Discipline Five – Simplicity – Reordering To God’s Priorities

DYG-12 & WFL-16

030518AM

Discipline Five—Simplicity:  Reordering to God’s Priorities DYG: Message Twelve

Transcript

Let’s open our Bibles to Hebrews chapter 11. We’re looking at the disciplines of our Christian lives. The disciplines of a godly Christian. Last time we looked at solitude. And solitude is the spiritual concept and quest of us getting alone with God because we love Him. We find a quiet place in our full and rich and busy lives to get along with God. That’s solitude. This morning we’re looking at the attitude it takes to get something when you’re alone with God. And that concept is the simple devotion of, now listen to this, of meditation.

Meditation is the spiritual digestive facility of the soul. Most people are very good at amassing information. They go and they get all kinds of Bible facts and they listen to this and that and read and everything, and they get all that stuff. But spiritual growth does not come by amassing, it comes by meditation. And to digest all that we get in our head to our spirit is through the process of meditation.

I think often of people who regularly ask me, they’ll come up after a service and they’ll have their Bible tucked under their arm, or they’ll call in and they’ll come see me and make an appointment. They come and they say, do you know a new book that I could go… and they’re holding their Bible right here and they say… a new book that I could get at Mardel? Or do you know some Christian tape series or video series, something new that I could get for my spiritual growth?

And they’re holding the best and only and powerful revelation of God. But what it is, we’ve gotten into this idea that, yeah, I’ve already gone through that. I know all the books of the Bible. And I know how it fits. And I know the charts. And I have a study Bible. And I’ve got all that. I need something, what? New. Something different. And that is because we have gotten so much up here in knowledge that we have not digested. And the digestive mechanism that God has used to take the head knowledge to our spirit and to change our life, it is called meditation.

Let me show you what I mean from Hebrews chapter 11, because if we were to analyze the world that… I’m going to show you just four characters, four of the great heroes of the faith in Hebrews 11 verses 1-10. But if we were to analyze their lives, those people that we are looking at; Abel, and then Enoch, and then Noah, and then Abraham, lived very busy lives. These people had to work for a living when there was no Albertsons, to run to a resource. Most people don’t even realize how hard it is to prepare food because the world has gotten the point that most people eat prepared food. If it’s not in a package, they wouldn’t know how to make a dish. It’s already done. And they just heat it or mix it or wet it or stir it or something. But back then they had to catch it. Before they caught it, they had to feed it and raise it and protect it and guard it and then keep it healthy. And then catch it and then kill it and clean it and cook it and eat it. Life was very busy. It was hard back then.

Do you remember the olden days? My mom used to tell me about life on the farm when they went… My mom lived in a dirt floor log cabin in Michigan in 1920. Dirt floor log cabin in Michigan, on a farm. And they went to town once a month. And they bought in town what they couldn’t grow, catch, or raise. And that was very little. Life was busy. These people we are looking at, they had busy lives. Don’t think your life is busy. Most of the busyness in our lives is chosen. It’s not obligated. We choose to just have these frantic full, in every direction, too many friends, and too many activities, and too many commitments lives. These people were busy because it took that much to raise the crops and do everything else.

But it wasn’t just busy. Life back then was very distracting. And it is today too, isn’t it? It seems there’s just something going on all the time. If it’s not the war, which had people glued to the television, it’s the weather for the last two weeks. It’s kept everybody going. But we’re just very distracted and it’s always been that way.

But, something else, which I see in all four of these lives that we’re going to look at, not only were they busy and very distractible, but the times were evil. And I think it’s even worse now. It seems as we have the End of Days breathing down on us that we’re in the perilous days, that the scriptures talk about. Where evil men and seducers, as Paul wrote, will wax worse and worse, to use Elizabethan terminology.

What do you do if you’re in a busy time in life? How do you get something out of this without prowling the halls of the local bookstore looking for something new? How do you get something new out of something old? How do you digest this thing so that it can change your life every time? In fact, if I could tell you a secret this morning, tell you how every time you can get in this book, you’ll get something fresh and new and life-changing and powerful, would you be interested? Would you be willing to make a few choices and changes in your life to make this book come alive? What we’ll find is, it’s come alive since the beginning of time.

The revelation, they didn’t have it written down and bound in calves skin, and gold embossed. What they had was the same thing, the Word of God, these four. But what they learned was to take that from the head and digest it through meditation to their hearts. Let’s learn about that because that secret will make us powerful, and godly men and women busy, and distracting in an evil world we live in. It is a proven technique that God’s servants have always had, that works in any time at any place, and under any pressure. It sounds too good to be true. But it’s true that you can meditate and glean and digest and derive spiritual food that will make your life and my life victorious and fruitful and overwhelmingly powerful for the glory of God.

