How to Meditate on God's Word
Scripture meditation is pondering on scripture for an extended amount of time, thinking about its meaning and intention deeper than a simple quick read of a verse or passage in the Bible. It’s an effective way to ensure God’s truth stays in our hearts. Learn how to meditate on scripture with a simple 3 step process in today’s video. Enjoy!
A few weeks ago, I shared a video on how to hide God’s Word in your heart and that one of the ways we can do that is to meditate on scriptures.
Meditating on its own is contemplating, pondering, or thinking about something for an extended amount of time. It’s surrendering our mental capacity to a certain thought or no thought at all, with the central purpose to clear the mind and enter a state of calm. Now many people may think: my mind is constantly spinning and thinking about millions of things at a time, I don’t believe I have the discipline to meditate. But think of it this way: if you’ve ever worried about something to the point that you can’t stop thinking about it and you’re mentally obsessed with it, you’re pretty much meditating. Worry is a type of meditation. Now that’s not the type of meditation we want to practice as Christians.
In secular circles, the purpose of meditation is more so to clear the mind, calm the mind and empty the mind. But as Christians, we don’t want to stop at an empty mind. We want our minds to be filled with God’s truth. This is where scripture meditation comes in.
Scripture meditation is pondering on scripture for an extended amount of time, thinking about its meaning and intention deeper than a simple quick read of a verse or passage in the Bible.
Meditation is a biblical practice to use our thoughts to glorify God. We’re not emptying our minds, but filling our minds with God’s truth.
Scripture meditation is truly savoring the Word of God or what Jesus called the bread of LIFE. (John 6:35)
In real life, we can eat so fast that we don’t even taste the food. But when we take our time to savor the flavors and enjoy the taste it brings, a new enjoyment and pleasure comes to eating. Consuming God’s word is much the same.
In our busy society, we are often tempted to rush our time in God’s word without truly savoring His truth. But when we meditate on God’s word, we give our time and focus to truly take in God’s word.
Three Step Process on How to Meditate on God’s Word
So how do we do that? Well in today’s video, I’m sharing my simple 3 step process to teach you how to meditate on God’s Word.
STEP 1: Select a verse or passage from the Bible.
The first step is to select the verse of passage you want to meditate on. Maybe you have a favorite verse or life verse you want to choose. Or maybe you want to find scriptures on a particular topic that interests you. To do that, you can use a Bible app or software like YouVersion and search a particular word to find scriptures on that topic. I also like to use www.openbible.info/topics/ where you can type in a word or phrase, and it will give you many verses and passages on a topic. You can also download my free scripture memory worksheet in the description of this video to find an organized list of scriptures on various topics.
If you’re just getting started with meditating on scripture, I suggest starting with one verse. You may think that’s not enough to meditate on, but trust me, God’s word is living and active (Hebrews 4:12) and one verse is more than enough to get started. Once you get used to meditating, then it may be easier for you to move up to meditating on passages, chapters, and even entire books of the Bible.
I also want to add that selecting a scripture to meditate on is something you can and I would say should pray about. Simply ask God to reveal to you what He wants you to meditate on.
Once we have decided what scripture we will meditate on, we’re ready to move on to step 2.
STEP 2: Acquaint yourself with the scripture
The second step is to acquaint or familiarize yourself with the scripture. You can’t really think about something that you don’t know. So even if you only have one verse that you are meditating on, it will greatly help you to have a basic understanding of the verse. You can do this many ways. You can:
- Read the verse in its full context which means read the verse, but also read the scriptures around the verse to get a more complete understanding of what the verse means.
- Read the verse in different translations.
- Read it out loud so you can hear yourself saying it.
- Write the scripture down so you can see it as you are writing it.
- If you can, memorize the scripture; that’s even better because then you are not limited to only meditation on the verse when you have your Bible, but anywhere you go.
- If you want to do a Bible study of the scripture, I have a video on how to study the Bible using my simple 4 “R”s Bible study method. There is a link in the description of this video to watch that.
You don’t have to do all these things, but choose one or some that will be helpful to you as you familiarize yourself with the scripture that you choose to meditate on.
STEP 3: Focus and Think about the Scripture
So now you’ve selected a scripture, you’ve acquainted yourself with the scripture and now you’re ready for the third and final step of scripture meditation which is to focus and think on the scripture.
So first you do want to clear your mind so that you can focus. If you have a lot on your mind, maybe you write it down so you can get it out of your head and get to it later. Now clearing the mind is where secular meditation stops. But not us, we’re clearing the mind to fill it with God’s truth.
saiah 26:3 says:
“You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you.” (Isaiah 26:3 ESV)
Once your mind is clear, it’s time to simply think and focus on the scripture. This is pretty straightforward. You are literally going to think about the scripture.
Here are a few scripture meditation prompts:
- Chew on the scripture slowly. You may say the scripture over and over again in your mind slowly. Think slowly about each word of the verse, what it means and why would the author use that particular word.
- Get curious about the scripture and ask lots of questions. What emotions or feelings are evoked from this scripture? Why was this particular scripture important for God to put in the Bible?
- View the scripture from all angles. How do you think the author of the scripture was feeling when they wrote it? How do you think the original audience of this scripture would have felt when they heard it? If the scripture is about a person or people in the Bible, ask yourself what you think each person’s perspective would have been in that scenario. What do you think God wants you to learn and take away from this scripture today?
Now, these are prompts to get you started, but let your mind wander about the scripture as the Lord leads.
If you’ve done step two and familiarized yourself with the scripture, you can meditate on the scripture anywhere: washing the dishes, waiting in the carpool line, or on your commute to work.
In the Psalms, we read of David meditating on God’s word in the watches of the night. Also, God commands Joshua to meditate on His Word, day and night. God told him:
Only be strong and very courageous, being careful to do according to all the law that Moses my servant commanded you. Do not turn from it to the right hand or to the left, that you may have good success[a] wherever you go. (Joshua 1:7 ESV)
The most challenging part of meditating on scripture is being intentional to make time to do it, and then creating the space in your mind to think on God’s Word. So if you’re just getting started, I recommend setting aside time and quiet to meditate. Maybe this is something you can incorporate in your devotional or prayer time if you already do that.
As you become more comfortable with scripture meditation, then you can do it anywhere you go. As you become more acquainted and engaged with the scripture, you may naturally find yourself thinking about it as you go about your day.
Scripture meditation is not the same as reading or studying your Bible, it’s simply creating the mental space to think about God’s word and what it means. If you find yourself getting off focus, that’s fine. Just notice your mind has wandered off the scripture and rerun back to your practice of scripture meditation. Don’t waste time beating yourself up for getting off track. It will take time to train your mind to focus so you’ll need to extend grace to yourself. The purpose is not to be the best at meditating, but allowing God's powerful word to fill your mind, thoughts, and soul.
Now if you need a little more guidance when it comes to this, I’ve created a free 5-minute audio-guided scripture meditation to walk you through the process. You can download it for free here.
I’d love to hear from you. Are you going to try scripture meditation and if so, what scripture will you be meditating on? Let me know in the comments.
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