Prayer is the interactive relationship we have with God about what we and God are working on together. Christian meditation is the listening side of this interactive relationship…Meditation is the spiritual discipline that helps us to listen well and to hear correctly. (Richard Foster)
I was really looking forward to training in meditation for a month; the aim was to quieten and slow down to listen to God, through Scripture, nature and music. I chose four key passages to meditate on – one per week – and tried to memorise them, as a way of immersing myself more deeply in the text. All other Bible reading was put on hold and I tried to focus my attention as much as possible on these select four passages.
The first thing I found was that my choices of passages were too long; I don’t have the time or the capacity to take in all that each passage contains in one week. Another time, I would try a verse or two per week; less volume and more depth.
Secondly, the memorising really helped to get my head around the text. I’m not good at applying things to memory, and I’m not sure I managed to memorise any of them completely, but the process of doing so kept the text at the forefront of my mind.
But the most surprising aspect of meditation was how practical the outworking of it was.
Often meditation will yield insights that are deeply practical, almost mundane…Meditation sends us into our ordinary world with greater perspective and balance. (R Foster)
In all honesty, I felt fairly cynical about the above quote when I read it, and didn’t anticipate seeing any practical outworking of any ‘spiritual insights’ I may have had…until I was on the second week, reading Luke 9v57-62, about the ‘Cost of Following Jesus.’ Having read the text several times, and having asked God to speak to me through it, I came across a short commentary on the verses, which I began to skim through. I came across a comment which simply said ‘Jesus knows your idols’. I came back to the text and sat with it for a while, knowing that God was wanting to speak. I began to realise that Jesus was not talking about patterns and rules to follow when it comes to following Him, but about laying down our idols, whatever they may be – that if anything in our hearts competes against our affection and commitment for Him, He asks us to lay it down.
Around this time we had begun to think about buying a house, which obviously means staying in our area for the next few years. I’m not exactly enthused by this idea, and had been struggling to find peace or hope in the prospect of putting down any roots somewhere I wasn’t sure I wanted, or we were meant, to be.
This moment of meditation changed it all. I suddenly realised that God was speaking through the text, challenging me to lay down my idol of escapism, otherness, adventure, and the ‘non-normal’ as I perceive it. Buying a house where we are cuts right against the grain of all my own desires; but it provides me an opportunity to daily live a commitment to follow Jesus rather than my own idol. Meditation was leading to a very practical action, and presented a challenge to my willingness to actually follow Jesus. This moment was my confirmation and encouragement to go ahead and buy a house – could meditation get more nail-bitingly practical?!
Meditate with caution and great expectation: when we slow down and listen long enough, God may just speak to us in life-changing and heart-changing ways.
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