All of these Enoch, Noah, and Abraham and Abel, each of them held onto God’s Word, turned it over and over in their minds until they had digested it into their lives. And Hebrews 11 is a chronicle of how they in the busiest, the most distracting, and the most evil of times, were heroes of the faith. Let’s learn about them as we read Hebrews 11:1-10.

Now faith and that’s taking God at His Word. It’s the substance of things hoped for. It’s the evidence of things not seen. For by it the elders obtained a good testimony. By faith, we understand that the worlds were framed by the Word of God, so that the things which are seen were not made of things which are visible. By faith Abel offered to God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain. Through which he obtained witness that he was righteous, God testifying of his gifts, and through it he being dead still speaks.

Character number two. By faith, Enoch was taken away, so he did not see death. And he was not found because God had taken him. For before he was taken, he had this testimony that he pleased God. But without faith it is impossible to please Him. For he that comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him. Wow. Enoch diligently sought God and God rewarded him.

Verse 7, by faith, Noah being divinely warned of things not yet seen, moved with Godly fear, prepared an Ark for the saving of his household. By which He condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness, which is according to faith.

By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to the place which he would receive as an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going. By faith, he dwelt in the land of promise as in a foreign country. Dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise. For he waited for the city, which has foundations whose builder and maker is God. Let’s bow together.

Father in Heaven, we bow before You asking You to open our eyes to behold wonderful truths from Your Word. We ask you to reveal Yourself and to give us the Spirit of wisdom and knowledge in the revelation of You. Oh Christ, we come before Your Word. We ask you to open it to us and to open by stirring our hearts, our hunger, that we may learn to not merely learn a fact, but to digest a truth and to be conformed a little bit more every day to Your image. I pray that You would help many this morning to make choices to reenergize or to begin their devotional life of solitude, getting alone because they love You. And then disciplining themselves to stay there until they grab a truth they can hold onto all day long that will change our lives. Teach us that through Your Word. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.

You ever thought how hard it was to live back then? Abel, the first one we’re looking at in verse 4. This fellow had to live out with his herds. Remember? He offered one from the flock. And back in the old days, they didn’t have airplanes and GPS tags on their animals to check where they were. They actually watched them and they sat out there with them. And they protected them and guided them and cared for them. So, Abel had a very, very busy and difficult life. Then, Enoch. Enoch talk about busyness; he had a different problem. He lived at the time that the Earth became so bad. God destroyed it the first time. God’s going to destroy the Earth twice. The first time with water. Second time with fire. We’re getting close to the second time. He was living just before the first time and he lived in the time that is described in the Bible by the most ungodly verse in the Bible. I don’t know if you’ve ever read that, you’re in Hebrews, you’re so close. Why don’t you turn with me to the second to the last book, Jude. Second to last book of the Bible. It’s Revelation that’s the very last, and then back up one and go to Jude. I want to show you the most ungodly verse in the Bible. It reminds us of what God can do, no matter what’s going on around us, with this wonderful truth, this devotion to God that we can have.

Verse 14 picks up in Jude. Only has one chapter. By the way, Jude is our Lord’s earthly brother. We know that Jesus had four earthly brothers and sisters, probably two or three, which it says in the Gospel record. So, Jesus came from a family of seven brothers and sisters, plus himself made eight. The four brothers, two of them are very famous, James that wrote the book of James. Jude that wrote this book. So, his two brothers were notable leaders in the Early Church. And Jude, one of Christ’s earthly brothers was inspired. That means God’s spirit came upon him and he wrote down the very Word of God and recorded it. Look what he says in verse 14 under inspiration, Christ’s earthly brother Jude is writing down history from the very beginning of time. It says, now Enoch the seventh from Adam. Now wait a minute. Jesus’ own earthly brother under inspiration wrote down that Enoch was the seventh generation after Adam. Did you catch that? That means that there are no gaps in the biblical record. If you just read Genesis, you could read into it that maybe, there’s, about 50 generations between each of those guys to make the world older than [it is], so we wouldn’t be embarrassed by scientists. But actually, the Holy Spirit says Enoch, who by the way was just two generations from the flood. And the flood, we still see all the evidence of on this planet. It means the Earth is not as old as they’re telling us. It’s as young as God says. But I’m not going onto creationism this morning. He prophesied this, Enoch, about those men saying, behold the Lord comes with 10 thousands of His saints. So, Enoch was talking about the return of the Lord. And with the saints with Him, just like Paul did.

