Kingdom Chat Week 44: Godly Meditation – Unlocking The Excellent Spirit
“Isaac went out to meditate in the field toward evening” Genesis 24:63 NASB
“I have more insight than all my teachers, for I meditate on your statutes” Psalms 119:99
“Meditate on these things; give yourself entirely to them, that your progress may be evident to all” 1 Timothy 4:15
We are daily inundated with imagery and stories of successful people in various disciplines but oftentimes we are not told of their lifestyle of sacrifice, aloneness and delayed gratification. Someone said, that extra-ordinary people do consistently, what ordinary people do occasionally. There are general laws or principles for success in the market place which apply irrespective of your faith or creed which is why you do not even have to believe in God to be the richest man on earth. The Bible tells us that God makes the sun to shine on both sinners and the righteous. That is the sovereignty of God. However, it pleases God the most when believers prosper and are excellent in their endeavors because this brings glory to Him.
There were times when people thought about the believer as the poorest of people; without much aspirations in this world except to die and go to heaven or only wait to be raptured to heaven. So “true churches” were known for poverty – from where we got the ridiculous tag, “as poor as church rat”. But thank God that we have heard the true gospel which has exposed us to the excellent and beauty of God’s Kingdom and now we can rise to our calling of being shining (blazing) lights in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation! We have access to the excellency of divine wisdom and God wants us to take advantage of this to subdue and dominate our world.
Looking in the bible, we can draw examples from people like Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Daniel, David, Solomon, etc. who walked with God and consistently produced excellent results. There are believers who ignorantly settle for mediocrity, thinking that because of their background, or inadequacies, they cannot achieve excellent results. Some have believed that there are demons responsible for their failures or challenges, while some have made excuses that they cannot succeed because other people do not want them to, or are plotting evil against them, or may be something mysterious is happening to them. Contrary to this mindset, one common theme with the excellence that comes from God is that these folks prospered and thrived excellently INSPITE OF many oppositions or their underdog status because they tapped into the realm of divine excellence. You can only produce consistent results in God’s kingdom according to the level of personal and revelation knowledge of God you apply to your life on daily basis. To gain this revelation knowledge, I have come to realize that the role of meditation cannot be over-emphasized. If we are going to produce deep and lasting results we need to spend more time on God-inspired meditation.
Our opening scripture describes Isaac prior to an important event in his life – marriage to Rebekah, he went out to meditate which seemed like a habit for him. God’s first instruction to Joshua for him to prosper and have good success was to meditate on the law day and night (Joshua 1:8). What a divine prescription! David says he had more understanding than ALL his teachers because he was meditating on God’s word. Our Lord Jesus spent time alone with God prior to any major step in His ministry away from the crowd as we see in Luke 5:16. Paul told us the things to meditate about in Philippians 4:8. Note that, we are referring here to godly meditation, not just the meditation as taught by the world like we see in yoga, mantra or the various new age religions today (We can talk about the difference another day).
Godly Meditation simply refers to the deep reflection on the word of God and its application in your daily actions. The word meditation comes from the the word, “Hagah” which means to study, to ponder, to imagine, to mutter or to utter/speak in a low sound like the growling of a Lion (Halleluiah!). The second Hebrew word for it is “siach” which means to be “occupied with” or “concerned about”. These words all represent an active process of deep engagement with God-inspired thoughts and not a quick superficial activity to tick the box of personal devotion. If we are going to have access to the deep things of God as Paul writes in 1Corinthians 2:10, we must also engage with God’s thought process through meditation. Our excellent nature will not be expressed simply by the “Grace of God”, we have to cultivate the soil of our minds to allow the divine excellence that is already in our spirit to overwhelm our minds and so be evident in our daily living like Paul told Timothy. We need to go beyond the “name-it-and- claim-it by prophecy on Sunday” gospel because it does not produce any consistent result for the believer. We will not dominate the world that way. We must be trained to think like God through the process of meditation. Show me a Christian that is consistently excellent and I will tell you he/she is one that consistently meditates on God’s word.
Personally, my academics got transformed when I began to spend time meditating on God’s word. I saw myself thinking wide and having deeper understanding of even things in nature. I began to consistently be among the top students and was excellent in whatever I was given to do. I realized that meditation allowed my mind’s imaginative ability to be reset to God’s factory settings and be transformed by being calm, reflecting and listening to the Holy Spirit muttering (growling) these words to myself. Prayer time should not be a time for us to talk too much rather more so, a listening time. Jesus did not just talk in prayer but listened, that is why He only spoke what He heard from the Father. Meditation trains your human spirit to hear God even in the midst of the noise. Meditation impregnates your spirit with the way God thinks because you are rubbing your mind with God, and like iron sharpens iron, your mind is sharpened by God’s mind. This way it becomes impossible to see yourself as a victim or cry like everyone else; you can say there is a lifting up when others are talking about economic crunch because you have access to divine, infinite and eternal wealth of and wisdom. This for me is the biggest secret for divine partnership in excellence and all round success in our careers, family, business, academics etc. It is God’s tool for us to dominate the world of arts, science and innovations.
Make a commitment today to set out time to meditate or at least start today by not dashing off after saying “a word of prayer”. Take out even 5 minutes to listen to your heart and think about what God wants you do about your prayer or that activity you want to engage in. This is one of the ways to exercise yourself in Godliness.
Discussion:
1. According to Philippians 4:8, what kind of things are we supposed to meditate on?
2. How has meditation helped you personally or how do you intend to include meditation in your daily routine?
Feel free to post your comments or questions below, don’t hold back any thought, it just might help someone else. We look forward to hearing from you.
- 1 Reply
@michael what an inspirational post! It is good to be reminded of the excellence we are called as Christ followers. Phil 4:8 instructs us to meditate on what is true and pure, and what else but the Word of God perfectly meets that criteria. Because the Word of God is living and active (Heb 4:12), we are not meditating on on a passive object (like you might use your natural mind to think about a magazine article). I like how you called that the Holy Spirit impregnates our spirit when we meditate effectively – it’s a mind renewal, a divine interaction that brings about transformation. That has been my experience as well.
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