The Practice and Power of Meditation


Both yesterday morning at TDF and tonight in Birmingham, I spoke from Joshua 1:8 on the practice and power of meditation.   I contrasted two interesting experiences I had in college.  As a freshman at King College, I listened to the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s presentation about Transcendental Meditation in which one uses a “mantra” to empty one’s mind.  As a sophomore at Columbia International University, I was taught by the Navigators how to fill my mind with Scripture and to unlock its meaning by meditating day and night.

I still have a little Navagator booklet I purchased in 1971, that said:  “Meditation is the skeleton key that unlocks the greatest storeroom in the house of God’s provision for the Christian…. (It is) holding the Word of God in your heart until it has affected every phase of your life….  Beware of getting alone with your own thoughts.  Get alone with God’s thoughts.  There is danger in rummaging through…thoughts that can be labeled daydreaming or worse.  Don’t meditate upon yourself but dwell upon God…. Make this a built-in habit of daily living…”

I’ve never been a fan of the Maharishi, but I’m a huge fan of the practice and power of biblical meditation.  Find a verse, read it, study it, memorize it, visualize it, personalize it, and meditate on it.  Think it through as you drive to work.  Ponder it as you walk along the greenways.  Mull it over as you go to sleep, and you’ll wake up brighter in the morning.