In His law meditate day and night—this man shall be blessed

This book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth but meditate day and night in it. Then you will make your way prosperous and have good success. Joshua 1:8  

(see also Psalm 1, 19 and 119))

How can a young man keep his way pure? By guarding it according to your word. With my whole heart I seek you; let me not wander from your commandments! I have stored up your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you.

Blessed are you, O LORD; teach me your statutes!

With my lips I declare all the rules of your mouth.

In the way of your testimonies I delight as much as in all riches.

I will meditate on your precepts and fix my eyes on your ways.

I will delight in your statutes; I will not forget your word. Psalm 119

I read once that Hebrew mothers would read some Scripture to their little ones while giving them some honey or sweet tasting treat (associating pleasant memory with learning God’s word). Jewish people usually have a ornate small box with Scripture in it attached to the door frames of their houses. Priests wore similar little “Bible boxes” around their foreheads in reference to Deut 6:9.

 “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.” (Deuteronomy 6:4-9)

Deut 11:21 adds this promise to the command that your days and the days of your children may be multiplied in the land that the LORD swore to your fathers to give them, as long as the heavens are

above the earth.”

Memorization has become harder for me – probably reflective of short term memory problems of getting older. Other hindrances are stress, mind-clutter of anxieties, discouragements, weariness and temptations. These all take their toll in my concentration. This has disappointed me for years because when I was a new Christ-follower, in my busy college years, I always carried memory cards and memorized hundreds of verses. The more often I pulled them our of my pocket, the more I committed to memory, the easier it seemed to be to absorb even more. I genuinely loved doing it and sometimes even made up little jingles or wrote songs which I can still sing today.

In fact, in the 1970’s we sang Scripture songs as part of our corporate worship and could learn much of God’s Word that way.

Some things have helped me:

1. Writing them down, keeping them handy and reading them aloud so I am using eye, hand, voice, ear, and mind to get them into my heart.

2. Intoning or chanting them or singing Scripture in my heart and to one another heart (Eph 5:19).

3. Associating specific words with images like a story board.

4. Repeating a phrase slowly, emphasizing a different word each time.

5. I’m told that slow, deliberate, going over and over style of memorizing tends to work it into long-term memory, rather than short-term.

6. Dallas Willard wrote that the fundamental thing is to direct and redirect our minds constantly to God. The first thing is to keep God before our eyes, as David said. (Psalms 16:8-9)

In this way we can break old habits and replace them so that God becomes the “polestar” of our inward beings. Jesus is the door, life, and way. Receive him, open to him, and direct our attention to him. This is done best by memorizing and meditating on the Gospels. 

It’s best to concentrate on memorizing great passages. It’s actually more important than a “quiet time” because meditation on the Scriptures can fill the day. The law gets in our mouth by memorization and dwelling on it through meditation.

The Hebrew Word for meditation is used in various word pictures:

Strongs #1965: haghah  coo, growl, murmer; speak, roar, chirp…

These are incoherent sounds like mumbling, sighing in delight while eating something delicious or being full of anticipation (like a dog delightfully gnawing a bone). It is used of quiet and calm reflection like the gentle cooing of a dove, or like the slow and imperceptible melting of a lozenge in our mouth. Meditation can involve feeling strong emotion like a lion growling over its prey.

So, be a lion or a cow, because meditation can vary by engaging strong emotion and passion with noisy sounds or it may be peaceful repetition: chew the cud-swallow-regurgitate-repeat-until it passes through all seven stomachs in order to become sweet milk.

(I am indebted to Pastor Steve Humble who testified recently: “I’m no expert, but I am seeing a difference in my thinking and sometimes in my behavior these days.”)

 

Pray the Jesus Prayer so that breath becomes Life centered in Him

God be merciful to me a sinner; Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me. (Luke 18:13, 38; (see also Matthew 20:30).

Blind men, lepers and sinners cried out to God for the mercies of forgiveness and healing. They recognized Jesus as Messiah, the Anointed King, Son of David. Their faith revealed Him and received Him as the Son of God. Their simple prayer was of faith that “made them well.”

From earliest times the church has prayed the simple Jesus prayer, as easily as breathing in and out, in a short or longer form: “Lord, Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner. Visit and heal my infirmities for your name’s sake.”

(The following is excerpted and edited from John Michael Talbot’s, The Ancient Path. He describes a way to “pray without ceasing.” I use a simple cross and beads to help me in the night, while driving, while sitting in a meeting, or watching a movie, etc. This practice helps me meditate on Him, intercede for others and overcome anxiety. If interested in beads or a cross ask me.)

The Desert Fathers had encouraged the use of aspirations, and Augustine had counseled a busy widow in his parish to imitate the Egyptian hermits in this way. Nor was devotion to the name of Jesus anything new. Saint Paul had long before told the Philippians: “at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth” (2:10). And the pages of the Acts of the Apostles are replete with the primitive Church’s devotion to the holy name (see, for example, 2:38, 3:6, 4:10, 8:12, 9:27, etc.). From the first generation, the Church had prescribed Jesus’s name for the expulsion of demons, the healing of ailments, and the correction of error.

A way to pray without ceasing in our busy lives

If our goal is to make Jesus the single focal point of life, and to make our prayer to him as constant as breath try this: 

Breathe in: Lord.

Breathe out: Jesus.

It’s not mechanical. It’s not magical. It’s love. People do heroic things for love. They give up drinking or drugs or gambling, but the way they overcome is by keeping their beloved in mind when faced with temptation. So they’re faced with a stark choice between the loved one or the vice. If our prayer is Jesus, we will have him always before us. We will have the habit of preferring nothing to him. And, like the apostles, we can do all things in him who strengthens us (Philippians 4:13) and in his holy name.