But here’s the Un-Godliest verse in the Bible. Look at verse 15. To execute judgment on all, to convict all who are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds, which they have committed in an ungodly way. And of all the harsh things, which ungodly sinners have spoken against Him. Did you know the Enoch walked in the world when it was ungodly? It was so ungodly God could only find eight people on the whole planet that He could save, that would respond in faith to Him. Eight. Noah, his three sons, and each of their wives. And God took Enoch out. What a time to walk with the Lord. So, it works when you’re busy like Abel. It works when you’re in an ungodly place like Enoch.

Back to Hebrews 11, let me just show you the other two and then we’ll move on from this. By faith, Noah… I mean you talk about a man who had a distraction. Noah was called to build this boat and the world was ending. And he, it was the only escape. You had to get in this boat. And he had only a hundred years to build it. Can you imagine how distracting it was? He must have slept and ate and breathed building the boat. But you know what it says in Hebrews 11? By faith Noah being divinely warned, in verse 7, of things not seen. He listened to God carefully and responded to what God told him to do. Is it any different what God expects us to do? He expects us to listen, and to carefully listen. And to grab out of His Word the truth that He has put there, that we must respond to. And then to not just collect it and know it, but to respond to it. That’s what all these men did.

Here’s the last one. Look at Abraham. Abraham. I’ve taken my family camping once every year since… this is our 20th year of marriage, and our 18th and a half year of family, of children at least. And for all these years we’ve camped every year. We’re going again in June. And I go and live in a tent and go speak to teenagers. And it’s a blast. But you know what? It’s hard to camp. You have to walk to that water thing and put it in a pail and carry it over. And you got to start the fire in the morning. And Bonnie actually cooks these gourmet meals over a campfire. I’m talking about wood fire with a grill on top. Just bakes and cooks. It’s just wonderful and I gain weight. But you know what? It’s good for it to be over. I have to go out and find the wood, and I have to start and do the fire, and bring the water. And then after you eat, it takes forever to do… you know how hard it is without a dishwasher and [in] a campground? You actually have to wash the dishes with your hands and scrub and scrape. And when you get done with that, it’s time to start over again because it takes so long to cook over the fire. It’s just amazing.

That’s what he did for a hundred years. Abraham. He obeyed God, called out to this place, and look at verse 9, he dwelt in tents. You know what? He was very distracted. He is very busy. He was living in the midst of some idolatrous, wicked, evil people. And you know what? He walked with God.

All that to say this; how on Earth do you do it? These verses are calling and reminding us that the simplest and most neglected spiritual practice is the godly practice that each of these learn to do. They learned not to go prowling the bookstore, and I’m not against Christian bookstores, but I’m against this notion of everybody… they’re just looking for the newest, do you have the newest study Bible? The newest book? All of them are just supposed to be explanations of this [the Bible], and I’d rather go right to the source. Wouldn’t you? What we’re saying by our fixation on newest materials is that we are children needing milk instead of people that can actually eat the Bible ourself.

We need someone to… Like my kids are watching the birds and their nests out the window, and those moms go out there and they tear up the worms and they drop them in the mouths of those baby birds because they aren’t old enough to go get their own worms. You know what? That’s what we have. A whole generation in America that aren’t old enough to go and find the food themself. They have to listen to it or have someone else get it for them. But that’s fine for a while. But we’re supposed to go on. How do you go on? When you go on by cultivating the biblical art of meditation. A godly meditation. Anyone who will choose to practice godly meditation is going to find that God’s Word is going to explode with a richness of wisdom, and a spiritual fire will be kindled within our souls.

So, you say, how do you do it? I’m glad you asked because it is something that we should practice and learn. If you don’t know how, I’ll just give you a slice of how in normal, everyday life, how you can learn to meditate on God’s Word.

Number one, solitude is getting along with God because I love Him. Simple devotion is listening to God through His Word by meditation. And we find in God’s Word that meditation is the process God has chosen to take His Word and to pass it from our head down through our spirit, where its power can be released. And meditation, as someone once said, is the digestive facility of the soul. How do you engage your digestive facility?

First thing, if you want to jot these down. Let’s turn to Colossians chapter 3. And this week I’ve been working… once a month I spend about an hour in a discipleship class with the elders and deacons. And this week I took them to Colossians 3 and just had a blast with them. I actually started this with the staff. We sit around, the staff, the big boardroom where we meet in the library. And I say, okay, staff, we started this at the beginning of the year. I said, I’m going to treat you like you’re my family, okay? We’re all going to sit. You bring your Bible to the staff meeting and I’m going to be the daddy and you’re going to be all the kids. Okay? And we’re going to have a Bible study. Because I want to teach you how you can, every time you’re in the Bible, you can get something out of it. You can get something out of it. You can remember that you can apply that will change your life. And we’ll do that in just a moment.

