16 Meditation Prepping

Principle number seven: Meditation will make us more aware of sin in our own life by making us more aware of His holiness. The more we meditate on the person of God, the more we are going to understand the nature of God, which is absolute perfection. The more we see His absolute perfection and holiness, the more like Isaiah we’ll be: we’ll fall down and yell, “Woe to me!” (Isaiah 6). We’ll be aware of our sin.

Recall the illustration that the closer our hand gets to a light, the more dirt we can see on it. Many of us would prefer not to meditate because what we see scares us. The more we really see God in His holiness, the further away from Him we feel because of our unrighteousness and unholiness.

Principle number eight: Meditation will enlighten, deepen, and intensify our prayer life. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 14:15 that we can pray in the Spirit by meditating and having our mind become one with God’s mind. Meditation, then, will become more of a dynamic dialogue rather than a monotonous monologue.

Most of us tend to pray as a monologue. We go to God and tell Him what we want and how we feel. There’s no real dynamic dialogue taking place. It’s a monologue where we’re doing all the talking and not very much listening. We need to listen as well. Jesus said in John 16:13, “But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come.”

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We’ve looked at eight principles of meditation. Now, let’s go to the actual act of meditation and make some practical preparations for it. The vehicle of meditation is the inner self, or put another way, the human spirit working through the human mind. The human mind is like a computer: garbage in, garbage out. Whatever we allow into our mind is what our mind starts processing, meditating, and musing over.

First in the process of preparation, we’ve got to avail ourselves of the proper raw materials for a fruitful meditation. This includes things like good books and music.

Our minds are basically evil. Perhaps this is why we seemingly remember every dirty joke, every dirty picture, every bad thing that’s ever happened in our life. We have no problem remembering evil. However, we’ve got to start pulling our mind in a more positive direction.

Next, we need to clear our minds of all random thoughts. Remember that meditation is a concentrated focus, a deep thinking or musing. It can’t be a random kind of action. Satan will constantly infiltrate our minds and try to scatter our thoughts to keep us from being able to focus on Jesus. It seems we can be praying, med-

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itating, or memorizing a verse one minute, and the next our mind is drifting to something it shouldn’t be thinking. We need to fight this temptation to drift.

After that, we need to cut ourselves off from audible and visible distractions. This means TV, internet, radio, music, magazines, hobbies—anything that can keep us from meditating. Even if it’s “Christian” music, we may not be able to focus because, as we’ve said, our minds are not capable of more than one emotional or mental focus at one time. Therefore, we’ve got to begin to clear these things out of our minds.

Location, Location, Location

We must also consider our environment. For example, I know I can’t go out to my workshop and meditate. When I go to my shop, I’m ready to work, not meditate.

We all know there are places where we can’t properly meditate. The moment we get into that context, there’s a conditioned response and our mind is going to be on something else. So, cutting yourself off from audible and visible distractions will necessitate getting alone and away from people.

We read in the four gospels that Jesus frequently went off to a lonely place. He got away from His disciples and the crowds to a place where He could spend time focusing on the Father. Remember how Jesus di-

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rected us to pray in Matthew 6:6: “But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen.”

This is a profound principle here. We’re not going to have a vital prayer life when there’s a lot of distractions. We must get away from people. Our most valuable meditation will take place in a secluded setting. If it’s not in a secluded place, then it needs to take place early in the morning or late at night outside of audible and visible distractions.

Personally, I must either get up early in the morning or stay up late at night to have real, focused attention. The TV is off. The kids are asleep. There’s no traffic. My neighbor’s dogs have finally stopped barking, and so on.

Let’s look at some specific verses about this. God tells us in Psalm 46:10, “Be still, and know that I am God.” It can be the hardest thing in this noise-polluted, insanely fast-paced society to really be still and know that He is God. Yet this is what we are called to do. Psalm 62:1 (nasb) says, “My soul waits in silence for God alone.” This means we’ve got to shut up and quit talking. Start listening, so God can talk to us.

The prophet Elijah had just witnessed victory in the showdown with the false prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel in 1 Kings 18. God showed up there in an amazing way. However, the evil queen Jezebel was not deterred and announced she was going to have Elijah

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killed by the next day. He was scared, wanted to die, and hid in a cave.

Here was Elijah after an incredible mountaintop experience—now in despondency and depression! God told Elijah to go out of the cave on the mountain where he had fled (1 Kings 19). God then brought a violent wind, an earthquake, and a fire. It was only when there was a gentle whisper of a wind afterward that He recognized God’s presence.

What was the lesson? Elijah had gotten so attuned to the dramatic that he couldn’t hear the still small voice of God. He needed to get tuned in; he needed to get his mind right.

In addition to location, I recommend always having a Bible nearby and using it as a springboard for meditation. Also, keep a journal or notebook handy. The Bible is our launching pad, and the journal is our landing strip. All meditation should spring forth out of God’s Word. Then, the notebook or journal should be used to record what He says.

What’s Holding Us Back

We also need to look at four hindrances to meditation. The first is failing to deal with unconfessed sin. Let’s look at a few verses, starting with Psalm 66:18: “If I had cherished sin in my heart, the Lord would not have listened.”

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