Episode #253 Experiencing God Through Biblical Meditation: Moving Beyond Knowledge to Relationship – Unforced Rhythms of Grace

Hey friend, it's Jen. Welcome to Good God Talks. Today we're talking about what biblical meditation actually is and how it can move you from knowing about God to actually experiencing him for yourself. Now, if this topic of meditation is familiar to you, great, I know there's stuff God wants to talk with you about in this episode.

And if it's new to you, I'm really glad that you're here. And I encourage you to come with some curiosity.

Biblical Christian meditation is very different from New Age or Eastern meditation. And we're talking about some of those differences today because the Bible encourages meditation a lot. We talked in the very last episode about two of the primary words in ancient Hebrew that are translated as meditation and they mean to listen to God, to ponder him, to dwell on and ruminate on his word and his actions and his character. To think on these things.

And meditation is closely connected to contemplative prayer or what's commonly known as listening prayer. That's what we practice here in our Good God Talks episodes. We're praying and listening for God to respond.
We want a back and forth conversation with him, not just offering him a one way prayer request.

And I'm sharing with you quotes and excerpts and ideas from Richard Foster's Celebration of Discipline, and the first discipline is meditation, and he says that Christian meditation, very simply, is the ability to hear God's voice and obey his word. He says in meditation, we're growing into what Thomas Acampos, who was a monk in the 1300s, called a familiar friendship with Jesus.

We're sinking down into the light and life of Christ and becoming comfortable in that posture. The perpetual presence of the Lord moves from theological dogma into a radiant reality. He walks with me and he talks with me, ceases to be pious jargon, and instead becomes a straightforward description of daily life.

That's exactly what we're talking about here. That's exactly the point of the podcast.

I want to be clear. There's nothing wrong with theological dogma. That means core, unshakable beliefs that are considered to be true about God. We have those in the Christian faith. We want those. We just don't want those to stop there. We don't want to limit ourselves to simply understanding things that are true about God.

We also want to experience how they are true about God in his interactions with us and how we engage with him in our daily lives. For example, that quote talked about how God is omnipresent. He's everywhere. That's true. It's good to understand that, but even better is to experience the reality of that as we taste and see and notice that God is there with us and with our loved ones in highs and lows, that God is everywhere.

And so I'm going to go through some quotes from him here, really contrasting these two forms of meditation.
"Eastern meditation is an attempt to empty the mind; Christian meditation is an attempt to fill the mind."
"Eastern forms of meditation stress the need to become detached from the world. Emphasis is upon losing personhood and individuality and merging with the Cosmic Mind. Personal identity is lost and, in fact, personality is seen as the ultimate illusion. Escaping from the miserable wheel of existence. There is no God to be attached to or to hear from. Detachment is the final goal." (Richard J. Foster, Celebration of Discipline)

And now let's contrast that with Christian meditation. Christian meditation goes far beyond the notion of detachment. Detachment is not enough. We want to go on toward attachment. The detachment happens from the confusion of the world around us in order to have a richer attachment to God, who makes himself available to us. Christian meditation leads us to the inner wholeness necessary to give ourselves to God freely. And in Christian meditation, we're filled by who and what we meditate on. We're filled by God and his word.

Another term that Richard uses to describe biblical meditation is listening silences. And that's actually what we're going to practice here today, because there can be a temptation in listening prayer to not leave too much silent space. What we're growing in is this ongoing comfort with being silent to pay attention to what God would say to us.

And so today's closing question is a little bit more of an activity first, I'm going to read for us Psalm 145:5 in the ESV, “On the glorious splendor of your majesty, and on your wondrous works, I will meditate” (Psalm 145:5 ESV).
And so here's what I invite you to do. Think of something that qualifies for Psalm 145:5, something of God's glory or splendor or majesty, something of his wondrous works that are worth thinking on and pondering and listening to him telling you more about. So pick one of those for yourself and then ask,

“God, what else?”

And wait. Allow yourself to listen in silence. It doesn't have to be long. A couple minutes if you can handle it. 30, 60 seconds but listen. And as you sense his response, whether he pops a picture in your mind or a memory, whether it's a word or a phrase that you hear or see in your mind or in your heart, whatever you feel like God is responding with, receive it from him, and then ask him the question again:

“Thanks, God. What else?”

There is so much that he has to share with you.

Have a good talk.

And if you've been encouraged by this content, please share it with a friend and help them grow in their conversational relationship with God too!

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