How can our reading and studying of God’s Word take us by the hand and lead us into the presence of God? How can our study of God’s Word actually be a means of grace as it was in Paul’s life (Acts 20:32)? One answer is the meditation of God’s Word. It is easy for us who are bombarded with information not to meditate or process all the input to which we are exposed. We are inundated with news from our car radios, emails at work, texts and tweets from friends, website surfing, and podcasts and TV in the evenings, and endless cell phone calls.
How can we overcome the endless competitors for our time and attention and grow in the grace and knowledge of God’s Word? Meditation! Donald Whitney in Spiritual Disciplines for The Christian Life defines meditation as “deep thinking on the truths and spiritual realities revealed in Scripture for the purposes of understanding, application, and prayer” (44).
Whitney gives an analogy of enjoying a cup of hot tea. In the analogy, you are the hot cup of water and the Word of God is the teabag:
Hearing God’s Word is like one dip of the tea bag into the cup. Some of the tea’s flavor is absorbed by the water, but not as much as would occur with a more thorough soaking of the bag. In this analogy, reading, studying, and memorizing God’s Word are represented by additional plunges of the tea bag into the cup. The more frequently the tea enters the water, the more effect it has. Meditation, however, is like immersing the bag completely and letting it steep or soak until all the rich tea flavor has been extracted and the hot water is thoroughly tinctured reddish brown (44).
Spiritual success according to the Bible is only promised in relation to the Bible and specifically in regard to meditating on God’s Word (Psalm 1:1-3; Joshua 1:8).
Jonathan Edwards, the 18th-century theologian, and pastor cultivated his spiritual life through the meditation of God’s Word. Whitney related the following example:
When he was younger, Edwards had pondered how to make use the of time he had to spend on journeys (on horseback). After the move to Northampton, he worked out a plan for pinning a small piece of paper to a given spot on his coat, assigning the paper a number, and charging his mind to associate a subject with that piece of paper. After a ride as long as the three-day return from Boston he would be bristling with papers. Back in his study, he would take off the papers methodically, and write down the train of thought each slip recalled to him (48).
Just like Jonathan Edwards, we have to discipline ourselves to creatively use our time wisely in order to meditate on God’s Word.