Biblical Meditation: The Secret to a Transformed Life

By Carlton Babatunde Williams

WHAT IS THE SECRET TO A TRANSFORMED LIFE?
HOW CAN I BE FREE FROM DESTRUCTIVE HABITS?
HOW CAN I MAKE A GODLY IMPACT ON SOCIETY?

God’s word must leave the pages of Scripture and enter man’s heart for transformation to occur. Meditation is a deeply spiritual process that facilitates this. Yet many Christians shy away from this practice because it is associated with eastern religion and relaxation techniques, thereby falling for the enemy's classic manoeuvre: make people abandon a powerful truth by calling a falsehood the same name.

This book shows us how to reclaim meditation with its true meaning and practice, so we can live as people of joy and impact.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Nov 20, 2017
• ISBN: 9780995704329

Book preview

Williams

Dedication

To my four girls: Anita, Vanessa, Keona, and Zoella.

I cherish your love.

Acknowledgements

I will always be grateful to Dr. Peter Ilori, whose insight into the scriptures challenged me many years ago, thrusting me on a path to deeper study and hunger for intimacy with God. My pastor, Bob Yandian, has set for me a standard of integrity and doctrinal soundness to which I aspire. I would also like to acknowledge and thank my mentor, Geof Jackson, for putting up with my incessant questioning and spiritual naiveté during my time at Grace Bible School and loving me through it all.

There are people God sends into your life that are important to your journey. I believe my editors, Timi Yeseibo, Kemi Odukoya and designer Dare Emmanuel are such people. Thank you for the tireless hours spent on revisions, editing, and painstaking re-designs that helped arrive at this final product.

I thank God for you all.

Introduction

In today’s world, meditation is a word that is widely used among people who consider themselves somewhat spiritual or religious. Its application has been largely limited to practices that aim at emptying the mind of noise and distraction and focusing inward to bring calmness to one’s life in the quest to achieve wholeness and balance. Its recent popularity can be attributed to the endorsement given by western celebrities who have explored eastern religions, particularly Buddhism, and touted the benefits of some of their practices for modern life, claiming impressive results.

Given this background, much of the Christian world have viewed the word with suspicion and in some quarters steered clear of it altogether, thereby falling for the enemy’s classic manoeuvre: make people let go of a powerful truth by calling a falsehood the same name.

A candid comparison of the early church and the church today must leave us with sobering questions. Where is the powerful witness we see in the book of Acts? In my country Nigeria, with mega churches and at least 90 million Christians, where is the national transformation we should experience if our Christianity has the same potency as that of the first century 120, which transformed the world? Christians all over the world are asking these questions. We have clearly lost something along the way.

Christians now have access to more books, CDs and MP3s, conferences, seminars, and Christian television networks, than at any other period in church history. Numerous Bible translations abound. Study aids that help us understand the original languages of the scriptures ranging from commentaries to lexicons and word studies are readily available to all. The internet is also an excellent resource. Christian organizations have made expensive study tools accessible at no charge to anyone with a computer and internet connection. Even secular online bookstores and auction houses have large catalogues of Christian material.

These tools, though welcome, are clearly not the answer.

The Western church is still enjoying religious freedom, and countries that historically opposed the gospel are opening their doors, so this is not a problem of access.

The word of God remains the same. The Holy Spirit remains on earth. We are still in the same dispensation as that of the church in the book of Acts. What did they know and understand that we need to learn?

God’s counsel to Israel during Jeremiah’s day still holds true for the church today.

… "Stand in the ways and see,

And ask for the old paths, where the good way is,

And walk in it;

Then you will find rest for your souls…" (Jeremiah 6:16).

This study examines one of those ancient paths: the practice of true biblical meditation. Biblical meditation started with the patriarchs and persisted throughout the early church. It holds the key to unlocking the transforming power of God in every life and has the potential to ignite revival fire in every heart.

We must claim meditation back with its true meaning and practice. We must reclaim the practices of the faith that were delivered to the saints and freely admit to their mystical nature. There is a higher life in God behind the door that this powerful key will unlock. This book provides tools that will enable you get up and experience it.

I commend this book to the precious Body of Christ who have been purchased by the blood of the Lamb of God and called to a high purpose. May your heart’s hunger for more of God be satisfied through the power of the Holy Spirit.

PartOne

The Case For Meditation

Chapter 1

The Fruitful Life

The first chapter of the book of Psalms is sometimes called the Preface Psalm¹ because it serves as an effective summary for the whole book. It also gives us a description of a fruitful life.

Blessed is the man

Who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly,

Nor stands in the path of sinners,

Nor sits in the seat of the scornful;

But his delight is in the law of the LORD,

And in His law he meditates day and night.

He shall be like a tree

Planted by the rivers of water,

That brings forth its fruit in its season,

Whose leaf also shall not wither;

And whatever he does shall prosper.

The ungodly are not so,

But are like the chaff which the wind drives away.

Therefore the ungodly shall not stand in the judgment,

Nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous.

For the LORD knows the way of the righteous,

But the way of the ungodly shall perish (Psalm 1:1-6).

Walking, Standing, Sitting

Blessed is the man

Who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly,

Nor stands in the path of sinners,

Nor sits in the seat of the scornful; (Psalm 1:1).

