BE STILL AND KNOW

"Meditate within your heart on your bed and be still" (Psalm 4:4).

It is the privilege of every Christian to enjoy the deep movings of the Spirit of God. A sweet, heavenly peace will pervade the mind, and you will love to meditate upon God and heaven. You will feast upon the glorious promises in His Word (Messages to Young People, pg. 132).

When I began this new journey with Jesus--in seeking Him with my whole heart--I didn't really understand how to go about it. But somehow, I knew the Bible held the answer. So I began a chronicle, recording the stories of how Bible heroes and heroines sought the Lord. It was a rich study that drew me closer to Jesus.

But one day, as I was reading, I heard the Spirit say, "Meditate on what I show you, and you will learn more." This was new territory for me. I had no problem immersing myself in Scripture or in spending time in prayer. But meditation? I'd never done that before.  I can't remember even hearing a sermon on that topic. But when God points you in a new direction, He's not going to be silent. So, I turned to the Word to discover how to seek Him in this new way.

In the Old Testament, the words meditate or meditation often come from the word hagah, which literally means to ponder, imagine, or converse with yourself. When I ponder, I'm taking time to wonder what God is saying or how to live out His message in my life. 

Have you ever come across a verse in the Bible that stirred you up? I remember the first time I discovered that I was a child of God. I was in high school then and feeling quite a bit like the number zero. I was used to hearing how dumb or how ugly I was. And I ended up believing it. But when I began to read the Bible, I came across these words, "Behold, what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God!" (1 John 3:1) When I read that, something lit up inside. Even though I didn't grow up with a Bible, I knew that God was the King of Kings. And if I was His child, then that made me a princess, someone with great influence and value. I didn't realize it back then, but I was actually meditating. I was pondering what God was saying to me--to me personally. And that knowledge began changing my life. 

Now, here I was, many years later discovering meditation once again. And I began wondering as I read the Bible. I began asking questions about what God said, not to doubt what was written, but to question my place in the verse or story. Am I acting in the same way as the Pharisees? Is my faith strong enough to move mountains? Would I have turned away if Jesus said, "Come, follow Me"? What kind of excuses do I make when I hear Him calling? The answers to these questions aren't found within a gospel story or a single verse. They're discovered by meditation.

In many places, the word 'meditate' is translated as 'commune' or vice versa. In the King James Version, today's key text says, "Commune with your own heart upon your bed, and be still" (Psalm 4:4). But other versions, like the New American Standard and the New King James, replace 'commune' with 'meditate.'  They're so closely connected that you can't separate communion from meditation. They're vitally linked together in building intimacy with God.  I'm discovering that when I meditate, God speaks to me--not merely through the words on the page, but through His still, small voice. Quite often, He shakes me up or gives me exactly what I need right then. Or He points me to other places in the Bible that answer my questions. And I end up digging much deeper into the Word of God. 

When you meditate on Scripture, God moves into your life in a more powerful way. It's hard to put into words, but I believe His presence becomes more real to you. You feel like you're in the very atmosphere of heaven. When I open up more to God, and listen more intently to the Holy Spirit, I have a sense like Jacob did after his vision of the angels ascending and descending heaven's ladder. I can truly say, "Surely the Lord is in this place and I did not know it!" (Genesis 28:16). 

"God bids you fill the mind with great thoughts, pure thoughts. He desires us to meditate upon His love and mercy, to study His wonderful work in the great plan of redemption. Then clearer and clearer will be our perceptions of truth, higher, holier, our desire for purity of heart and clearness of thought. The soul dwelling in the pure atmosphere of holy thought will be transformed by communion with God through the study of the Scriptures" (God's Amazing Grace, pg. 34).

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