Should Christians Meditate?
Meditation is defined by m-w.com as the act of engaging “in mental exercise for the purpose of reaching a heightened level of spiritual awareness.” Let’s assume that we’re talking about meditating on a particular passage or phrase in the Bible, or on an aspect of God.
So, what do you think, should Christians meditate?
Is that not called prayer? I often will read a passage of scripture and then think on it. But in doing so, I usually find my self asking the Holy Spirit for guidance, and thus I am praying.
Meditation is a form of focusing on a single item and cleansing the mind and body.
Different than prayer when you are having a conversation with God/Jesus.
Meditation here means focusing on what you have learnt or read from the scriptures and allowing yourself to the insighted more about what u learn through the Holy Spirit..which comes from God..so God speaks when Meditating.
For me, meditation is a must and my first priority. Muslims,Hindus, Buddhists meditates so, as a Christian a bible-based believers, we must meditate day and night (Joshua 1:8; Psalm 1:2).Key to have a prosperous and victorious life as God promised.Meditation glorifies God.
Meditation is totally a Biblical principal. Whether you’re focusing on pressing into the Father, parts of his known word (ie: the Bible) or things said by other believers that you want to test or aid you. Meditation is the way by which our subconscious can be informed by and begin to inform our conscious. The other day I listened to a song called “Again” by the band Flyleaf. I found it very inspirational to meditate to. I was enriched by the word of the Lord… Just some thoughts.
I’ts practical and second nature for Bible Based believers to meditate,but we meditate because others meditatated in the Bible and they found joy and delight ex: Psm 119:15 15I will MEDITATE in thy precepts, and have respect unto thy ways. 16 I will delight myself in thy statutes: I will not forget thy word.
Psm 1:1-2 1Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, F1 nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful. 2 But his delight is in the law of the LORD; and in his law doth he MEDITATE day and night.
Psm 63:3-6 3 Because thy lovingkindness is better than life, my lips shall praise thee. 4 Thus will I bless thee while I live: I will lift up my hands in thy name. 5 My soul shall be satisfied as with marrow F184 and fatness; and my mouth shall praise thee with joyful lips: 6 When I remember thee upon my bed, and MEDITATE on thee in the night watches.
Duteronomy 6:4-9 is about meditation. The caution about mediation is WHO is the focus of our meditation. It has to be God. If the focus of our meditation is a passage of Scripture, there are dangers that the enemy will use it to our disadvantage (see what happened in the Garden of Eden!). God is the centre of our focussed thoughts – Him and Him alone. He will reveal His will through his word. Not the other way around, i.e. meditating on God’s word does not reveal His will and purpose, meditating on God, does!
-k
There is illustration of a hand that shows five elements of God’s word. Each digit represent.a part of learning and living the word. Hearing (Hebrew 10:27), Reading (Rev. 1:3), Studying (Acts 17:11), and Memorizing (Ps. 119:9-11). The most important part of our hand is the thump. It holds what is needed to be retained. Meditating (Ps. 1:23) is the thump.
Meditation is the most effective way to have a deep connection with God and Jesus. Through a daily meditation practice, it is possible to clear your mind of daily chatter, connect to your heart, and transcend the physical body to connect on a much deeper level with God. I feel that meditation is the missing ingredient to most Christian’s prayer. Just as prayer is a practice, meditation is a practice. Prayer without meditation can be superficial. If you meditate before or after prayer, it is that much more meaningful and from the heart rather than the mind. Without meditation, most prayer is from the mind, not the heart. God / Jesus look into our hearts, not minds. Unfortunately, most people mistakenly connect meditation with Buddism. Meditation is an excercise all on its own – prayer of the mind – it is nothing to fear. It is something to cherish and be grateful for – after all, the bible does mention meditation many times!
Nah…
Good discussion. Here is how I view mediation through studying the scripture and my exposure to Hindus. Mediation in eastern religions is the art of emptying oneself of all thoughts. If you have swept yourself clean by emptying yourself out, you are open to deception.
Christian meditation is God centered and is to fill us up on through the Spirit on the greatness of God. His holiness, righteousness, mercy, grace etc. is the attention of our thoughts. From focusing on God, we place Him first and this allows the Holy Spirit to align us correctly with Spirit, Soul and Body.