The word ‘blessed’ in the first verse of Psalm One does not refer to God conferring a blessing on a human being, but is a translation of the Hebrew word esher, which means happy, fortunate, prosperous, and enviable.² In other words, the man that lives this way is to be envied, because his outcome will be prosperous. The writer wants us to pay attention to anyone who patterns his life according to what is stated in this verse because he will have an enviable outcome.

He makes the observation that a failed life does not happen suddenly. It is a downward spiral from a position of movement to that of being stationary—walking in ungodly counsel, then standing in the sinners’ way, and finally, sitting with the scornful.

The progression in the path of failure begins by walking in the counsel of the ungodly. Imagine you are at an intersection. You are sure that one of the exits will take you to your destination but you do not know which one, so you ask a passerby. By following the recommendation of a stranger, you have allowed somebody else to set your course. The prosperous man, the man to be envied, the fortunate man, referred to in this passage, does not allow wicked counsel set his direction in life.

Don’t draw your values, dreams, and vision from a source that does not uphold biblical standards or is permissive towards them, because it will set your course. Unfortunately, ungodly counsel can sometimes come from well-meaning friends and parents. We are bombarded with it through secular and sometimes even Christian media. Just because the source is Christian does not mean the counsel is. Be discerning about what you let determine your actions and set your course. Paul the Apostle’s admonition to the Thessalonians was, ‘Test all things; hold fast to what is good’ (1Thess 5:21).

What is driving your life? You may be moving forward but what is the motivation behind your momentum? Is it the love of money? Fame? Security? Or is it fulfilling God’s plan for your life? Where are you drawing your counsel from?

Following advice that contradicts what the Bible teaches, leads you to stand in the way of sinners. This is a place where you lose godly momentum and enter a stationary state where godly counsel cannot reach you anymore. Here, your decisions have brought you to a place where you are surrounded only by negative influences. Then, you slowly move from a standing position to sit in the seat of the scornful where your heart is no longer receptive to the right counsel. At this point, there is no further movement in the direction of godly success; you are now one of the scornful. You are now part of the dream thieves who are bitter and twisted and give ungodly counsel that sets the course of the undiscerning traveller in the direction of failure.

If you have succumbed to counsel, which has set you in the direction of failure, change your course by delighting in God’s word and meditating on it day and night.

And if a tree falls to the south or the north,

In the place where the tree falls, there it shall lie (Ecclesiastes 11:3).

This verse seems a bit odd does it not? A paraphrase of this verse would be, the direction a tree falls is where it will end up. That is obvious isn’t it? Why would someone as wise as Solomon include such an obvious statement in his book? Well, it is so obvious that we often miss the truth of the message.

Have you ever watched a tree falling? You can almost tell the exact spot where it will end up. It starts with motion, gains momentum, but ends up stationary. Momentum does not indicate success. It is not the fact that you are moving that matters. Sticking with the tree analogy, it is the direction where you are falling that makes the difference. Any lumberjack will tell you that when felling trees, the direction of the wind does not determine where the tree falls. The lumberjack determines the direction of the fall by the angle of his cut. The stronger the wind, the deeper the angle of the cut required to set the direction of the fall. We don’t have to be victims of the principles of the world around us. There is a way we can set our own course irrespective of how cultural or economic winds are blowing.

But his delight is in the law of the LORD,

And in His law he meditates day and night (Psalm 1:2).

The man who prospers does not walk in ungodly counsel. The Psalm does not say that he does not hear ungodly counsel. We hear ungodly counsel all the time but we do not have to receive it, subscribe to it, or act on it. He also does not stand in the way of sinners or sit in the seat of mockers.

However, success is not just about what we don’t do; it is also about the right actions we take. The prosperous man finds his delight in God’s word.

If you have succumbed to counsel which has set you in the direction of failure, you can change your course through meditation. Your negative prevailing circumstances do not have to determine the outcome of your life; you can still take control by delighting in God’s word and meditating on it day and night.

Delight can be defined as extreme pleasure. He finds his joy and pleasure in God’s word. One translation of delight in Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance is a valuable thing.³ A feeling of pleasure is a hormonal response to an association of value. If you associate value with the word of God, you will ultimately experience pleasure when you meditate on it consistently.

Value + Pursuit = Pleasure + Delight

Pleasure is dictated by the direction of one’s heart or passion. However, because we do not understand this, we tend to wait until we feel like reading the Bible before we do so. Instead, we should set our hearts on God’s word first and then we will experience the pleasure created by our pursuit and association of value.

Job and David understood this. These men placed a high value on God’s word and subsequently experienced the pleasurable feelings that accompany such an association of value.

I have not departed from the commandment of His lips;

I have treasured the words of His mouth

More than my necessary food (Job 23:12).

More to be desired are

Reviews for Biblical Meditation

[Solomon- ThegreatestofalltheRevivals · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I have gone through this book and it lays fundamental truth attached for a believer is that to immerse himself and meditate the Word of God consistently. Great work by author for bringing basic meditation techniques from the Word of God.

[creamy02 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

One of the best books on Mediation that I have read. Was worth my time.