But let me give you the principles first. And if you want to jot down, there are six simple but important principles that I use personally in my life that deepen and enrich my meditation in God’s Word. Because we see from the scripture these great heroes of the faith, though their lives were busy and distracted and in an evil time, they were always fresh. They were always able to be growing in the Lord. How did they do that? They learned how to meditate. How do we meditate?

Number one, we have to learn to pray first. We have to ask for God to bless us. Don’t ever think of getting into scripture without asking Him to give you something. Every time I read the Bible, in fact for our staff meetings I say, okay (whoever’s right there), Bob, why don’t you ask God to help us learn something from His Word? It’s amazing. We don’t have, because we don’t ask. So, the first thing you do is, you say God, I want to not have to run out and get something new out of the bookstore. I want to actually come and mine some truth from this book. And you actually ask Him. Say; God, would You open?

And if you want to write a verse down, Psalm 119, verse 18. Do you know what that verse says? It’s a prayer. It’s a prayer either of Ezra or whoever wrote the 119th psalm and the inspiration of God’s Spirit. Probably it was Ezra, the scribe. Maybe David, but probably Ezra. You know what he said? He said, Lord, open my eyes that I may behold wonderful things in Your Word. And then he dove in. Did you know that simple habit of pausing before you dig into this book and asking the Author to guide you? Wow. Did you realize that the author of this book is with you all the time just waiting to help you? The author of this book waits around every day and prowls around waiting for you to invite Him into your Bible study. And that’s the first step.

Another verse you could write down is Ephesians 1:17. He said, I pray for the Spirit of wisdom and revelation and knowledge of Christ to be yours. Pick either Psalm 119 verse 18 or Ephesians 1:17. But pray first. What do we pray for? We ask God to give us a spirit of wisdom to reveal His Word to us. God wants to give us insight through our meditation. He wants to. He wants to help us.

I was watching one of the buddies, as they were fiddling around trying to do something. They were screwing something together and they had a Phillips head screwdriver on a flat head. And they were, they could not figure out why that screwdriver wouldn’t go in there. And daddy, the workshop guru, I have screwdrivers. That’s it, I was going to help them. But I wanted them to come to the point where they realized they needed help. So, I watched them fiddle around. They really desperately wanted this screw to go in, and finally they just looked up at me and they went, daddy, what am I doing wrong? What? I said you need the other, it’s one of those you turn it like this. [Referencing the screwdriver] it’s flat and Phillips, it’s one of those reversible with all the gizmos and you can turn the head around and everything. I said, you go [like this] and it fits. Thank you.

That’s how we are. We’re right here. We’re going, oh Lord, in my life it doesn’t fit, I don’t understand. But we never go, oh Lord, will you help me to figure out? So, you pray first. Just stop wherever you are and pray first. That’s the first step.

Number two, grab something. In other words, read the Bible aggressively. You probably can’t see from there, but my Bible’s all marked up. I have 45 Bibles. I’ve read every single one of them. All of them are marked up. Do you know why? Because I’m so simple that I have to mark it so I can remember what I found. And every day when I read the Bible, in fact, right now I’m in Colossians 3. I not only have underlined, I’ve got colored marks in there. You know why I’m studying right now, the imperatives of Colossians. There are 25 of them. You know what an imperative is? It’s an order, a command. And the Lord says, he the half My commandments and keepeth them. He it is that loveth me and he that loveth me will be love to My Father and I will love Him and we will manifest ourself to Him. That’s John 14:21. So, I go through the Bible… my current study is I’m looking for all the commands. I’m not talking about the 10 Commandments. I’m talking about the commands of the New Testament. There are literally hundreds of them. They’re contained in the simple tense or the simple mode in grammar, which is called imperatives. There are 25 imperatives in the Book of Colossians.

And so, my current study is, I say, Lord, open my eyes to behold. And then I look along and here, we’re sitting at the table, follow along in your Bible.

Look down, look at Colossians 3. If then you were raised with Christ, seek those things which are above where Christ is sitting on the right hand of God. Now, which word in that verse sounds like an imperative to you? I’ll read it again. If you then were raised with Christ, seek those things which are above where Christ is sitting on the right hand of God. Did you catch it? You all knew that you didn’t need me to raise my voice or to put my orange coloring in your Bible. You could do it yourself. Did you know it? It’s no mystery that is a command, seek.

Okay let’s keep reading around the table, verse 2. Let’s see if we can find another one. Set your minds on things above, not on things on the Earth. See it? They just jump out of the page. Look at verse 5. Therefore, what? Put to death or mortify, whatever version you have, your members, which are on the Earth. The next one’s in verse 8, but now you yourselves are to put off all these things. Do you catch it? It’s a command.

