Meditation helps us to learn how to hear God’s voice even in the midst of everyday distractions and responsibilities.
This is Felicia Ferguson with Christian Mix 106, helping you build faith for the journey.
I’ve talked about meditation as a method of self-care, but what about meditation as a spiritual discipline? This isn’t the eastern type where you empty your mind and allow the universe (whatever that entity might be) to give you wisdom. No, biblical meditation is spiritual clarity rooted in God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. Meditation helps us to learn how to hear God’s voice even in the midst of everyday distractions and responsibilities.
Richard Foster says that through this discipline, the verse from the hymn “In the Garden” (And he walks with me and he talks with me) stops being pious christianese or even trite poetry, “and instead becomes a straightforward description of daily life.” Meditation is simply spending time with the one who loves you perfectly. And during that time, God will often deposit his wisdom into us for situations that are troubling, problematic, or downright confusing.
But what if you’ve never heard the voice of God and don’t know where to begin? Foster says to begin with prayer. Jesus said you have not because you ask not. So pray for the desire to hear God’s voice and ask for the grace to do the work needed to hear him. Ugh, work, you might say. But these are called disciplines for a reason. We must have the desire, yes, but we also must have what an old professor of mine once called “the stick-to-it-tive-ness.” This dedication to do the work when it gets hard, we get bored without immediate results, or distracted by earthly matters is necessary to cultivate meaningful and life-changing biblical meditation skills.
Ready to meditate? Give yourself grace as you start because our modern day short attention spans need to be trained. So start out with only couple of minutes and build from there. Choose a scripture, some part of God’s nature, or way he has been faithful to you in past trials and simply think about them. Let the words or images roll around in your head. Chew them over like a cow chews cud. There are other more formal ways to practice biblical meditation, like the lectio divina, but for beginners, I’ve found it’s intimidating. Begin simply. AsZechariah said, do not despise small beginnings, for the lord rejoices to see the work begin. So meditate.
This is Felicia Ferguson, thanks for listening to Christian Mix 106.
