Core Rhythms - Study and Meditation

Series ReMix

Two Poles of Oscillation in Our Experience

Holistic Human Beings

• Emotions
• Intellect
• Will

The Intellectual Path and the Mystical Path

Jesus - And you shall love the Lord your God  with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ Mark 12:30 (ESV)

The Knowledge of God

 The Centrality of the Book

• 2 Peter 1:20, 2 Timothy 3:16 , Hebrews 4:13

Study and Meditation on Scripture

• In order to know God and be Changed

No Spiritual Discipline is more important than the intake of God’s Word.  Nothing can substitute for it.   There is simply no healthy Christian life apart from a diet of the milk and meat of Scripture…In the Bible God tells us about Himself, and especially about Jesus Christ, the incarnation of God.  The Bible unfolds the Law of God to us and shows us how we’ve all broken it.  There we learn how Christ died as a sinless, willing Substitute for breakers of God’s Law and how we must repent and believe in him to be right with God.  In the Bible we learn the ways and will of the Lord.[1]

Desiring and Meditation on the Word Psalm 119:9–16 (ESV)

⁹ How can a young man keep his way pure? By guarding it according to your word.

Proverbs 16:25 (ESV) ²⁵ There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death.

¹⁰ With my whole heart I seek you; let me not wander from your commandments!

¹¹ I have stored up your word in my heart that I might not sin against you.

The word was God’s own, and therefore precious to God’s servant…He laid it up in the place of love and life, and it filled the chamber with sweetness and light….we must mind that what we believe is truly God’s word; that being done, we must hide or treasure it each man for himself; and we must see that this is done, not as a mere feat of the memory, but as the joyful act of the affections.^[2]

Defeating Giant Despair

¹² Blessed are you, O Lord; teach me your statutes! ¹³ With my lips I declare all the rules (just decrees) of your mouth.

Teach me God, teach me…

¹⁴In the way of your testimonies I delight as much as in all riches. ¹⁵ I will meditate on your precepts and fix my eyes on your ways. ¹⁶ I will delight in your statutes; I will not forget your word.

On Delight, Meditation and Fixing our Eyes

Scriptures calls  us to Meditate Upon…

1. God’s commands and decrees (Joshua 1:8; Psalm 119:23, 97)
2. God’s works both in history and today (Psalm 77:12; Luke 2:19, 51 )
3. What is just and true (Philippians 4:8)
4. God’s Word (Psalm 1:1-2)
5. God’s splendor and majesty (Psalm 145:5)
6. God’s wonders (Psalm 119:27)
7. Meditate on the work of God in Christ through the Gospel. 

This in perfection is blessedness, for it is caused by the eternal vision of the glory of God in Christ; and the nearer approaches we make unto this state, the better, the more spiritual, the more heavenly, is the state of our souls. And this is to be obtained only by a constant contemplation of the glory of Christ…[3]

Provoking our “Want To”

UP now, slight man! flee, for a little while, thy occupations; hide thyself, for a time, from thy disturbing thoughts. Cast aside, now, thy burdensome cares, and put away thy toilsome business. Yield room for some little time to God; and rest for a little time in him. Enter the inner chamber of thy mind; shut out all thoughts save that of God, and such as can aid thee in seeking him; close thy door and seek him.

Anselm of Canterbury, The Proslogion

Community Meditation

• What is your current relationship to the Bible? New to the book? Studied it for years?
• Do you find yourself more a thinker or a feeler in your relationship with God? Do you tend to read the Bible to know God relationally or to learn truth intellectually?
• Discuss the path of the intellectual and the path of the mystic.  How can we see them combined in our lives?
• When you hear the word “meditation” what comes first to your mind? How is “eastern meditation” different from “biblical meditation”?
• This week you received a Core Rhythms Card discussing ways we can hear, read, memorize, study and meditate upon Scripture. Let’s all work towards incorporating the Bible into the daily, weekly and seasonal rhythms of our lives.

Notes

[1] Donald Whitney, p 28.

^[2] C. H. Spurgeon, The Treasury of David, Volume 5: Psalms 111-119 (Bellingham, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 2009), 159.

[3] John, Owen, Meditations and Discourses concerning the Glory of Christ (Works, 1:461).