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Picking up where we left off yesterday…

4. CONFESSION

The fourth ingredient of meditation is CONFESSION. The Hebrew word for “meditation” means “to mutter, to murmur.” We call this CONFESSION. A vital ingredient to meditation is speaking or confessing to ourselves what we are thinking.

 Joshua 1:8 tells us: 

This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate in it day and night, that you may observe to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success.  

This verse shows us the connection between meditation and confession. There is a spiritual dynamic released when your heart hears your mouth speak God’s word. When you speak something, it becomes dynamic. Our thoughts and meditations are crystallized when we speak them out loud.

With the aim of keeping God’s Word at the forefront of our mind, confession is a vital link. This “speaking to yourself’ is a powerful tool in retaining God’s Word in your thoughts. 

Many become easily swayed and directed away from the crucible of meditation because they don’t know HOW to meditate and retain God’s Word in their heart. Confession is an exercise in discipline and maintaining the direction you desire your thought life to pursue.

There is another important purpose to confessing or speaking God’s Word to ourselves. That principle is discovered in Romans 10:17: 

So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. 

Faith comes by hearing. The more you hear yourself speaking God’s Word, the more faith is released to you. The “hearing” of this verse is a “hearing” that produces understanding. This understanding becomes the foundation for strong faith.

5. VISUALIZATION

The fifth aspect of meditation is VISUALIZATION. Jesus was the greatest Teacher in human history. In His earthly ministry He brought to us the thoughts and principles of Almighty God. He was the Son of God and what He said would be the most important words man would ever hear. So, HOW did He teach so the hearers would most benefit and learn? He taught with PICTURES!

Jesus used illustrations and examples to visually enhance and explain His teaching. He used parables to bring truth to us so that we could see and understand the wondrous things He was saying. Jesus used word pictures to teach because he understood the power of vision and illustration.

As we meditate in God’s Word, we will come to the place of seeing God’s Word become a part of our life. The sick person who meditates on God’s promises of healing must SEE HIMSELF HEALED before he will be healed. The teachings of Jesus were not dry, boring, religious doctrines. Instead they were living pictures painted by His Words of faith.

Sociologists tell us that we are primarily taught by visual learning – that over seventy percent of what we learn comes from visual input and information. God’s Word will work for you as you see the promises of God as yours.

6. IMAGINATION

The sixth component of meditation is IMAGINATION. God is creative. He’s made us in His own image and we are made to be creative beings. Meditation is a place for “birthing”, for creating.

It is the womb of transformation and metamorphosis. The imagination of man is a God-given and God-like human quality. By the proper use of this human faculty, mankind has continuously benefited and bettered his conditions. By the improper, ungodly, use of this ability we have seen great evil and perversion in our world.

Most people don t use their imagination when it comes to God’s Word or Christian things. They live uninspired and uninvolved on this great adventure called “life.” Many have been taught that the imagination was an evil or unessential thing. But, our imagination is a God-given resource so that we might live a creative and productive life. As we meditate in God’s Word, the life and power of his Word send sparks of creativity shooting into our soul, and our imagination is kindled.

In the 37th chapter of Ezekiel, God took the prophet to a place of death and destruction called the Valley of Dry Bones. In this wilderness of barrenness and hopelessness, God asked the prophet if these bones could live. The prophet was startled at this suggestion, but wisely replied that God knew if they could or not. God’s creative nature was not intimidated or influenced by the way things were, because God saw the way things could be – the possibility of creativity. Out of dry bones could come creative life! Allow the creativity of meditation in the Word of God to bring life to you.

7. MEMORIZATION

A final and very vital element of meditation is MEMORIZATION. There is a difference between meditation and memorization. The goal of meditation is not necessarily to memorize. When something has been memorized, it can be recalled at any time. Memorization is permanent ownership of God’s Word. It gives you the ability to remember and rehearse the promises of God anywhere, anytime. 

However, it should be noted that it is possible to have God’s Word memorized, but not have it greatly affect your life. This happens when the Word is simply stored in your memory. Meditation is the key to bringing the promises out of the storage room of your memory and activating them. 

Stories have recently come out of China about the suffering of the Chinese Christians. One amazing fact is that during the time of great persecution against the Church, those believers who had memorized God’s Word were able to endure and overcome, but the Christians who had not memorized the Word of God lost their minds or betrayed their Lord. The Holy Spirit can only bring to our mind what we’ve put in our memory. In the moment of crisis or spiritual dilemma, it is difficult to confess or claim the Word if it’s not in you. Through memorization you are prepared and positioned to meditate continually in God’s Word and to readily receive the promises.

As we labor in the laboratory of meditation, we experience an ever increasing change of nature and character. The Word of God begins to transform us into the image of the Living Word, Jesus Christ. From glory to glory, faith to faith, we grow in the things of God as we apply our hearts to learn and meditate on God’s Word.

God has a plan and a purpose for your life. He has visions and dreams to share with you. The key to unlocking God’s destiny for your life is in the process and power of meditation on God’s word.

As you diligently put God’s Word in you, the Holy Spirit will birth God’s vision for you.

Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says: “Today, if you will hear His voice, Do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion, In the day of trial in the wilderness, Where your fathers tested Me, tried Me, And saw My works forty years. Therefore I was angry with that generation, And said, ‘They always go astray in their heart, And they have not known My ways.’”

Hebrews 3:7 -10NKJV

The children of Israel “provoked” and “tempted” God by refusing and rebelling against his today word for their lives.  An entire generation was “passed over” by God because they refused to “move on” into His will. 

This refusal DISQUALIFIED the children of Israel from living in God’s perfect will. God patiently waited for the entire generation to die (except Joshua and Caleb who believed the TODAY WORD). Instead of being entirely obedient to God’s purpose, they chose to do some of what God wanted, and not to do the part they were uncomfortable with. 

Half-hearted Christians who pick and chose when to obey God, never please God with their lives. Just when we think we know it all and have got it all together— when we become comfortable and even complacent with where we are—God disrupts our comfort zone with a fresh revelation and a new direction. 

This fresh revelation becomes God’s invitation to a new season of His blessings and grace.

The incredible thing about God’s dealings with man is that God gives a man the power to CHOOSE –the ability to say yes or no to God. 

Deuteronomy 30: 14, 19 reads: 

“ But the word is very near you, in your mouth and in your heart, that you may do it…call heaven and earth as witnesses today against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both you and your descendants may live..”

Although God gives us this power, when we choose wrong, we must live with the consequences of disobedience. When we choose right by receiving and believing God’s today word, we receive the reward for entering into that promise from God. 

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