Internalize the Word

Psalm 119:148 (ESV) My eyes are awake before the watches of the night, that I may meditate on your promise.

Of the 20 times the Hebrew Word for meditate shows up in the Bible, 8 of those times appear in Psalm 119. There is no doubt that when you are discouraged and downcast, the answer is always God's Word.

And this is intuitive to our culture.

I was having a conversation the other day about a popular TV show where one of the characters in this very gruesome post-apocalyptic world keeps turning to the Bible on occasion. Somewhere in Hollywood there is a writer that still wrestles with the reality that the Bible has the answers 2000 years later to the hardest parts of our lives.

Biblical meditation is not emptying your mind but filling your mind with God's Word to such a decree that it causes you to start living differently. It's meaning in the Hebrew is to “go over a matter in one’s mind” or "to rehearse" it. Meditation is not just reading, but re-reading and thinking deeply about the Word of God.

So you don't just browse it, or get through it. You let it stay on your mind, lingering there for a long time. You have to be continual in this practice for any benefit to take affect.

Ronald Jenson wrote about the power of focused thoughts for living godly saying: “When you sow a thought, you reap an action. When you sow that action, you reap a habit. When you sow that habit, you reap a character. When you sow that character, you reap a destiny.”

That's why God says to Joshua...
Joshua 1:8 (ESV) This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success.

Did you see the "so that" of this passage? that's the main idea. You are to meditate on God's Word and speak God's Word SO THAT you will be careful to do God's Word. You don't change until you've got the Word of God deep inside of you, internalized and part of you.

You were created by the Word of God and you are sustained by the Word of God.  Hebrews 1:3 (ESV) He upholds the universe by the word of his power.