Very well put. So many become fearful when they hear the word meditation because they think of it as an eastern/new age art, This was a well done explanation of the differences between eastern meditation and Christian or Biblical meditation. Eastern empties self, Biblical meditation draws near to Christ, submitting to the Holy Spirit as Counselor, teacher and Comforter.
The Hebrew word meditation is a visual of a cow chewing cud. The understanding is to take God’s word and chew on it and get all that can be gotten from it, while enjoying all the richness of it.
Meditation on Him and His word is crucial to maturity and steadfastness especially in the craziness and busyness that surrounds us today,
JOSHUA 1VS 8 says or reads ‘”this book of law shall not depart from your mouth you shall meditate upon it day and night…” it’s a biblical instraction therfore one have to.
My understanding on meditation is this:
In prayer – We make our needs known to Him and In Mediation – He makes His needs known to us.
God has no needs. He is complete in himself. He doesn’t need us, but he has determined to love us and redeem us for his own glory. He is thoroughly happy and complete in himself.
I have recently learned a good method of meditating, I attended a seminar by Mark Virkler on “hearing god’s voice”. Now that I know an easy method of meditation I do it at least once a day and I ask myself how was it possible for me to be a Christian without meditation.
meditation is a absolutely important, for ‘as a man thinketh in his heart so he is’. often times we engage in it without realising we are, so we ought to do it consciously to ensure we meditate on the right things.- whatever things are true, pure,of good report.- we are to stop our minds from dwelling on things that do not it into that scripture.
Christian should mediate, in fact it should take up a great aspect of our time. Psalms talks about meditation on God’s words day and night. It helps us to get to know Him better, memorize the scripture focus our thoughts on greater meaning. Also, it keeps us in constant contact with God and prevent us from thinking about negative things
Derrick Meer is correct in his statements. Meditation is concentrating on God’s Word and filling your mind with his will by using your mind/heart (same thing), to come to a deeper understanding of His character or will. You should never empty your mind or focus on a single word and chant it over and over. If you do this you are opening yourself up to the doctrine of demons. This type of practice has come into the church through spiritual formation or the spiritual disciplines. Psalm 119 shows us what to meditate on and it is God’s word.
Mike I just read your post. Your exactly right. I read it after I had posted the dangers of contemplative prayer. Ray Yungen’s book “A time of departing” helped me understand this foolishness all in the name of “drawing closer to God”
Totally right!
Mike, I agree with you. A coworker told me about “Soaking Prayer”. I did some research and found that people were meditating on “sacred” words not on God’s word. They would fall into a “trances” where they would shake violently. Go to http://www.youtube.com and type Demons in Church. I can’t believe CBN promotes this.
Yes
But do we as Christian’s? No, partly because the scare of the eastern religion, no one teaching how to, and business. It is hard for our culture to “be still” “go and pray in the mountian’s”. Can you be still long enough to build a connection with GOD and then open oneself to hearing GOD, talking to GOD, Communing with our Father. OR Meditate “filling oneself with love from the I AM”.
So how do you start with Meditating? I would recommend starting with forgiveness and repentance. Then go into the bible to find scripture that you can imagine, be “in” scripture. Say feeding the five thousand, think of standing in the crowd, smelling the lake, feeling a breeze, hearing Jesus speak the Serom of the Mount… and so on … Skip forward … as the crowd leaves from eating, you walk up to a rock to sit down on and Jesus comes up and sits with you. Ask him a question “Master, Teacher …” Just enjoy waiting for an answer, and he will answer… Ask another and so on…
This is Meditation with imaganation, it will keep your mind and senses focused. It is also how children do it, playing with an imaginary friend. Why cannot we adults have a friend unseen. We can and it is so wonderfull to have Jesus as a Friend that is with you all the time.
I think my concern about this is that our imaginations are fallen. I’ve done studies on medieval mystics who performed these kinds of exercises and they received some counter-scriptural answers from ‘Jesus’ in their meditations. So it’s important to always match any experience with the Word, of course. But I agree with you that we are very much in need of rediscovering silence.