He’s saying the Christian life is not the deeper life movement. Quiet-ism promoted the idea of let go and let God take over. And so, everybody just went around like this and they just walked softly in their robe and hoped that God would take over in their lives. That’s not in the New Testament. You know what the New Testament is filled with? On the basis of this truth, you respond. You set your affections, God’s not going to set them. You set your mind on things above, God’s not going to change the channel of your mind off what it shouldn’t be on, onto what it should be on. You have to say, God, I want that and then He gives you the gracious power to accomplish that. But you got to want it. You’ve got to respond. You’ve got to have His commandments and keep them as Christ put it.

Verse 9 has another one, don’t lie. Verse 12 has another one, put on tender mercies. Verse 15 has another imperative. By the way, some of these I know that I’m not raising my voice on them because some of these are only found by knowing the grammar. But you know what? There’s a good thing to go to Mardel’s for, instead of getting someone else’s chewed thing, you can get a tool where you can actually find these yourself. For $49, you can get a little computer program that identifies every verb in the New Testament, and you just push a button and it will print them out for you. It will tell you every command, and you can start marking them and finding them. They’re all the way through.

So, number one, you pray. Number two, you grab something you write down in your Bible. That’s where I write it, or your notebook or your journal. And it takes a discipline, effort. But if you discipline yourself to write something down and mark something either in your journal or notebook or Bible or study book, you’ll probably remember it.

But it doesn’t stop there. So far all we’ve done is prayed and found some facts. The third thing is we have to stop for a moment. We have to think about what that means. Now, I want… I’ll do verse 5 with you. Okay. Colossians 3:5, and this is what I do at the table. Boy, it’s very… don’t come for a meal at our house. Everybody that comes, they get involved in the Bible study. We’ve had people that start coughing. They thought that we wouldn’t do it because they were there. But we, at one meal a day, always read the Bible. And I’ve had people just about ready to fall through the floor. They couldn’t believe that they were involved in a Bible study at our house. But it’s exciting because you have to answer questions.

And I would say, verse 5. Therefore, put to death your members, which are on the Earth. Now that’s not getting rid of bad church people. That’s not an elder verse there. This is, personally, put to death your members, which are on the Earth.

And always, first in all these lists, this is my comment I’d make as we sat around the table. I’d say, did you know in every SIN list, there are 21 sin lists in the New Testament, do you know what’s either first or second in every list? Number one or number two sin of all, fornication. Sexual immorality is always right at the top of the list. Do you know why? Because the lust of the flesh is present in all of us. And if you feed your lust of the flesh, you will start hungering and longing for more and more lust of the flesh. It’s like self-feeding. If you feed it, it grows and it feeds more and it draws you more. And so, fornication is always at the top of the list. So, what he’s saying is, he says I command you; put to death your appetite for fornication. And not just fornication; for uncleanness, for passion, for evil desires, for covetousness. How do you do that? If you want to put something to death, you don’t feed it. Right? You want to kill a good plant? Don’t water it. Don’t put it in the sun. It’ll just die. You just leave it there in the dark, water less, food less, it’ll die. You want to starve to death some microbe, just don’t feed it. Don’t give it what it needs. That’s why we clean the bathroom so that there’s nothing for those wicked little germs to feed on. You kill all the stuff that they eat, and they die out.

You know what? We have a whole generation of Christians. Who are coming on Sunday and saying, Lord, I just want to serve You. I want to know You. I want to read Your Word, and I want to grow in You. I want to know Your choice for my partner for life, and what You want me to do in my work. And they’re not obeying verse 5. You know what’s so amazing? Under the guise of Christian liberty is, people watch and fill their minds with what grieves and quenches the Holy Spirit of God, who is the one that opens this book to us, assures us of our salvation, and leads us in the will of God. So, if I was sitting around the table with my family, I’d say, if we’re going to mortify fornication, uncleanness, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry, then we are going to lessen our exposure to what would lead to those things. So, the third thing we do is, we stop for a minute and think about the application of it.

The fourth step… If you’re writing them down, number one was pray first. Number two is grab something out of the text. Number three is stop for a moment to write down the implications. And what I wrote right there by my fifth verse as the implication is, I have to be aggressively, actively starving the things that promote sin in my life. Number four, I have to listen to God. So, this is the most dangerous part after I pray and grab something out of the Bible and think about what it means. I say Lord, how do You want to apply that in my life? That’s the worst one. We just don’t want to hear it. What it means is, I have to stop certain things. I have to promote certain things. I have to avoid certain things. And that’s what the fourth step is, listening to God apply the understanding to my life. As we continue to meditate, the Lord fills us with incredible insights about His character, His love, and those nuggets are choices we make to apply to ourself.

