In one of my videos, I spoke about 4 ways to interact with the word of God and one of them is through meditation. Meditation is something that is in trend right now. Many celebrities and motivational speakers will talk about mediation as part of their lifestyle, but this kind of mediation is likely the Eastern religions and New age practices. This type of mediation requires you to calm your mind by emptying it and connecting with your inner self. Some people like to meditate on tarot cards and they believe through this form of mediation you can recall your past life and you can increase physic abilities like telepathy. That is not the kind of meditation I am talking about. In this video I walk you through practically how to meditate as a Christian.

So the Christian form of meditation is scripture mediation it’s not about emptying your mind, but it is rather about filling your mind with the word of God. The dictionary defines the word meditate as “to think deeply about something” that means it can be thinking deeply about something good or something bad so even worrying is meditating. Sometimes you may be worried about something and you will keep thinking about it, you are playing the situation over and over in your mind, you can’t sleep and you can’t think of anything else and it can greatly affect your mood. By the end of this video, we want to stop meditating on our problems and worries and meditate on the word of God. Scriptural mediation is where the word moves from your mind to your heart and it is a biblical practice, Joshua 1:8 says Study this Book of Instruction continually. Meditate on it day and night so you will be sure to obey everything written in it. Only then will you prosper and succeed in all you do. 2 Corinthians 10:5 talks about taking into captivity every thought to make it obedient to Christ. Philippians 4:8 talks about whatever is lovely, whatever is true, whatever is excellent think about these things. The Bible uses mind and heart interchangeably and urges us to take control of our thinking and guard what we allow into our heart. David says in Psalm 119:11 “ I have hidden your word in my heart so I may not sin against you”. So meditating helps you to know the word for yourself and it helps you to replace ungodly thoughts with the truth of God’s word. I imagine scriptural meditation to be like this sweet in a wrapper. I can take the sweet with the wrapper and put it in my mouth and I know there’s something sweet in the wrapper, but I will not enjoy the sweetness until I take my time remove the wrapper and get to the sweet itself. Now when I put it in my mouth I can enjoy it fully! That is the same with the word. Meditating is like taking your time to remove the wrapper so you can enjoy the naked word that is when logos becomes rhema!

So practically this is how to meditate.

Set the mood: Find a quiet space, take a book, pen and sit down. Some people connect better with music so you can have worship music, or worship instrumentals playing slowly in the background, you can include some scented candles or dimmed light. Do what works for you as long as there are no distractions, and you can fully concentrate. Start with prayer, ask the Holy Spirit to guide you and open the eyes of your understanding so you can see beyond what is written.

Select the verse, passage or Bible topic you want to meditate on. So let’s say you are struggling with anxiety, you can google scriptures on anxiety and pick them one a day and meditate on it. If you are just starting I would recommend doing a verse at a time and then you can develop it into more verses, chapters or even books as you grow in it. For this example let’s use Psalm 34:19: Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the LORD delivers him out of them all.

Get to know the scripture. It is very easy to just take a scripture out of context and meditate on it so it’s important that you get the context of the verse. You can start of by reading the verse in different translations out loud, when you read out loud your mind is forced to focus on what you are saying. then read the whole chapter to get a better idea of the context of the verse. You can even memorise the verse ( I will do a video on how to memorise a verse). Then you can do a study of the verse so a SOAP study or Verse mapping I have videos on Instagram on how to do different bible study methods. I have linked some of them below. I would also read the Bible commentary on Enduring word on that scripture to see what others have said about it.

Now think of the verse and break it down. Take it word for word so using our verse: the first word is Many: this means more than one. Other words that come to mind is a lot, plenty then the next word affliction: are the afflictions, other words for affliction are troubles, challenges, pains, struggles of the righteous. This means being righteous doesn’t exempt me from afflictions. Afflictions are part of the Christian journey. But the Lord delivers him out of them all, not some but all, it is not people who deliver but the Lord. I will ask myself questions like: Why did God include this passage in the Bible, How was David feeling when he wrote this verse? What was the affliction he was facing? how do I feel when I read the verse? I feel hopeful, I feel like I am not alone in my troubles. I feel like my afflictions will come to an end because the Lord will deliver me! Get curious about the word. I will ask questions like God why do the righteous have to face so many afflictions? As I am asking this he brings a passage to mind James 1:2-4 Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. So then I will ask myself are afflictions the same as trials? Are they testing my faith? As I am thinking of this I am reminded of Jesus and his own afflictions, it was necessary for Jesus to go through his afflictions because out of it came my salvation. Then I ask myself is there a purpose for my affliction? What does God want to teach me in this affliction? I can decide to then do a study looking at people who faced afflictions in the Bible. You can do a character study on Job. So you see, from just one verse I can meditate on it for hours and even days! So on my drive to work I can be thinking of the scripture, when I am doing my house chores I can be meditating on the verse. You will see that the more you think about it the Holy Spirit will expand on the word He will give you deeper revelation. The word becomes alive and he will begin to highlight areas of your life that you need to work on. You can discuss the verse with a your husband or wife or your friend and the more you talk about it you see that other people will also bring their own understanding of the verse and perspectives that you have not thought about. As you consume your mind with the word it will drown out all the other voices and the voice of God becomes the loudest.