Q: How is Christian meditation different from secular or Eastern meditation? In Eastern religions the aim of meditation is to empty our minds
In Christianity it is to fully think about God
New Age - In the West, meditation found its mainstream roots through the social revolution of the 1960s and 1970s, when many of the youth of the day rebelled against traditional belief systems as a reaction against what some perceived as the failure of Christianity to provide spiritual and ethical guidance (this quote is from the Wikipedia on meditation but speaks volumes on the perception of Christianity, or more precisely Christian churches, as a place of where 'proper' behaviour, rules and regulations are more important than inner spiritual growth)
The counter cultural nature of meditation Pretty much all of the spiritual disciplines we will look at through this series are really counter-cultural and none more so than the concept of meditation. Meditation would never have been considered counter-cultural to people in Jesus' day, so why is it now?
Here's a clue, 9,192,631,770
This is the natural constant used to measure the second - The second is defined as being equal to the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the cesium 133 atom. Whereas a thousand years ago, or even a couple of hundred, a day was sliced into just a few segments, dawn, morning, lunch, afternoon, dusk and nighttime we now divide a day into 86,400 seconds.
Our culture is now obsessed with time and doing as much as possible in the minimum amount of time. We multi-task constantly and even single tasking can seem dull, we consume energy drinks and slice our time time so thinly that we have progressed from books, to magazines, to blogs to tweets - 140 characters of information then onto the next piece.
Meditation means setting aside lots of time to achieve nothing external.
Carl Jung the famous psychiatrist said, 'Hurry is not of the devil, it is the devil'
Q: Why is it important? Joshua 1:8 - Do not let this Book of the Law depart from your mouth; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it, then you will be prosperous and successful"
Its not just to be prosperous and successful (and these aren't necessarily materially just in case you were thinking that) - but to be close to God.
If you think about the relationships that people like Adam and Eve, Moses, Elijah had with God you can see that they talked to God much like we talk to eachother - Ex 33:11 God spoke to Modes 'face to face, as a man speaks to his friend'.
People turned away from that and wanted Moses to be their go-between, we go to church and expect certain people like the pastor to be more 'religious' than us and to spend more time with God doing things like meditating because that is his job. We've absolved ourselves of that deeper relationship with God.
When people do spend time getting close to God, He is able to use us powerfully to enlarge His kingdom.
Phillip and the Eunuch - Acts 8:26-39
Jesus and the Samaritan woman (John 4)
The Centurion - Acts 10:1-6 (Note that the Jewish hour of prayer was at 3pm)
What do you do in an hour of prayer - is it a big list?
Q: Why is meditation not a bigger part of our worship in the Western evangelical church?
- Counter cultural - it's still too much of an ask for most churches to ask people to be so counter-cultural
- It gets confused with works (this is much like the other spiritual disciplines)- Imagine a couple getting married, the priest speaks, then the groom says his vows, then the bride says hers, as she finishes speaking the groom let's out a Homer Simpson 'woo-hoo' and runs off yelling 'I'll be in the bar'. Every day the groom just spends a few minutes with the bride where he just asks her to do things for him and never spends time with her alone. Are they still married? Yes. Is is a real relationship - not really. We know that we have grace, we know that we can't get to heaven through works but we seem confused about how to relate to God and have substituted works for... different works, or sometimes nothing. We will organize church events but never to meditate or fast, those things have become reserved for the 'very religious'. So we think that saying we need to meditate or fast is like saying we need to do works. The confusion is that we don't engage in the spiritual disciplines to earn our salvation, that is already assured, but to keep up our relationship with God - we know that all relationships need work but we sometimes think that to say we need to work at something is to deny the grace of the cross - it isn't at all, they are different things but we get them confused.
- Takes too much time and is too difficult
Meditation is a way we simply be with God and listen to Him. Important because we need to have an impact
Practical Spend 20 minutes meditating on one of the following topics
From Psalm 139:
O LORD, you have searched me and you know me. You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways. Before a word is on my tongue you know it completely, O LORD. You hem me in—behind and before; you have laid your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me,too lofty for me to attain.
...
For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.
From Psalm 46
God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging.
There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy place where the Most High dwells. God is within her, she will not fall; God will help her at break of day. Nations are in uproar, kingdoms fall; he lifts his voice, the earth melts. The LORD Almighty is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress.
...
"Be still, and know that I am God;
I will be exalted among the nations,
I will be exalted in the earth."
From Romans 8: For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present or the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
In our group people said that it helped them really experience the verse rather than just read it and that it would really help them to remember it and be able to bring it to mind
Why is it quite hard to do easily?
- We're used to being over-stimulated
- We have too much busy-ness in our lives so we're unwilling to spend the time
- We're out of practice
This month plan ahead to spend a block of 30-60 minutes each week in contemplative prayer, not asking God for anything but just to meditate on one aspect of Him. You will need to:
- plan ahead and mentally dedicate the time to God
- find a place free from distractions
- leave your phone somewhere else and turn it off
- pray about the time ahead of actually doing it
Prayer and meditation are different aspects of building up and maintaining our relationship with God. They shouldn't be confused with 'works' and doing them cannot earn our salvation but is necessary for our relationship with God. Like all disciplines meditation takes time and work to do properly, and if we spend time listening to God in meditation he will reveal more of himself to us and enable us to have an impact on those around us.
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