Across our sermon series this term we’ve been looking primarily at what kinds of things hinder the Christian from truly enjoying God. They are things like (i) elder brother syndrome (using God to get his stuff), (ii) idolatry (allowing something to rival God in our affections), and (iii) Sin (wanting something that goes against God’s ways). Today we finally get to how to actually enjoy God.
There are various ways in which we can rejoice in the Lord. We can sing songs of praise, pray prayers of praise, reflect on Jesus in the Lord’s Supper, be thankful to God, reflect on God’s character, see God working in people’s lives, and read his word, just to name a few. But the principle we’ve chosen to focus on today is Christian meditation.
The first reason for this is that Christian meditation has become a type of lost art in the modern church. It is rarely practiced, preached on, or even spoken about. Yet the word comes up almost 20 times in the Bible. It is only in the past few years that I have started to notice Christian authors writing about meditating on God’s word.
Yet the main reason we’re focussing on Christian meditation today is because it is a direct way in which God’s people may delight in him (Psalm 1:2). Christian meditation is not an emptying of our mind, as eastern meditation promotes; it is filling our mind with the word of God. Yet it is not just a cognitive exercise; it is taking the truths of God that enter our minds, and speaking them directly and forcefully to our heart, rather than simply listening to our heart. If done through prayer, and in the power of the Spirit, Christian meditation has the potential to truly set our hearts on fire for the Lord. Brendan McLaughlin