And so, the Lord says, yeah, you know what? This is so great. Why don’t you spend as long studying your Bible as you would sitting being exposed to everything that grieves Me and see what we can come up with. And we go, oh, I didn’t want to hear that. Then we make a choice. See, we still have not fulfilled everything. We’ve prayed. We’ve grabbed something, we’ve noted it in our Bible. Now we’ve talked the Lord and said what is that? How should that apply to my life?

The fifth step of meditation is responding and saying, Lord, I will do that. And what I have written in my little chart is, answer Him. Respond to God. Nine times out of 10, meditation will bring us to a point where we’re bursting with something we know we need to respond to God about. Don’t lose it. Respond right then. Say, Lord, by Your grace I will choose to not do this. I will choose to do this. I will choose to memorize and meditate on scripture rather than memorizing and meditating upon whatever the latest thing is in the world. I won’t be distracted, the war, the weather, or the latest whatever. I want You.

And then the last step… If you’re a note taker, pray first. Grab something, two. Stop for a moment, three. Listen to God, four. Answer Him by responding, yes. And then number six, start a new habit, start meditating and receiving understanding from the Lord. Not just a quiet and passive activity. No.

I will actively sit there with my Bible open and I will not get up until I find something, a truth from His Word, that I will respond and listen to God and say, God, I open my life to Your truth. I want that. What do I need to do? And I’ll tell you what, you’ll get some clear direction. And then you have to say, yes. I’ll say yes, Lord. Yes, to Your will. And to Your way, I’ll say yes. You know? That’s what meditation’s all about. It’s not humming through the Bible and getting all the… I know it’s important to know content, I know the content of the Bible. I know how many chapters are, I know all that stuff. That is just knowledge. I’ve had professors in college that knew all that and were unsaved. They looked at the Bible as they looked at Shakespeare. They knew it like literature. They didn’t know the author. It’s not content, it’s not facts, it’s truth that we received as the engrafted Word that changes us from the inside out.

Why not making a choice this week? Find a time of solitude where you get alone with God because you love Him. And then simply devote yourself and say, Lord, I’m not going to get up till I find something, help me. And sit there with your pen in hand and start reading. Say, Lord, show me something. When you find it, mark it. When you mark it, ponder it for a moment. What does it mean? And then when the Lord floods your mind with what it means in a truth that’s so simple and powerful, say, Lord, what do you want me to do about that? And then say yes to Him. And then think about it all day long, no matter how busy, how distracted, how evil the world is. You think about that all day long and what you’ll find is you’ll want to share it with someone

Men, you do this at home instead of playing your virtual sports games and all your competitions and all this junk that men do, and women do in their free time. Just say, I’m going to devote 15, 20 minutes of my lunch hour to You, or half hour, all of it. And then you find that at work, or at school, and when you come home you say, honey or kids, can I tell you what I found in God’s Word today? Oh, you do that every day, it’s transforming. It’s what God wants. Let’s bow before Him in prayer.

Father, I pray that we would make a time in our life to get alone with You because we love You. And then I pray that when we get that time alone with You, because we love you, that we do what your great servants have done throughout all of recorded history, we would meditate upon Your truth and let it change us. For meditation is a digestive facility that you have put into our spiritual beings. And meditation takes truth from merely being knowledge in our minds and it puts it in our wills. And we want to willfully choose to start a new habit of meditating on Your Word so we can be conformed to the will, to the way, and to the image of Jesus Christ. In whose name we pray, amen. God bless you as you go.

Let’s analyze the world each of us live in.

• It is busy, right? More to do than time permits each day.
• It is also distracting. Many things draw and tug at our minds trying to get our attention.
• It is also evil. There is darkness pressing in around our hearts and souls each moment as the last days breathe down upon is.

Now, if I could offer you a secret that could make you powerfully godly in a busy, distracting, and evil world – would you be interested? How about if I offered to show you a proven technique that has always worked – in any time, in any place, and under any pressure? Sounds too good to be true? No it is even worse than that. It is too simple to be actually considered. So here goes. Please turn with me to Hebrews 11.

What do Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Job, David, Ezra, and Daniel all have in common with Jesus? Listen as we stand and read Hebrews 11.1-10.

All of them held on to God’s Word and turned it over and over in their mind until they digested it into their life. In Hebrews 11 we can start, there we find a roster of those who heard God’s Word and held on to it.

