- As you become more comfortable
with scripture meditation, then you can do it anywhere. As you become more acquainted and engaged with the scripture, you may naturally find yourself thinking about it as you go about your day. (bright upbeat dramatic music) Hello, beloved and
welcome to beloved women with me Christina Patterson, and where we encourage,
equip and empower women, in the love of Jesus Christ
and the truth of God's word. If you are new here, welcome to beloved, be sure to subscribe and join
beloved at belovedwomen.org. And if you are returning welcome back. A few weeks ago, I shared
a video on how to hide God's word in your heart, and that one of the ways we can do that is to
meditate on scriptures. Now, meditating on its own
is contemplating, pondering or thinking about something
for an extended amount of time. It's surrendering our mental
capacity to a certain thought, or no thought at all, with the central purpose to clear the mind and enter a state of calm. Now, many people may think, my mind is constantly spinning and thinking about millions
of things at a time, I don't believe I have the
discipline to meditate. I want you to think of it this way, if you've ever worried
about something to the point that you can't stop thinking about it, and you're mentally obsessed with it, you're pretty
much just meditating. Worry is a type of meditation. Now, that's not the type of meditation, we want to practice as Christians. In secular circles, the
purpose of meditation is more to clear the mind, calm the mind and empty the mind, but as Christians, we don't want to just
stop at an empty mind, we want our minds to be
filled with God's truth. This is where scripture
meditation comes in. Scripture meditation is
pondering on scripture for an extended amount of time, thinking about its meaning and intention, deeper than just a simple read of a verse or passage in the Bible. Meditation is a biblical practice, to use our thoughts to glorify God. We're not emptying our minds, but filling our minds with God's truth. Scripture meditation is truly
savoring the word of God or what Jesus calls, the bread of life. In real life, we can eat so
fast that we don't even taste the food that we consume, but when we take our
time to savor the flavors and enjoy the taste, it brings a new enjoyment
and pleasure to eating. Consuming God's word is much the same. In our busy society we are
often tempted to rush our time in God's word without
truly savoring His truth. But when we meditate on God's word, we give our time and focus
to truly take in God's truth. So how do we do that? Well, in today's video, I am sharing with you my
simple three step process to teach you how to
meditate on God's word. The first step is to select the verse or passage you want to meditate on. Maybe you have a favorite verse or life verse that you want to choose, or maybe you want to find a
scripture on a particular topic that interests you. To do that you can use a Bible app or software like YouVersion, and search a particular
word to find scriptures on that topic. I also like to use openbible.info/topics, where you can type in a word or phrase, and it will give you many verses
and passages on that topic. You can also download my free
scripture memory worksheet, in the description of this
video to find an organized list of scriptures on various topics. If you're just getting started
with meditating on scripture, I suggest starting with one verse. You may think that's
not enough to meditate on but trust me, God's word is living and active, and one
verse is more than enough to get started with. Once you get used to meditating, then it may be easier for
you to move up to meditating on passages, chapters and even
entire books of the Bible. I also want to add that
selecting a scripture to meditate on is something that
you can, and I would say you should pray about. Simply ask God to reveal
to you what He wants you to meditate on. Once we've decided what
scripture we will meditate on, we are ready for step two. The second step to scripture meditation, is to acquaint or familiarize
yourself with the scripture. You can't really think about
something that you don't know. So even if you only have one
verse that you are meditating on, it will greatly help you
to have a basic understanding of the verse. You can do this in many ways. You can read the verse
in its full context, which means read the verse, but also read the
scriptures around the verse, to get a more complete understanding of what the verse means. You can read the verse in
different translations, read the verse out loud so
that you can actually hear yourself saying it. You can write the scripture
down so that you can see it as you're writing it. If you can memorize the scripture, that's even better because
then you're not limited to only meditating the verse
when you have your Bible, but anywhere you go. If you wanna do a Bible
study of the scripture before you start meditating
on it, I have a video on how to study the Bible using my simple four hours Bible study method. There's a link in the
description of this video, to watch that. You don't have to do all these things, but choose one or some
that will be helpful to you so that you can familiarize yourself with the scripture, that you choose to meditate on. So now you've selected a scripture, you've acquainted yourself
with the scripture, and now you are ready for the third and final step of scripture meditation, which is to focus and
think on the scripture. So first you want to clear your mind so that you can focus, get to a quiet place. If you have a lot on your mind, maybe it's a good idea to write it down so that you can
just get it out of your head and focus on it later. Now, clearing the mind is
where secular meditation most often stops, but not with us. We are clearing the mind to
fill it with God's truth. Isaiah 26:3 says, "you keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on you
because he trusts in you." Once your mind is clear,
it's time to simply think and focus on the scripture. This is pretty straightforward. You are literally going to
think about the scripture. Here are a few scripture
meditation prompts, chew on this scripture slowly. This means you may say the scripture over and over again in your mind slowly, think slowly about each word of the verse, what it means and why would the author use that particular word? Get curious about this scripture
and ask lots of questions. What emotions or feelings are
evoked from this scripture? Why was this particular
scripture important for God to put in the Bible? View the scripture from all angles. How do you think the author
of this scripture was feeling when they wrote it? How do you think the original
audience of the scripture would have felt when they heard it? If the scripture is about a person or people in the Bible, ask yourself what you think
each person's perspective would have been in that scenario. What do you think God wants you to learn and take away from this scripture? Now these prompts are
just to get you started, but let your mind wonder
about the scripture as the Lord leads you. If you've done step two and familiarized yourself
with this scripture, then you can meditate on the scripture anywhere, washing the dishes, waiting in the car pool line, or on your commute to work. In the Psalms, we read of
David meditating on God's word in the watches of the night. Also God commands Joshua
to meditate on His word day and night. God told him, "this book
of the law shall not depart from your mouth. You shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful
to do according to all that is written in it, for
then you will make your way prosperous and then you
will have good success." The most challenging part
of meditating on scripture, is being intentional to make time to do it and then creating
space in your mind to think on God's word. So, if you're just getting started, I recommend setting aside
time and quiet to meditate. Maybe this is something
that you can incorporate, into your devotional or prayer time, if you already do that. A you become more comfortable with scripture meditation,
then you can do it anywhere. As you become more acquainted and engaged with the scripture. You may naturally find yourself thinking about it as you go about your day. Scripture meditation is
not the same as reading or studying your Bible, is simply creating the
mental space to think about God's word and what it means. If you find yourself getting
off focus, that's fine. Just notice that your mind has
wandered off the scripture, and return back to your practice
of scripture meditation. Don't waste time beating yourself
up for getting off track, it will take time to
train your mind to focus, so you'll need to extend
grace to yourself. The purpose is not to be
the best at meditating, but to allow God's powerful word, to fill your mind, thoughts and soul. If you would like a
little bit more guidance when it comes to scripture meditation, I have created a free audio
guided scripture meditation to walk you through the process. You can download it for free, in the description of this video. Now, I would love to hear from you. Are you gonna try scripture meditation? And if so, what scripture
will you be meditating on? Let me know in the comments. If you enjoyed today's video, I wanna invite you to join Beloved TV, and receive hundreds of more videos, just like this one to help grow your faith and encourage your soul. If you are tired of the
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be blessed and be loved. (upbeat music)
