What motivation does the Scripture gives us to encourage our meditation on His Word?
1. To Stir Our Affections
First off, meditating on God’s Word helps to stir and deepen our affections for God and the things of God.
To illustrate this, one Puritan used the imagery of starting a fire: “Meditating is like trying to build a fire from wet wood. Only those who persevere will produce a flame. When we begin to meditate, often our affections are cold and damp and wet, so all we experience is a bit of smoke. Then as we continue on there are a few sparks here and there. But, at last, if we continue to press on there is a flame of affection and joy that rises up to the Lord.” (A Puritan Theology, p. 896).
Look in our passage to see how the Psalmist shows this link between meditation and affection. Listen to verse 97:
Oh how I love your law! It is my meditation all the day.
There is this sort of back and forth relationship between the Word of God and the heart of the Psalmist. Because the Psalmists loves the Law of the Lord, he meditates on it. And the more he meditates on it, the more he grows in his affections for the Lord and His Word. It’s like a classic game of pong.
Look also at what the Psalmist says in verse 103:
How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth!
You can study how honey comes to be formed, you can read the nutrition facts on the back of a honey jar, you can even interview Winnie the Pooh about the joys of honey, but nothing beats dipping your own hand into the honey jar and letting your own taste buds relish in the delights of honey. To relish the sweetness of honey, you have to let it linger over your tastebuds so that you get the richest enjoyment out of it.
That’s how we stir and deepen our affections through meditating on God’s Word. If we want our cold damp heart to spark into flames we must persevere over a text. If we want to take in all the sweetness of God’s Word we have to let it linger over our spiritual tastebuds.
The Puritans, who in Church History have really been the loudest cheerleaders for meditating on God’s Word, recommended two particular topics for meditating to stir our affections: Meditate on the (1) Savior and meditate on (2) Sin. That seems to be an odd combination but it is a proper one. You see, the goal of our spiritual growth when it comes to our affections, the desires of our heart, is that they would mirror God’s. Meaning, that we would love what God loves and hate what God hates. Also, as Thomas Watson said, “til sin be bitter, Christ will not be sweet.”
So if you want to taste more of the loveliness of Christ, linger over a passage like Colossians 1:15-20. When it comes to the person and work of Christ, this passage is like deep sea diving in the Mariana Trench, no matter how long you swim you’ll never make it to the bottom. And the truths are so deep that the theological pressure almost causes your head to burst, in a good sort of way.
To taste more of the bitterness of sin, start with a topic like pride or coveting or disobeying your parents, look up what the Scriptures have to say about it, and then take some time to ponder these two questions:
(1) Why does a Holy God find pride or coveting or disobeying parents so detestable?
(2) Where in my heart and life do I need to confess pride or coveting or disobeying parents?
Meditate on God’s Word helps to stir and deepen your affections.
2. To Guide Our Prayers
Second motivation to meditation: Meditating on God’s Word helps to guide and inspire our prayers.
Have you ever felt in the act of praying that your prayers are scattered and shallow or your distracted and start running down rabbit trails in your mind or you come to prayer but you feel like a car with a dead battery that won’t turn over? Meditating on a particular passage of Scripture is a wonderful remedy for that kind of prayerless praying that we often experience. When you lack motivation to pray or don’t have the foggiest clue what to pray, the best recourse is to pray God’s Word back to Him. Take a text of Scripture and transpose it into a personal prayer. Meditating and Praying is like holy God-approved multitasking.
One practical way to see the link between meditating and praying is to think of every passage as a house of prayer and inside that house are 4 rooms that you should walk into. The 4 rooms are Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, and Supplication, the 4 different types of prayers. So let’s take Psalm 23:1 as an example: “The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want.”
First, you enter the room of Adoration: Lord, what a marvelous God you are, that you would watch over and provide for lowly sheep like us.
Then, you walk into the room of Confession: Lord, I have wandered this week from your Shepherding-care and been anxious and worrisome because I have lacked trust that you would provide for all my needs.
Next, you come into the room of Thanksgiving: Lord, I thank you for how you guided me through another year of ministry. Thank you for providing our family with another child and a beautiful undeserved home.
Finally, you enter the room of Supplication: Lord, I pray that Mrs. Jones would know even in the midst of her grief that you are the kind of shepherd that never leaves of forsakes your sheep. I pray that in the midst of Mr. Jones job loss you would supply all his needs.
By just taking that one verse and viewing as a house for prayer, you can turn it into a time of Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving and Supplication without feeling like you’re lost or at a loss for things to pray.
Meditate on God’s Word to guide and inspire your prayers.
3. To Improve Our Application
A third encouragement for meditating on the Scriptures is that it helps you improve your application of the Word to your life.
It has been rightly said that the goal of digging into God’s Word is not to gather information but to experience transformation. God’s Word must journey through our head, into our heart and out our hands.
The intended destination is not the head, although that is a necessary and essential stop in the journey, because we need to learn to think God’s thoughts after Him.
The intended destination is not even the heart, again a necessary and essential stop along the way, because we need to learn to love what God loves and hate what God hates.
The intended destination is the hands, because, as beloved children of God, we need to learn to act as God acts.
Meditating on God’s Word, truly digesting, regurgitating, then digesting it again, helps move God’s Word from head to heart to hands.
Think of this specifically in relation to listening to the preaching of God’s Word. Listening to the preaching of God’s Word is wonderful, I highly recommend it. You’ll never benefit from the sermon you never hear. Yet, remember the warning James gives us: “be doers of the word, and not hearers only… (James 1:22-25)” Our hearing the preaching of the Word should lead to living out the Word that was preached.
When a Pastor preaches, it’s as if they are scattering the seed of God’s Word over the soil of your heart. For that seed to actually bring forth the fruit of application, you need to tend to it and cultivate it through meditation. Chew on the sermon, sip and savor it like an expensive well-aged wine, all the while asking the question “How is God calling me to live differently in light of this Word?”
A wonderful example I have seen of this is how one family uses Sunday lunch to go around the table and discuss what they learned and what questions they had about the sermon. I like that idea, my sermons are very forgettable so strike while the iron is even luke-warm!
Meditate on the Word of God to improve your application.
4. To Sharpen Our Conscience
Finally, I would commend this practice of meditating on God’s Word because it helps to sharpen and calibrate our conscience.
The Bible speaks of the conscience as our internal compass for morality and wisdom. Our conscience is designed by God to help us choose right over wrong and wisdom over foolishness. Jiminy Cricket’s advice to Pinocchio was “always let your conscience be your guide.” But there’s one major problem with that piece of advice: because of the effects of sin, our ‘conscience compass’ doesn’t point due north. We need to sharpen and properly calibrate our conscience so that it can be a faithful guide in issues of morality and wisdom.
Look at what the Psalmist says in verse 102: “I do not turn aside from your rules, for you have taught me.” The Psalmist is able to walk in line and not turn aside from God’s rules because he has been taught by the Lord through meditating on His Word.
The more we steep our minds in the Word of God, the more calibrated our conscience will be to the will of God. In this present cultural moment where ethical fences are being plowed over, we need a very sharp conscience.
So if you would taste more of the sweetness and digest more of the nutrients of God’s Word, take up the practice of meditating on God’s Word.
