Meditation: Dwelling on God

Good morning and welcome to the Bridge Church. I am so glad that we can be gathered together this morning. This week we will be continuing our discussion of Spiritual Disciplines. This morning we will be talking about Meditation. When we talk about Meditation we have to talk about something very important first.

Time!

How do you spend your time each day? What things fill your day? I was thinking about these questions. I thought about all the things that eat away at my time and what i do each day that is probably not the best use of my time. One area that I always find interesting is screen time. Each week on Sunday morning without fail i get a notification on my phone and my tablet that shows me my screen time for the past week. Not sure why it is Sunday morning but it usually arrive about an hour before church. Some weeks i am proud. Some weeks I pause and think did i really spend that much time on my tablet. Now I can sit here and I can justify or reason out why the time comes out to be what it is. If i am honest though that isn’t the important part. The truth is that like many Americans I spend too much time connected to a screen in some form.

I was interested in how much time we really spend. Now in 2019 Netflix released that on average their users watched around...

2 Hours per day.

Think about that for a moment that is a lot of time. I am guilty though. Just the other night i pointed out to Angie we sat and watched like 5 episodes of a show and at about 20 to 25 minutes per episode.

If you want to see what has happened since. In 2020 because of quarantined that number jumped to 3.2 hours of content. Across all its users that is 6.1 Billion hours of time used to watch videos. take that a little deeper that is only through Netflix. That isn’t accounting if people were using Disney +, HBO max, or any other subscription service.

The point is that this is just one example of how we spend our time. Is this a problem? Is this something that we need to really take a look at?

The truth is that when it comes to the Spiritual Disciplines we must faced the reality that they demand our time. There is no way to avoid it. Time is the biggest challenge when it comes to going deeper in our relationship with God.

Taxes

To help drive this point home let me share a quote with you. It is tax season so it is on everyone's mind right about now.

"It seems that the average person spends more time and intellectual labor each year filling out income tax forms than he or she spends in a lifetime trying to learn from the Scriptures and from the light of the Spirit what the church is and what he or she ought to do about it."

--A.W. Tozer

What do you think? Is that statement true? That is the challenge we face today and it is one that we have to take head on.

Christian Meditation: What is it

Richard Foster defines Christian Meditation simply as “The ability to hear God’s voice and obey his word.”

There are no secret chants or special actions you must do to commit to the act of mediation.

Now wait a minute that seems really vague, why are we talking about it. The truth is that yes mediation can be a little more complicated than that but in essence the only thing that Meditation is, is opening ourselves to God and obeying. It is the willingness to stop talking to stop getting in the way, to trust and obey when God calls us.

Another way to think about Christian meditation is to move to a state of perpetual presence of the Lord.

Perpetual Motion

When I first heard about this idea of the perpetual presence my mind went to the idea of a perpetual motion. For those who don’t know the idea of Perpetual motion is simply a machine that can work infinitely without and external source of energy. The problem is this is impossible. It violates several laws of science. Now to avoid getting into all of that because i have to admit i don’t fully understand it all and i am sure there are people out there who could explain it better than me. I know that perpetual motion is ultimately impossible.

How than can we have a perpetual relationship with Jesus?

Isn’t that impossible?

How could we possibly maintain that kind of relationship?

We get Stuck on the Impossible

We get captivated and defeated by what seems impossible. We see that we could possibly fail and we become paralyzed by that fear. Let me make this very clear because Meditation like all the other Spiritual Disciplines, you will have times that you fail. I must confess that I fail. I have been trying to commit myself to this practice these last couple weeks and i have fallen short on more than one occasion. Yet, I can also stand here and tell you that I try to get up the next day and live it out again. Asking God for grace and understanding and moving toward that goal of being in a perpetual relationship. I realize that there is a reason i want this and i long for this kind of relationship and that is because the scriptures guide us to it.

Joshua 1:8 NIV

8 Keep this Book of the Law always on your lips; 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.

Psalm 1:2–3 NIV

2 but whose delight is in the law of the Lord, and who meditates on his law day and night. 3 That person is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither— whatever they do prospers.

Matthew 14:13 NIV

13 When Jesus heard what had happened, he withdrew by boat privately to a solitary place. Hearing of this, the crowds followed him on foot from the towns.

Luke 5:16 NIV

16 But Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed.

Revelation 3:20 NIV

20 Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me.

This last one is my favorite because this is an often quoted verse that is in reference to non-believers but this was written in a letter to the church. This is the moment that we realize that mediation as a Christian is not about just removing all the distraction of life but it is about attaching ourselves to God.

It is about Attachment not Detachment

This is where we can find that the perpetual relationship becomes possible. We seek to grow in our relationship with him and we long to grow together and to push beyond the boundaries that we might expect. We start to evaluate our time and our stance on what we are doing each day and see that we have to start attaching ourselves to Jesus and not removing him. It is in this state that we open the door because we hear him knocking and we have fellowship with him.

We create the emotional and mental space for God.

Creating the Space

The first way that we can create this space is by setting a part time for God. It is important that we begin to evaluate the time that we use and how we can spend some of it focused exclusively on God. Maybe instead of watching 2 hours of netflix today I commit to only an hour and a half.

2 episodes instead of 3.

A shorter movie tonight.

Maybe it isn’t netflix though, maybe for some of us its work. We get abosorbed in putting in the hours both at our jobs and around our homes. We got to go go go. Maybe we recognize one or two task that can wait till tomorrow each day and we allow time for God. Or maybe we need to be active in managing our lives that our relationship with God is a part of our routine.

Creating space doesn’t just mean time though

Create some physical space. Figure out where in your house that you can create the space to as Jesus did.

Luke 5:16 NIV

16 But Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed.

This doesn’t mean we have to go off to some mountain top to pray but maybe we carve a space in our room that is designated for this time of prayer. That when the door is shut and you are in that chair people know to let you have that time and space. It is okay to share with your family what you are doing too. In fact, I would encourage it because it might lead to conversation about why it is important. It might inspire your loved ones to also engage in that time and that is something we should encourage.

I have one more rule for this time. This is probably the only rule I am going to strongly suggest.

Do you see this? (hold up a Bible). Use this not this (hold up phone).

This has distractions this one is the Word of God. Just a practical suggestion.

Now What?

You have created space so now what do you do?

We don’t have time to cover the in depth details of everything that is possible in times of meditation, but let me give some practical pointers.

Clear your mind of everything but God

Ask God to Speak to you in this time

Pray ( we will cover more next week)

Be Silent

Rest

There is no prescriptive way that is perfect when it comes to Meditation the only real rule I would say is cut out distractions and just open yourselves to God.

Meditation in Life

While this set aside time and space is important Meditation is not just about our own lives. Meditation without life is pointless. In the tradition of the Church there have been many hermits and Church people who have isolated themselves to the point that they lost touch with the World. That isn’t what Jesus did. Jesus would return and be with people. He would live out his faith and while he was doing so he would keep his mind, his heart focused on God. True Meditation doesn’t turn us from the world but allows us to better live in the world. It is the time that we connect to God and we grow and we are filled and we pour that out into the world. We take it with us and live out our relationship with God among the world.

We are in the world not of the world.

Start Today

If i can leave you with one thing this morning is that i encourage you to not wait. Don’t wait till you feel that you are so lost and without hope that you can’t make it. Don’t wait for tomorrow. Start growing in your relationship with God. Begin with the most simple thing.

Open your heart and mind to being filled with the Presence of God.

Let us Pray.