Some people have what seems to be a photographic memory. In other words, they see something once and they don’t forget it. I can tell you with certainty that I do not have that ability or gift. One of my many short-comings is that I forget people’s names. All my life it has been a weakness and, for a pastor, that’s not helpful. Tell me your name and in a minute or so I get fascinated with facts about what you’re saying and your name floats out of my conscience . I’ve tried all kinds of things to help, like word association, or repeating names three times quickly but nothing seems to work. This is where marriage can be very helpful.

This is the last in the series on meditation and I wanted to close on the goal and skill by which healthy Christians should pursue biblical meditation. If you haven’t read the first four articles please do so before reading this final part as much of the first four deal with the wrong way to meditate, which is linked to eastern religions like Hinduism and Buddhism.

Whereas Easter meditation focuses on achieving serenity and tranquility through emptying yourself, Christian meditation involves pursuing understanding, not emptying one’s mind. Judaism has made use of meditative practices for thousands of years, although the idea of gaining greater intimacy with God has become somewhat obscure in this day and age.  The search for the law and its detailed meaning has become the central practice, rather than a deeper relationship with the creator. For Islam, the purpose of meditation is incorporated in the practice of Salah, a mandatory act of devotion performed by Muslims five times per day. The practice is focused on sets of different postures meant to reinforce respect and beliefs, rather than opening up to God’s voice for greater intimacy.

Many times Jesus would say while teaching the crowds, “He who has an ear let him hear” which translates to, “You have to listen carefully to gain greater depth of understanding.”  The writings of King David in the psalms and King Solomon are packed with the idea of gained knowledge for the purpose of great intimacy. David speaks much about witnessing in nature God’s hand and realizing God is speaking daily through it. This great insight into nature’s purpose helped David not only respect and love God more, but also opened for him a doorway into the greater presence of God.  David understood that God will reveal himself generally through nature, but one must move into greater respect and faith in order to avail themselves of knowing God better. Listed below are just a few passages of such insight.

Psalms 19:1-3                                                                                                                                                          

The heavens are telling of the glory of God; and their expanse is declaring the work of His hands. Day to-day pours forth speech, and night to-night reveals knowledge. There is no speech, nor are there words; their voice is not heard.

Psalms 119:14-16                                                                                                                                                    

I have rejoiced in the way of Your testimonies, as much as in all riches.  I will meditate on Your precepts and regard Your ways. I shall delight in Your statutes; I shall not forget Your word.  Deal bountifully with Your servant, that I may live and keep Your word. Open my eyes, that I may behold wonderful things from Your law.

David understood that the entrance to great intimacy with God was first observing what the creation is revealing about the creator. This moves him to solicit God directly for greater revelation that must come from God who holds key information about himself and the creation, which includes humanity’s purpose. Interestingly, the writer of the Book of Hebrews speaks directly about this transition from general knowledge to greater intimacy in chapter 11.

Hebrews 11:1-3                                                                                                                                                      

Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. For by it the men of old gained approval.  By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things which are visible.

There is an element of faith, which is practical trust, that God requires individuals to exercise to move from general knowledge of God to personal knowledge. This awareness of God’s conditions for greater intimacy is gained when an individual opens their soul to the spirit of God with the information at hand.  We all in our own way came to a saving knowledge of God by steps. We heard a testimony from someone and we opened our minds and souls to consider a creator who might be willing to care and love us as a person. That openness is the beginning of faith.

Hebrews 11:4-6

By faith Abel offered to God a better sacrifice than Cain, through which he obtained the testimony that he was righteous, God testifying about his gifts, and through faith, though he is dead, he still speaks. By faith Enoch was taken up so that he would not see death; AND HE WAS NOT FOUND BECAUSE GOD TOOK HIM UP; for he obtained the witness that before his being taken up he was pleasing to God. And without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarded of those who seek Him. 

God has certain standards by which he reveals himself and as we discover those standards we move closer and closer to him. King Solomon asked God for wisdom in becoming king and that wisdom was a doorway into greater intimacy. The key is to use the knowledge we gain from our own transparency so that God reveals himself in a more transparent way. If we start living contrary to what we have learned, like Solomon, God shuts down his intimacy and we are on our own again.

Proverbs 3:32                                                                                                                                                         

For the devious are an abomination to the LORD; but He is intimate with the upright.

Listening is what mediation is all about. We choose to invest time in pursuing greater awareness and understanding to engage in greater intimacy with our creator. When Jesus told parables he was revealing truth in stories that could be taken at face value or could be a doorway to greater truth. His objective was to hide deeper meaning from those who didn’t want to learn to change, including those who were more interested surface truth instead of transformative truth.  If you listen to God and truth passively, God will stay in the shadows.

