Blog In Audio:
Greetings,
In my last leader’s blog I presented that proper meditation of God’s word, testimonies, and even God as a person includes an expression of our words. We must speak. We must make some expression of what God has said and is saying in our lives. I gave several Scriptures where the word for meditate is translated as the word speak. This is an out loud expression of an experience in our hearts.
Ephesians 5:18 And do not be drunk with wine, in which is dissipation; but be filled with the Spirit, 19 speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord, 20 giving thanks always for all things to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, 21 submitting to one another in the fear of God.
The word for speaking in in this Scripture is GSRN 2980. λαλέω laleō. It is a prolonged form of an otherwise obsolete verb; to talk, i.e. utter words. When we are filled with the Spirit, we are inspired to speak! Speaking is an overflow from our hearts when we experience an intimate and powerful connection to Holy Spirit. When we have an encounter with Holy Spirit in our hearts, it invokes a response in us. Our response to Holy Spirit invites a further encounter with Him in our lives and we are edified and even transformed in our lives from within.
Our expression of God’s words, God’s sound, and God’s life is something we must give sound to. It is not enough to merely think upon God’s words, testimonies, or even His person. We must receive His word, His testimonies, and a revelation of Him in our hearts and thus we express a confession of these things with our mouths. With our hearts we believe and with our mouths we make confession. This empowers the imagination and the influence of our lives to others.
The same thing is true for meditation upon the testimonies of God in our lives. We don’t just think about them, we make a confession of them to ourselves and to others. When our meditation of God’s testimonies includes the confessions of our mouths it empowers further faith in us and even inspires faith in others as they hear what we experience and believe.
Psalms 77:12 I will also meditate on all Your work, and talk of Your deeds.
Sometimes we fail to meditate upon God and the things of God because we are occupied with some form of negative mediation. Worry is also a form of meditation. It is meditation on what the news says, what my circumstance says, what people say, or what I see naturally. It is a negative form of meditation.
Jude wrote that when people speak negatively toward us because of what they know to be naturally true or what they perceive to be true, we are to pray in the Holy Spirit (Jude 20). This will build up our most holy faith. The apostle Paul said that to pray in the Spirit is to pray in tongues (1 Cor. 14:15). Faith comes by hearing God’s words to us in our hearts (Rom. 10:17) and faith works through love. When we pray in the Spirit, we silence our natural thoughts and we position our own spirit to hear the Holy Spirit within. We have an internal experience with God’s love, and we hear God’s voice from the mind of Christ that is within us. This inspires our spirit to flood our soul with thoughts, reasoning, imagination, emotions, and desires that are the voice of God to our soul. Praying in the Spirit builds up our faith. This is a part of our meditation upon God and His word in our lives.
Another aspect of proper meditation involves an internal focus and an active seeking from within our hearts. This is the aspect of musing God’s word, testimony, and person.To muse means to ponder, consider, and study closely.
Psalms 39:1 I said, “I will guard my ways, lest I sin with my tongue; I will restrain my mouth with a muzzle, While the wicked are before me. I was mute with silence, I held my peace even from good; and my sorrow was stirred up. My heart was hot within me; while I was musing, the fire burned. Then I spoke with my tongue”
Luke 24:32 And they said to one another, “Did not our heart burn within us while He talked with us on the road, and while He opened the Scriptures to us?”
Proper meditation involves a response to the burning presence of God in our hearts. His words to us are not for us to have proper information in our lives. The power of the Scriptures is not simply in reading them. The power of Scripture is seen in an encounter with Jesus in our hearts that opens up our understanding in a supernatural way. This is what causes us to be transformed in our lives. Leaders set an example for those they lead and the lead them into a way of life that consistently meditates upon God’s words, testimonies, and His person in their lives.
Food For Thought,
Ted J. Hanson
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