• In Abel’s life it is called OFFERING TO GOD (11.4). Think of Abel living with his flocks, seeking the Creator of the Universe, and dying for his testimony in Genesis 3-4.
• Enoch’s life it is called WALKING WITH GOD (11.5-6), Enoch lived in one of the worst times in history. In fact his description of the time just before the Flood is the ungodliest verse in the whole Bible. Turn there if you’d like, it is Jude 14-15.
• In Noah’s life it is called OBEYING GOD, (11.7) the world was ending, and Noah had to work for 100 years building a boat. And all the way his mind was on the Lord.
• In Abraham’s life it is called BELIEVING IN GOD, (11.8-10). Can you imagine living in a tent, camping for
• In David’s life it is called FOLLOWING CLOSE AFTER GOD (Psalm 63:8), Psalm 63:8 My soul follows close behind You; Your right hand upholds me.
• In Ezra’s life it is called TAKING HEED TO GOD (Psalm 119:9-11),
• In Daniel’s life it is called PURPOSING TO LIVE GOD’S WAY (Daniel 1:8) . . . do you realize that you don’t have to search any further for answers? Do you realize don’t have to research any more for sources? In this Book is ALL that God wanted us to know and have to live for Him. So we should stop trying to find something else and focus right here!
• In Christ’s life it is called LIVING BY THE WORD OF GOD, and in the Wilderness and through all the temptations, and with the physical weakness of the fasting – Jesus exemplified the victory of God’s Word!

All these men knew, valued, and practiced the Solitude of Simple Discipline: Listening to God through Biblical Meditation.

Here are the challenged to Meditation, mark them down as we find them:

• Ezra who faced an entire nation that had drifted from God while living in Babylon cries in Psalm 119:11, “Thy word I have treasured in my heart, that I may not sin against Thee.”
• Over and over in the book of Proverbs, God pleads with us to discover the richness of His Word, Prov. 4:1-12 listen to the rich metaphors of meditation: HEAR, GIVE ATTENTION, RETAIN, KEEP, GET, LOVE, GET, EXALT, EMBRACE, HEAR, RECEIVE, TAKE FIRM HOLD, KEEP! Get the idea? Grab on to God’s Word inside your life and don’t turn loose!
• In the death throes of Judah’s history while besieged by Babylonians, drowning in a slimy well, hunted and near death Jeremiah1 learns, “You will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart.” (Jer. 29:13).
• When Satan tempted Jesus He silenced the tempter, and it gave us our first lessons in true godly meditation as He responded: “Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.” (Matt. 4:4)

These verses are calling us to one of the simplest but most neglected spiritual practices – the godly practice of meditation. The simple exercise of getting alone, closing the doors of distraction be they computers, television, sports, or hobbies in order to read and dwell upon the truth of God and the wisdom stored up in His Word. Anyone who will choose to practice godly meditation, God’s Word is going to explode with a richness of wisdom and spiritual fire within our souls.

Solitude is getting alone with God because I love Him. Simple Devotion is listening to God in His Word.

Too2 often it seems we’re only motivated to pursue God when we encounter a problem in our daily walk But meditating on the Word of God should be our daily way we go about getting His life-giving truth into the core of our souls – down into the place where the vital decisions of our lives are made every day.

Meditation is the process by which God’s Word passes from your head down into your spirit where its power can he released. “Meditation is the digestive faculty of the soul3.” Even though Jesus was physically depleted from 40 days of fasting, He was so strong in spirit from seeking God and meditating on the Word that He wielded a few words and they were a powerful weapon to defeat His adversary.

To apply this, here are six simple but important principles I use to deepen and enrich my meditation in God’s Word:

(1) PRAY FIRST: Ask God for the Spirit of wisdom and revelation into God’s Word (Ephesians 1:17) He wants to give us insight through our meditation! It’s very important that we understand that fact so we don’t keep letting our feelings and emotions stand in the way of our time with the Lord. You may have to fight through a case of the “blahs” – but God never does!

(2) GRAB SOMETHING: Write the scripture down in your notebook or journal. Writing down the scripture takes a disciplined effort, and the more disciplined you are, the more opportunity you give the Holy Spirit to speak to you. When you write something down you tend to think about it in a deeper way. You analyze it more carefully, and your thoughts are more penetrating.

(3) STOP FOR A MOMENT: Write down what you understand from that particular scripture. At this point you might think, “This thought is nothing new – nothing unusual. Why bother writing it down? I’ll wait until I think of something really unusual.” But if you do that, your mind is going to start floating away on another subject. So write down your thoughts, even though they might not seem very profound to you at the time.

(4) LISTEN TO GOD: Apply the understanding to your life. As you continue to meditate, the Lord will probably begin to fill you with incredible insight concerning His character and His love. When you receive these “nuggets of gold” in your heart, don’t just relax and be content to store them away for safekeeping – start to apply them to your life! Ask yourself:

(5) ANSWER HIM: Respond to God. Nine times out of ten, meditation will bring you to a point where you’re bursting with a new response to God. Don’t lose that moment by hesitating! Seize the opportunity to respond with all your heart to the living God!

