How to Meditate: Preparation

Preparation for Meditation

You need a:

Right place: Choose a quiet, secluded place in your home. You want a place where you can meet privately with God without noises, disturbance or interference of any kind. If you are like many people, you may be doing your quiet time early in the morning. Because you will need to read, you need a place that has good lighting so that you can read. You also need a place where you can be comfortable whether it is sitting on a chair, on the floor etc. Many people call this place their sacred place, the place where they meet with God. In the Bible, we see Jesus frequently went to the mount of Olives to pray alone. We see Abraham and his son Isaac often went out to meditate in the quiet of the evening.

1. Right Time

The right for meeting with God would be the time that you are most alert and can meet with God uninterrupted. This will vary depending on the type of person you are. Some people are more alert towards the evening. Some are more alert early in the morning. Find that time for you and be able to do it. But it is our experience that most people are at their best early in the morning after a good night’s rest. In Mark 1:35, we see that Jesus went to have his quiet time early in the morning. Jesus sometimes prayed all night too. Many other leaders in the Bible like Abraham, Jacob, Moses, and David also did their meditation in the morning. Yet, there are a few like Isaac (Genesis 24:63) and David that meditated in the evening too. Psalm 8 and some other Psalms written by David appear to have been his meditations. David wrote, “When I remember You on my bed, I meditate on You in the night watches,” (Psalm 63:6). God commanded Joshua to meditate day and night. In Joshua 1:8, God says “Do not let this Book of the Law depart from your mouth; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful.” Psalm 1:2 also talks about meditating day and night. So choose the time that you are at your best. For most people, that will be early in the morning. It will be a tremendous blessing to you to meditate day and night (in the morning and in the evening)

2. Right Motive

( 1 Sam 16:7, Prov. 16:2 NASB).

3. Right Tools

You will need, i) A Bible, ii) A notebook to write in, iii) CD player for music or a hymn book if you prefer hymns. or with print large enough to read comfortably in the lighting you will have. You will also need

4. Right plan

If you don’t have a plan, you are planning to fail.

6. Right Attitude

1) An attitude of Faith: Bible teacher, Joyce Meyer, says “to hear from God, we must believe that we can hear from him. It doesn’t do any good for God to speak to us if we don’t believe we are hearing from him” That is where many of us fail in our attempt to hear from God through our meditation or through the other methods God uses to speak to us. We must go to God with an attitude of faith because “without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him.” Hebrews 11:6. The Christian life is a life of faith from beginning to the end. Without faith in God, we cannot hear God. Everything we receive from God is received by faith. Someone has wisely said that grace is the hand of God that stretches forth to give to us and faith is our hand that stretches out to receive from God. Without faith, we cannot hear from God. James 1:5-8 Further illustrates the necessity of faith in receiving from God. James writes, “if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all generously and without reproach, and it will be given to him. ⁶ But he must ask in faith without any doubting, for the one who doubts is like the surf of the sea, driven and tossed by the wind. ⁷ For that man ought not to expect that he will receive anything from the Lord, ⁸ being a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.” This is true for everything that we receive from God including his voice which is a precious gift to us who are privileged to hear it as his children. This lack of exercise of faith prevents many from hearing from God. Notice that I didn’t say this lack of faith. I said lack of exercise of faith because all believers have the Holy Spirit and a measure of faith that enables them to hear God if they exercise it. It would be uncharacteristic for God to leave one of his children without adequate faith to hear him. So go into the presence of God expecting him to speak to you, expecting him to bless you, expecting him to be expecting you in his presence!
2. Boldly: Because of what Jesus has done for us and made us God’s children, the writer of Hebrew’s exhorts saying “let us draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” God desires to speak to us through his word, so we must approach him boldly with the boldness that comes from a deep-seated faith in his goodness and willingness to speak to us and to bless us.
3. Patiently: Patience is one of those fruits of the spirits that many of us struggle with. We live in a microwave generation and serve a crock-pot God. We have a generation that is used to Google and other search engines give you search results in fractions of a second. You ask Google something, he tells you in less than one second. Sometimes, you ask God something and it can take months or even years! God works on us to prepare us either to see that our request is not best for us or to be ready to receive the request.
4. Actively: You are going to have a meeting with God. It has to be a two-way communication where you are an active participant and not a passive participant.
5. Alert and attentive: You need to schedule your meditation or quiet time when you are most alert. God deserves to have the best of our time.
6. With an Open Mind: It is a waste of time to expect God to speak to you through his word when you have made up your mind about certain issues before you go to the Word. To hear God, we must be open to allow him to encourage us, exhort us, rebuke us, teach us from his word.
7. Thankfully: One of the things that please God is a grateful attitude in his children. Psalm 100 exhorts us beautifully to go to God with this attitude of thanksgiving and praise. It says “Shout joyfully to the Lord, all the earth.²  Serve the Lord with gladness; Come before Him with joyful singing.³ Know that the Lord Himself is God; It is He who has made us, and not we ourselves; We are His people and the sheep of His pasture. Enter His gates with thanksgiving And His courts with praise. Give thanks to Him, bless His name. For the Lord is good; His lovingkindness is everlasting And His faithfulness to all generations.” This Psalm is overflowing with the exhortation for us to go to God with a grateful attitude. We were once destined for punishment and our God sent his son to die for us. The goodness of the Lord in our lives is greater than we can ever count or even imagine.