The Jesus prayer became a compact creed: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” That simple formula includes elements of adoration, contrition, and supplication. It confesses Jesus’s divinity and our own sinfulness. It’s as hard as diamond, but it rises lightly as breath. It has sustained the inner life of ascetics and ordinary folk in the Eastern churches for well over a millennium…

300 knots of prayer

Eastern Christians sometimes pray the Jesus Prayer while they count the recitations on a string of beads or knots. Pastor Dennis Cole wears an elastic band of beads around his wrist to help him pray. I was showing my little string of beads to Bob Johnson, my spiritual director, and he agreed with how helpful it is, then he opened his desk and pulled out a string with 300 knots in it. It was a good reminder to me that I am a novice in prayer and not a spiritual giant.

How can we pray when there’s so much else we have to get done?

The Eastern Fathers offered a way to approach the problem. We can key our prayer to our every breath. The Eastern (Orthodox) Fathers tell us to invoke the name and person of Jesus with every breath we take. Think about it: breathing is the one thing we do without ceasing. If we’re living, we’re breathing. When we stop breathing, we’re dead.

I am learning to “ask for His grace to pray with His effect in me

I try to begin prayer times by asking God’s grace to help me pray and that my prayer have a good effect in me. I ask the grace to know Jesus, love Him and bring him glory to him in prayer and through the day. It is humbling to admit that I need supernatural and present assistance to praise, worship, pray and read the Scripture into my mind and heart. Paul wrote that prayer is a work of the Spirit (Rom 8:26-27). Prayer is not something we could do on our own. God is transcendent. He is wholly “other” from us. But he gives us his Spirit to pray within us, so we can say with Jesus, “Abba! Father!” (Rom 8:14; Gal 4:6).

In both Hebrew and Greek, the word for “breath” and “Spirit” is one and the same—in Hebrew, ruah; in Greek, pneuma. Prayer is possible because we have the breath of God. The Fathers tell us to unite every breath to God.

Preparing a room for God or for sin

John Michael Talbot learned that he could not keep parts of life “purely for himself, apart from God. If I did that, I was preparing a room for sin. If I could pray from the heart, if I could pray with every breath, I would leave myself no opportunity to build a reservation for self and sin. I would sooner stop breathing. I would sooner die.”

Being with Jesus as Friend: seek Union with His Heart

This week is the most beautiful and the most important of the Church’s year. It is the drama of our salvation and our life and also a week of profound renewal. We renew our baptismal life because we see again the battle that God in Christ wins against all the powers of darkness and destruction in our world and in our lives. We know that our baptism makes us participators in his victory and so we have the courage to follow him on his journey and to contemplate the mystery of his love for us.  Through this week, and especially as it breaks into the new life and light of Easter, we also renew our faith in Christ. We see that God’s way is not our way or the ways of our world. His power is not exercised through force or coercion or through ‘shock and awe’. His way is entirely different; it refuses to get caught up in all our traps and illusions. God’s way of saving us was the way we least expected; a shocking way – the way of weakness and humility; the way of powerlessness and foolishness; the way that is least comprehensible for us. The best way of praying this week is simply to follow it. All we have to do in our prayer is be open and receptive, content to follow and to receive what God chooses to give us. In this way our prayer enters into the way Christ lives it. He allows himself to be taken on a journey by the Father – ‘thy will be done.’ So, let scripture take you on this road. Be attentive to it; notice its details, entrust yourself to it. Don’t fill up your prayer with too many words or thoughts or petitions, ‘For your heavenly Father knows all that you need.’ Let each period of prayer begin simply by asking for the grace of this week: to be close to Christ as he does the will of the Father; to touch something of the mystery of his life and love. Try and get some sense of that as we hear this weekend’s Gospel Reading from Mark.

“Contemplation”

On Palm Sunday the crowd clamored for David’s Son, Messiah, to save them from Roman oppression and restore their kingdom. Place yourself in the story. Would you be caught up in the way the world thinks? Would you identify with self-righteous religious experts of the law but who lacked union with God’s heart? Or would you be seeking simply to be with Him-to know Him-to surrender all to Him-to love Him and follow Him?

What question would you ask him if alone? How does He answer?

Plan silent moments to give Him-be with Him-receive His love:

His last hours with friends: John chapters 12-17; Mt 26:47-68; Mt 27:32-50

Helps and Hindrances:
 

Helps: Give thanks daily and ask the grace to be with Him.

• You might meditate on Hymns like “Were You There” or “O Sacred Head Now Wounded,” When I Survey Wondrous Cross”…
• Watch one of the “Jesus Movies,” attend a special service, write a poem or contemplation to give Him; 
• Offer to Him weakness and disappointments… 
• Pray in the Spirit and spend time in wordless prayer of the heart.      
  

Hindrances: Examine, identify and exchange at the cross

• Exchange offenses at God or others with forgiveness
• Exchange busyness with quiet stillness
• Exchange anxiety and hurry with His peace and perspective
• Exchange unbelief or hard hearts and heads with a new heart.

FEEDBACK: Has there been any profit for you who did these meditations or groups to some degree?  Write down what you feel or experience. Share with others (and me). If you have received some help through the last six weeks of prayer meditations please let me know.

If there is anything you will carry forward-any new or renewed habit, or any fresh desire to know and love and be united in likeness to Christ…

If there is a new desire to be filled with the Holy Spirit and be His witness with love and the power of the Holy Spirit…

If there is a growing compassion and mercy to minister to those who are the most forgotten or neglected (instead of “blessing the blessed and serving the saved or just praying for the privileged)…

Please let me know how Christ is helping you become “joyful for a change.”

Small groups will not meet on Resurrection morning but come early for donuts and coffee fellowship. You are invited to meet at Dwight and Barbara’s  Wednesday evening, 7 PM. 


-PD