I attended the New Attitude conference in Louisville, Kentucky a couple weeks ago, and was there encouraged by the speakers and the personal study time, to spend more time meditating on God’s Word and its truth. Having been raised in a Christian home, I’ve heard this exhortation often, though I’ve seldom carried it through on my own initiative. The challenge that Josh Harris made in his first keynote session at New Attitude (on May 24) has broadened my perspective on why we memorize and meditate. Josh said:
If, then.
It’s more than a cutesy little phrase. It means, that IF we view scripture as the inerrant Word of God and the specific “rule book” given intentionally to us as followers of Christ–THEN we should naturally desire to read, apply, and share it. Meditation — besides being a discipline the Bible over and over commands us to engage in — is an amazing way to keep scripture on the edge of one’s mind; always right there to bring up in conversation, to encourage another believer, or to simply speak truth to oneself.
I have Psalm 119:9 written out and framed on my desk. To me, the words “How can a young man keep his way pure? By living according to your Word” have ceased to be a quick-fix-that-doesn’t-apply-to-my-situation kind of phrase. I have found that I can’t forcefully keep my way pure. I simply can’t do it without God’s truth encouraging and driving me to flee sin and seek His Word instead.
With that somewhat lengthy intro, here are the verses I’m actually meditating on today (Eph 1:3-5):
3Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ.
4For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love
5he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will…
There is so much in these three verses. To really just sit back and study each concept thoroughly would blow the mind of the reader. The reality of God’s blessing, God’s choosing of each of us individually before the world was even created! The reality of our created purpose to be holy and blameless. What does that mean? Was that God’s original purpose for creation which sin screwed up, or does he still intend that we achieve such a status? We could spend hours dissecting that idea and what it means (though the succinct answer from Christ is in Matthew 5:48, I think), but there is still much, much more in this Ephesians passage worth getting exciting over. The idea that Christ predestined us in love and ADOPTED us as His sons . . . because, essentially, it was His pleasure to do so. The greek word here implies a sense of intense delight. It was with this delight, this pleasure, that God predestined us before he spoke the world into existence, and caused us to be adopted as sons and joint-heirs with Christ (as Romans 8:17 states). What a powerful truth! What an amazing Savior!
It should never be anything but a true blessing (certainly not a tiresome chore!) to meditate upon and memorize splendid, encouraging scripture verses like these. And the Bible is stuffed full of them, because it’s all about God — all about HIM.
Sam, its encouraging to see how you’re applying what you learned at na to your life. I was really convicted/motivated by the Lord through the messages to be dedicated to daily, in-depth study. So, I’ve decided to take two verses of Romans a day and just chew… and its been such a blessing already!