Why should Christians meditate? Here are some reasons for meditation:
- Because God Commands us to.
- It guarantees success through God’s power. Joshua 1:8, Psalm 1
- For insight. Psalm 119:99 says “I have more insight than all my teachers, for I meditate on your statutes.”
- To receive what God is saying in his promises. When you meditate, it is important not to focus on understanding the passage but on receiving it. Receive it! Receive and experience it in meditation. Don’t focus on dissecting it. If the promise is of God’s peace, receive it and enter into it with your imagination as you meditate. Imagine yourself receiving the peace and actually take hold of it during meditation. If there is one reason for meditation, it should be to take hold of God’s promises, to receive and experience them and allow them to take a hold of you so that your mind becomes one with God’s mind concerning his promises. That’s how faith comes to believe the promises in prayer. Some one has rightly said that grace is God’s hand stretched forth to give and faith is our hand stretched out to receive. That’s absolutely true. God’s promises and his commands are an act of his grace, that is his hand stretched forth to give us. Through meditation, we gain the faith to receive them and appropriate them to our lives. Remember that faith is vision, not eyesight, but seeing what is not seen and being sure of it. Meditation is the shortest route to faith.
- Meditation leads to meaningful prayer. Meditation is one way God speaks to us. Then when we have an earful of what God has to say to us in meditation, then we move on to respond in hearty prayer. George Muller experienced this and this has been my experience as well.
