True biblical meditation is not about emptying our minds or each of our thoughts. Instead, biblical meditation is about filling our minds with God’s thoughts as we seek to draw nearer and nearer to Him and then we process those thoughts. We reflect and ruminate upon those thoughts. We chew on those thoughts the way a cow chews the cud as we go about our day. Biblical meditation is not about contemplating the concept of infinity, chants, mantras, or our eyes rolling back in our heads. No, biblical meditation involves thinking deeply about biblical truth. It’s doing what Paul instructed us to do in Philippians 4:8 when he said, “Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things.”

Blessed is the person who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, nor stand in the path of sinners, nor sit in the seat of scoffers!
But his delight is in the Law of the Lord, And on His Law he meditates day and night.He will be like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither; And in whatever he does, he prospers.— Psalm 1:1-3 (NASB)

We live in a frenzied and fast-paced world that is increasingly demanding and digitized. A world where we are constantly being bombarded with marketing and messaging. The reality is we are constantly scrolling, skimming, surfing, and searching through a bottomless sea of data and information. And if we’re being honest, we all live incredibly distracted lives. The result is that for most of us, we’ve lost the ability to think deeply and critically about much of anything.

Like a rock protruding from the ocean, which was once jagged and sharp, we eventually become worn down and washed out by the waves of the times. And then the door swings wide open to Satan, attempting to lure us into falling for the lies of this world. What do we do to combat all of this? Well, we’ll do a five or ten-minute devotional reading of Scripture. We’ll send up a few brief “flare prayers,” and then we’re off and running. Now, as a pastor, I’m all for Bible reading. I’m all for prayer. I’m not at all trying to malign or undermine those important spiritual disciplines. But do you see the imbalance? Do you see the problem? How is it possible to face the onslaught of information we face every day? How is it possible to fight the spiritual battles we each face with such an imbalance between biblical content and worldly influence? What I hope to show you here is that biblical meditation is an essential spiritual discipline for a thriving Christian life. It’s a discipline that layers on top of our reading of God’s Word. It’s a discipline that builds upon the sermons we listen to on Sunday mornings. It’s a discipline that drives biblical truth deep into our hearts and cements those truths into our minds. It’s a discipline that enables us to fight and win the spiritual battles that we inevitably face every day.

The go-to text on biblical meditation is Psalm 1 and in the first three verses of that Psalm, it says, “How blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, nor stand in the path of sinners, nor sit in the seat of scoffers. But his delight is in the Law of the Lord, and in His law he meditates day and night.”

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