One of the hardest things for people to do in life is to develop an ability and skill in listening. We hear others speak but often misunderstand the content and true meaning of the person trying to communicate. God has the same problem with us. He speaks but we only casually listen, which causes misunderstanding.  Only those who choose to meditate on scripture regularly will gain a deeper perspective of the nature and character of God.  Our Heavenly Father reveals himself deeply to them.  Effective listening requires concentration and the use of all of our senses. David understood and applied himself to not only learning about God and his creation but to honoring the Lord. He discovered the presence of God in such a unique way that even today we long for the kind of experience he had with the Almighty.

Psalms 31:19-20                                                                                                                                                 

How great is Your goodness, which You have stored up for those who fear You,  Which You have wrought for those who take refuge in You, before the sons of men! You hide them in the secret place of Your presence from the conspiracies of man;              You keep them secretly in a shelter from the strife of tongues.

Questions:

1) Do you desire greater intimacy with God? Only through the learned habit and skill of meditation will you discover the depths of God.

2) Do you desire to learn from others what they have experienced with biblical meditation? Start reading books about men and women who have developed a meditative lifestyle.

May the Holy Spirit of God invade our souls daily so that we might discover more about our Heavenly Father.

Pastor Dale

This is now the fourth article on the importance of understanding biblical mediation and the need to develop  it in order to glean the truth both in scripture and life.  I believe being proficient in anything takes serious study and application and knowing and loving God is no exception. If you haven’t read the first three articles please do so first before reading this one.

This is the third in a series on the “Lost Art & Skill Biblical Meditation” which will deal with looking for short-cuts to peace and freedom in our fast pace world. There has been a real effort to find peace in our lives in ways other than a relationship with Jesus Christ. These so-called short-cuts are really counterfeits that mask themselves as genuine peace givers but, in the end, create bondage than we are ready for. 

This is the second article on the lost art and skill of the biblical practice of meditation. If you haven’t read the first article please do so now before continuing on with this important subject. Though many Christians may believe in the subject of true meditation, it is from my own experience and research that few understand its significance to the health of the human soul. It is strange how you can agree something is healthy for you and yet never truly engage in pursuing it.   

As we approach the celebration of July 4th I reflect on the question, “Are People Really Free or Just Pretending?” America has so much opportunity and yet many wander through a maze of broken hopes and dreams. We spend a great amount of time, wealth and energy trying to prove to ourselves and others that we are living “the dream” when we are in fact just being fooled by all the media marketing about what really makes one free and happy.

This will be the last in this series and I hope you have been blessed and challenged by the subject matter. I would love to hear your feedback on what you got out of the topic. If you have a unique story of a dark time in your life when God seemed silent yet the Lord taught you a valuable truth or lesson I would love to hear about it.

A common problem for many Christians is that they base their beliefs on superstition and legend rather than on scripture. Most will say they have a biblical foundation for their faith, but when questioned with deeper issues beyond simple concepts like John 3:16 they often are lost and can’t explain what they believe nor why. It is my experience that when we can’t explain what and why we believe, we often don’t really believe it. what we say we do. Somehow we have relied on sermons or Christian books rather than digging into the scriptures to discover what is really true and what is just religion or good ideas. 

We all go through “Dark Times” where it feels like God is nowhere to be found and we often feel isolated from people in our souls even if we are in a crowd of people. Those times can be scary because we don’t know what the outcome will be and we often can become overwhelmed with the prospect of the “What If’s” that fuel our worries. If you haven’t read the first two articles in this series please do so before reading this one as they are all linked with each other.

In the first part of this series, “Trusting in the Darkness”, I started to explore how life throws difficulties at us at times where our relationships are brought into question due to some area of weakness or fear. The fear could be over not knowing what the other party feels towards us when we are hit with a hard time or difficulty. It could be the feeling of isolation or inability to cope with our current problem and our friends or family seemingly not willing to bail us out when they have the means too. In any case, it is when life’s answers can’t be found and we feel lost. It is during those dark times that our relationships will be tested both with God and others. If you haven’t read the first article on this subject please do so before continuing with this one.

I started off this topic with the story of Mary, Martha and Lazarus who found themselves in great need asking Jesus for help. The apostle John is the only one who included this story in his gospel account for good reason. John wrote his gospel from a relational point of view. He helps us to identify when we have good relationship with God and when we are just toying with religion. In this story Lazarus gets sick and dies.  John focuses on what all relationships go through when a crisis tests the quality of our love for each other. Can we trust the person we seek assistance from who doesn’t come through the way we expected?

