts to take root in our hearts.
We are to slow down and understand the Scripture itself. One of the fathers of our faith, King David, led us to do so Psalm David was so passionate about meditation that there are at least 14 Psalms that mention it. This is a community of people who meditated on the word of God, the way in which we ought to meditate today. The newly found Christians would have been either a Jew or Gentile before coming to Christ. In both Greek and Hebrew cultures, the people understood what meditation was.
In 1 Timothy , Paul uses the Greek word for meditation. Paul did this because he knew that it was not immoral for the Church member to do so and because he knew that they could relate to this language. The entire Roman empire was familiar with meditation because they practiced it. In this way, whether Jew or Gentile, the new Christians would have had meditation experience.
In the early Christian church, members would have carried on some ancient Hebrew traditions especially if they were Jewish previously. They would recite Scripture to meditate on who God is and His heart for humanity, and they would have read the Davidic Psalms, and learned how he had meditated on God.
One of the earliest forms of meditation succeding the New Testament times is called the Lectio Divina. How did it begin as meditation? This form of meditation was primarily adopted by the Catholic tradition over the centuries and it was not found in the early Christian church. Many scholars do agree that he was lamenting of some sort, but itis also related to the Hebrew words of thoughtfulness. Despite the discrepancies, we can gather that Isaac was seeking the Lord during his time of meditation.
We do not always have to be in a peaceful state, to meditate on who the Lord is or to give Him our troubles. Isaac was troubled during this time, yet he still sought the Lord. It is a lovely description of how we can choose to meditate, following how Isaac did it. Isaac was in distress and went to meditate with the Lord in a peaceful place. What did Joshua mean when he said this? It is important to know the context and culture in which he commanded this.
Joshua was the new leader of the Israelite people, who were receiving their new promised land. He was in charge of leading them in holiness and righteousness, and he was appointed by God. Joshua not only knew the word of God, but it was on his lips. He spoke it, over and over, so that it was on his heart. The words of God would not depart from him, because he meditated on them.
He meditated on it day and night , which is also mentioned in Psalm 1. Because it is mentioned twice in the Bible, by two separate authors during two separate time periods, we can conclude that this is an important aspect of meditation. Prosperity and success come from knowing and following the law of the Lord.
This is a promise that Joshua gave the Israelite people, but the principle applies to us today. This is no surprise because meditation is a theme throughout the rest of his writings. David puts a strong emphasis on this practice. This holds true. David uses words to meditate. This is how we should meditate as well. Again, we see that words and meditation have a common connection.
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