Absolutely not in the sense of meditating in the mystical contemplative sense. This is very dangerous and unscriptural. I was made aware of the dangers of this practice by studies in the “spiritual formation” movement. I beg you all to consider the implications of this practice. I can recommend a great book entitled “A time of departing” by Ray Yungen. He helped me understand biblical meditation vs the “silence” as done in contemplative or mystical meditation. Please read the book and consider what this false movement is about.
In Him.
There is nothing wrong with meditating on the word of God. It doesn’t mean to meditate as these new age religions practice by clearing the mind and silence. It’s merely reflecting and remembering. The bible talks about meditating on the word multiple scriptures in Psalms talk about meditating for ex. Psalm 1:2 But his delight is in the law of the Lord and in His law he meditates day and night.
Remembering, thinking about a scripture is NOT the same thing as the meditating concept that we are hearing today… Because of the influence of eastern religions we have to be VERY careful. Never empty your mind of thoughts or chant or make repetitions…
When we meditate, we remember the word, think about how we can apply that passage to our lives throughout the day, pray responding to that passage (for example, if the passage talks about being pure, then my prayer should be “God how can I be pure, show me the truth in my heart, so I can see what things are not pure in me, etc)
To summarize, I think that when the word says “meditating” it means that God wants us to think ACTIVELY of His word, He wants us to apply it to every detail of our lives, not passive meditating. Our focus should be not the passage itself, but what is God’s heart, what is he saying, what changes in our lives He is asking us to do…
God Bless you all and please be careful, a word as simple as “meditating” can confuse us and instead of putting us closer to God it can drive us away from him!
The Bible has verse after verse on meditation; however because society has attached meditation to Yoga, Buddhism, Eastern philosophy, New Age Mysticism and other thoughts and religions, most never explore how fulfilling meditation is or what the Bible has to say about it.
When we quietly sit and think on God’s word, fully removed from the noises of this life, our ear pressed up against God’s word, like a frontiersman would have pressed against the ground, than from a far off we hear the rumbling of God’s voice and the deeper things of God that we would otherwise miss.
Prayer is how we speak to God, but meditation is how we listen to Him. I think I can say confidently that we develop a deeper walk with God when we meditate.
meditation on the word brings you closer to God.
Its through meditation that we can have a two way conversation with God,gaining an understanding of the direction he wants us to go in and knowing of what he wants us to do.
1 Blessed is the man
who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked
or stand in the way of sinners
or sit in the seat of mockers.
2 But his delight is in the law of the LORD,
and on his law he meditates day and night.Psalm 1-2 (NIV)
It seems to me that we are encouraged to meditate on the Word of God as a pathway to “Blessedness” and “success.” Meditation is the method of attaining God’s perspective through deliberate, focused thought regarding God’s Word. We fill our thoughts with His thoughts by looking at, speaking(muttering to ourselves) and writing the words we are meditating. When our thoughts are saturated with what we are meditating on we will have His perspective. God’s peace and joy will then flood our souls.
I’m sure that is something we as christians should do. Many scriptures support it. The problem why many people think meditating is wrong is because the negative connotation given by oriental religions that make them think it is about “emptying” our mind, whilst the word of God insists that we must “fill” our minds with God’s word. So we have to meditate, not by putting our mind in blank but by filling them with godly thoughts: “Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.” Phil 4:8
Meditation is not about emptying, it is about slowing your thoughts, creating more space between your thoughts – and this helps to relax your body. I find it much more effective in my meditation practice to clear the clutter in the mind first, and then fill it with God’s word. If you add God’s word to the clutter, it is harder to hear God speaking. When you try to fill your mind with God’s word when it is cluttered, only half the glass of water will fit, if you clear/empty your mind and slow your thoughts, you can drink a full glass of God’s love. I’m reading a lot of fear about emptying – that is what I do first and I hear God speak often. Also, it is wonderful to repeat words/mantra – just choose the word Jesus or God to repeat – nothing wrong with that. I learned to meditate in my yoga training, and my yoga practice and meditation is what opened my heart, cleared my mind, and let go of judgement enough to bring me closer to God. And amidst the challenge in my life, I was able to hear God speak to me and it brought me to the foot of the cross. Yoga and Christianity is a beautiful combination as long as you stay focused on God and Jesus.