Christians, especially in North America, have lost the art of meditation. In fact, we almost consider it a pagan practice. But his delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night (Psalm 1:2).
For the most part, our thinking, especially for the undisciplined, has a mind of its own. We are victims of our own thoughts. I’m sure that you’ve experienced it time and time again. You could be driving your car, and without any conscious decision you begin to worry. You envision yourself in the worst case scenario and before you know it you are embraced by a mood of melancholy and despair.
Through meditation we wrestle down negative thoughts and emotions that plague us every day. Meditation is a discipline of the mind where you take charge of your thoughts, directing them towards God.
We are a society of lazy thinkers. Television has become an electronic imagination. It determines, with vivid stereo and full color imagery, how we feel and think.
Try sitting down, closing your eyes and allow your imagination to be filled with a single thought. You have been chosen by God before the creation of this world, according to his good pleasure and will.
Allow your mind to be filled with the implication of how that single truth affects who you are, and your importance to this world. This will be difficult because negative thoughts come easiest to the mind. They are safe.
As you travel throughout your thinking, you will begin to experience obstacles of fear and unbelief. Those thoughts will oppose themselves against the Word of God. You will find that often your first experience with meditation is like a wrestling match in the mind, instead of an experience of peace and stillness. As you begin to experience the authority you have over your own thinking, the floodgates of joy will burst within you, maybe for the first time. You will develop an awareness of how you and the Word of God are one in your thinking.
There may be fifty years of hardened residue built up that you will have to come up against as you meditate to internalize the Word. The Word of God is the single force in all of eternity that is able to enter your thinking and recreate your character, mind and emotions, conforming them into the image of Christ.
There is nothing spiritual about opening a Bible and reading it. Christians all over North America do that in their personal devotions and remain unchanged. Meditation opens the soul to the Word that it may begin to come in and make great change.
We suggest that you take a scripture or a single nugget of truth and meditate all day. Look at your reflex-thinking, see if it conforms to that truth--and if it does not, cast it down as an evil thing that hinders you from communing with God.
Next Fasting Tip: Get Alone With God