John reveals that Jesus loved these three people in a unique way. To say Jesus loves us all is true. However, to say Jesus is intimate with all of us in the same way would betray the reality that we all experience God differently. Some of us seem to have a much closer walk with God than others. While we may experience struggles while walking in darkness, and those struggles may hinder our lives for a time, they don’t seem to damage our trust whereas with others the slightest trouble in life causes us to lose our trust in God and we stop our communication.  God is accused of a lack of love. This lack of trust and communication may last a day, week, month or even years. For Martha and Mary, they were hurt and wounded by his seeming lack of empathy concerning their brother but they still talk to Jesus out of their pain even when confused. Some people never recover in their relationship once they are disappointed with God’s actions or lack there of. No amount of scripture concerning the promises of God’s love assures them that God truly does because God didn’t come through for them the way they wanted or expected.

I left off the last article with a scripture from the book of Isaiah in the Old Testament that deals with the time when the Jews were in Babylon and complaining that the things they were experiencing were God’s fault due to his lack of love.

Isaiah 50:10                                                                                                                                                                             

Who is among you that fears the LORD,   That obeys the voice of His servant, That walks in darkness and has no light?  Let him trust in the name of the LORD and rely on his God.

Isaiah pens this prophecy because the Jews have felt that God didn’t love them anymore and that his love was shallow because of their suffering in Babylon. They have presumed that their experience reflected a lack of God’s love rather than their own lack of love for God. It turns out their suffering was due to their own lack of genuine love for and towards God. They had failed to follow God’s plan for their life and now they were experiencing the fruit of those choices.  It is to blame God or others when we are reaping the fruit of what we have sown.  Now our own current trials may not be the the fruit of a lack of our love for God but trials will indeed test the kind of depth or weakness in our love for God and others. The important thing is to examine just what our affection for God and others is based on. Is it only based on doing our will for our comfort or is it based on something far more valuable?

God identifies mature love through the words of Isaiah by saying that those who truly fear God and are identified as having biblical love are those who obey his voice even when darkness surrounds them. They so trust the person of God and his character that they trust his words even when circumstances look the contrary. This reminds me of a story I heard from someone living in Romania when it was under communism in the 70s. It happened a long time ago when a church and their church leaders were arrested and interrogated by the secret police in order to get them to betray each other. When the interrogator talked with each prisoner separately they accused the other leader falsely with reports saying some had confessed bad things about the other.  Each prisoner would reply, “They would never say such things about me because I know they love me”. At the end the prison guards gave their lives to Christ because of the unwavering love and trust they had for each other.

Martha and Mary still trusted Jesus in spite of their great pain and confusion. Yes, they were hurt deeply by what seemed to be Jesus’ lack of concern for their brother who was now dead yet their ability to still trust their friend Jesus was rock solid though tested through such fire. Look at their response when talking to Jesus in town.

John 11:21-22                                                                                                                                                                                        

Martha then said to Jesus, “Lord, if You had been here, my brother would not have died.  “Even now I know that whatever You ask of God, God will give You.”Jesus *said to her, “Your brother will rise again.” Martha *said to Him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.” Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in Me will live even if he dies, and everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die. Do you believe this?”

Martha is totally honest with Jesus.  Martha is trying to wrap her brain around the “Natural”, which reasons once your body is dead you are dead, and the “Supernatural” idea that God can intervene and change what nature says is unchangeable.

Here is the key thing for all of us. In order to trust God, whether it’s dark or broad daylight, we have to be anchored in the belief that what God has promised is rock solid because he would never lie. This is regardless of what we might experience in life, good or bad. I confess that having that perspective and conviction does not come easy and can at times be shaken. It takes a lifetime of walking with God to learn to trust God more than circumstances. Just the awareness of the truth that our convictions can be shaken should cause us to know that the only safe place to dwell is in the person and presence of God for He is the one that gives us the strength we need for any and all circumstances.

I recently visited with a person who was dying.   They are such a godly person that many would love to have had their faith but, when faced with all the signs of death, they were trying to stop death with their faith confession believing that their confession was where their strength was rather than God himself. As I sat with this person I encouraged them to relax in the love of their Heavenly Father rather than the strength of their confession or power of their will.  All of a sudden it’s like a light bulb went on in their soul and the peace of God folded their soul in such a wonderful way we both started to cry. From that moment on this person was able to truly trust God with simple childlike faith. The outcome of their journey was more up to God rather than feeling like it was all up to them.  We struggle to be in charge yet our Heavenly Father is longing for our trust to be in Him rather than the outcome of our battle.

In the next article we will continue to explore walking in darkness while still trusting. Stay tuned for more!

Questions:

1) Have you been struggling to be strong in faith rather than strong in your Heavenly Father ? Confess & be free.

2) Are you still relying on what you know to “Win” rather than relying on who you know ? Confess & Rest in Him.

Exploring the character of God is where our real hope and security lies.

Pastor Dale