(6) START A NEW HABIT: Seek Wisdom. Meditating4 and receiving understanding from the Lord is not just a quiet and passive activity. We don’t just sit there with an open Bible while the Lord fills us to the brim! Instead, the Lord requires us to take an active stance in meditation. As the truth of God penetrates your mind it attacks and demolishes the sin it confronts. John 17:17 was what Jesus told us, Mt. 4 He demonstrated it! Jesus said the way we become holy is through the Word. Remember this book will keep you from sin and sin will keep you from this book!

Now let’s stop talking about it, and do it. So where should we start? How about the first book and chapter many people are discipled from – Colossians 3?

The key to grabbing gold in Colossians is noting the imperatives:

Present Active

There are seven byproducts of mediation:

1. PROSPERITY: JOSHUA 1:8 [Think of taking the reins from perhaps the greatest leader who ever lived. A man who could talk to God face to face, lead 3 million people for 40 years, a judge, prophet and priest. What is the prescription to follow such a monumental man? Meditate on the Word!]

2. FRUITFULNESS: PSALM 1:2 [At the front door of the longest book of the Bible is a secret recipe for spiritual success. God wants us to prosper and bear fruit. How? Meditation! ]

3. PEACEFULNESS IN TRIALS: PSALM 35:28 [No one in scripture has more of their life laid bare than David. His affair, family problems, job stress, people problems, enemies, Satanic attack and more. How did you do it David? Meditation on the Word! ]

4. STABILITY IN ROUGH SEAS: PSALM 37:30 [Is your boat rocking? Starting to list, sink? What is the sure fire way to stabilize things? Meditate on the Word! ]

5. PERSONAL WORSHIP IN DRY TIMES: PSALM 63:6 [Are you running fast and thin? Do your nights and days run together? How many times have you wished for a quiet day at a mountain, seaside or forest retreat with just your Bible and a cup of coffee? God says, the coffees on and I’m waiting at every turn of your life. Turn your car, bus, sink, computer workstation, desk or whatever into an altar. How? By Meditating on the Word! ]

6. A LIFELONG TESTIMONY TO GOD’S FAITHFULNESS AS OLD AGE COMES: PSALM 71:24 [Ever want to end up as sweet as some of the precious saints you know. They die serenely, enduring those last long and pain filled days with a strength and peace that only comes from God. Where did they get that in life and into the shadow of death? By Meditating on the Word! ]

7. COMFORT IN ADVERSITY PSALM 77:12 [Do you feel it is too hard to even go on? Does the enemy seem to be winning? Are the problems multiplying like weeds? God has a solution and it is simple and powerful. What/ Meditating on his Word!]

Solitude of: TIME: John 17; Mat 26.36; Luke 6.12; Mark 1.35; PLACE: Mat 14:13, 23; Mark 6:46; Luke 5:16; 6:12; John 18:2 SPIRIT: Luke 9:18

1 The prophet Jeremiah knew about the power of meditation. He cried out: “Thy words were found and I ate them, and Thy words became for me a joy and the delight of my heart…” (Jer. 15:16) Is your spirit joyful because real life giving “food” nourishes it – or is it malnourished? Is your quiet time with the Lord a joy -or a duty? God’s Word is not something you read to fulfill a daily “obligation” or to show Him what a dutiful Christian you are. In a very real sense, it’s meant to bring the kind of inner happiness that gives “healing to your body and refreshment to your bones.” (Prov. 3.8)

2 Adapted from YWAM article by Fran Paris, MEDITATION: OUR LOST TREASURE. “Meditation is the way we can “mine” the treasure in God’s Word. It’s the way we hide God’s Word in the storerooms of our heart so we can draw steadily from those storedup riches. Just as food nourishes your body, God’s Word is real spiritual nourishment. It’s like vitamins, minerals, proteins, and carbohydrates! Without food, you become malnourished and sickly. Eventually you die. And if you don’t have a healthy, regular practice of taking God’s Word into your inner man – you’ll experience similar results in your spiritual life. “

3 Campbell McAlpine, Alone With God.

4 There are seven byproducts of meditation: Prosperity Joshua 1:8; Fruitfulness Psalm 1:2; Peacefulness In Trials Psalm 35:28; Stability In Rough Seas Psalm 37:30; Personal Worship In Dry Times Psalm 63:6; A Lifelong Testimony To God’s Faithfulness As Old Age Comes Psalm 71:24; Comfort In Adversity Psalm 77:12

Slides