Crossroads Bible Fellowship

I ran into a great quote today by Keller on the topic of prayer and I wanted to share it with you.

“Jesus always gives you what you would have prayed for if you knew everything He knows.”

Michael

Hello again everyone!

So, what did you think? Do you have any questions from Sunday? As we discussed meditation and really “Eating theh Word,” I hope you were encouraged and energized to love Chrst more. What are you wrestling with in this area?

I look forward to your comments and questions.

See you tomorrow with more comments on meditation continuing our series. I hope to meditate with you through a few passages very soon.

In Him, michael

Maybe we need to back up a bit and give a simple definition of meditation as we continue. Here is Keller’s definition or summary of what meditation actually is.
“Meditation on the Scriptures is pondering, relishing, imagining, applying and rehearsing God’s truth until it becomes real to the heart and permanently affects your attitude and behavior.”
From Gospel Christianity Course 2 page 32.

How does that do for a start? We often think about meditation as thinking on Scripture, turning it over in our minds like a cow chewing its cud. I think that is a helpful way to think about it, but I think Keller has helped us to go a bit further. What I like about this definition is the stated goal of meditation. We should meditate so that…
1.    Truth becomes real to my heart.
2.    My attitude and behavior are affected permanently.
What great goals! The first is more of a tasting of God and His goodness in Scripture and the second is that the truth of God changes us. It has to! My life will be different.

Now, Keller connects meditation to prayer and reading in the following way. He calls meditation a “middle practice which bridges between reading and prayer.” I think his point is this. As I read, it becomes difficult to pray over what I have just read unless it becomes part of me. If I meditate like we described above, that will inform and change my prayers.

Personally I struggle with prayer if I am not reflecting on some part or aspect of Scripture. When I pray and do not think about Scripture, I tend to say the same things and fall into the same ruts. How many times have you prayed and afterwards noticed that you said the same things that you had the day before? This happens often to me when I pray to thank God for my meals. I go into default mode and often did not think about what I was saying. I was on auto pilot. This is why Scripture helps my prayers. If I have been meditating on some portion of Scripture, I am thinking about and affected by many things God is saying, so I can pray about those things.

If these things are something you have struggled with in the past or still struggle with, I would suggest the following messages by Don Whitney. I have listened to them over and over and they have helped me to think about meditation and prayer through Scripture in a very healthy way. Check out these three messages here.

Back tomorrow with more if God desired me to be. ☺ James 4:13-17
Michael

Meditation is “the descent of the mind with truth into the heart, until our whole being yearns for God.” This quote comes from Peter Toon as quoted in Gospel Christianity Course 2.

Great quote, but what does it mean?
Too often I have read Scripture and studied through it in such a way as to get it into my mind and not necessarily into all of my life. This quote reminds me that meditating on Scripture should help me to take truth into my mind and into my heart in such a way that I will long for God with the psalmist.
Psalm 42:1 says, “As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God.” ESV
Psalm 63:1 says, “O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.” ESV
Do I long for God like this? Most of the time I do not, but I am convinced that if I am meditating on God’s amazing word, I will yearn for the One who wrote it. Meditation will help me to take my learning into my heart, which includes the head, but also so much more.

Now, there is much confusion about this word “heart.” I think Valentine’s Day is to blame!
When I say the word “heart,” you probably think about emotions, right? I know I did and most people do. The problem is that Scripture does not use heart this way most of the time.
Psalm 40:8 says, “I delight to do your will, O my God; your law is within my heart.” ESV Could this mean that he hid God’s word in his emotions? I don’t think so.
Deuteronomy 30:6 says, “And the Lord your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your offspring, so that you will love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, that you may live.” ESV What about this one? Do you think the emotions are what God is going to circumcise?

The fact is that heart means many things in Scripture, but most often it includes emotions as well as your thought process (mind) and your will (decision making). It is much more than these things, but it often includes all of them. I would suggest that the heart is actually the center of who you are. It is your core, so if something penetrates to the core of who you are, it will affect everything. Whatever is in our hearts we will naturally think about and act on. Whatever is actually in our heart will ultimately drive us. It will produce actions and emotions. It can’t help doing that. Whatever is in our hearts will pop into our minds constantly and even color everything else in our lives. Now do you see why it is so important for Scripture to penetrate our hearts and lives to this degree? I plead with you to resist the temptation to think “emotions” alone when I say heart.

So, do you long to have the truth of Scripture settle into your heart? Meditation can help the process. It will be work, but it will change you. Isn’t that what we all want—to be changed by God and His word?

Join us tomorrow as we continue looking at meditation.
Michael

Hey! Anyone out there reading this and want to comment on or ask questions about this past week’s message from our own JJ? I’m sure he would love to have more discussion. Didn’t he do a great job considering he had less that 24 hours notice with me being sick? Thanks JJ for your service.

Let the comments begin!

By the way, look for more devotional posts tomorrow and the following days. I finally feel better again.

As I stated yesterday, I have been having a hard time in Scripture lately. It is not that I lack a desire to be in Scripture, but rather that my time has been rather random. I have jumped around and landed at different places for a short time, but I have not stuck anywhere. This must stop! I have decided that one of the better ways to challenge what I have been doing is to think through meditation, specifically meditation on the word. There is good precedence that we should be meditating on God Himself and even His works in creation, but I think I need to focus on the word for a time. I hope you will join me in this pursuit.

To help me in my study, I have enlisted Dr. Tim Keller. He has written some pdf files that are available here called Gospel Christianity 1, 2 and 3. They are worth the price you must pay (if you are part of Crossroads, contact me before you buy a copy) and I am going to slowly walk through chapter 2 of course 2 called “How do I meet Jesus myself?” This chapter walks through meditation, so it will directly apply to my battle mentioned above.

As we get started, I would love to hear about how you “meditate” or “reflect” on Scripture in your own lives.

Well, if you choose to join me on this journey, I look forward to your helpful comments. Please pray with me that God will work in us so that we treasure Him as we should.
Until tomorrow…
Michael

Sometimes I really struggle with making simple decisions, so I thought I would post this and see what the rest of you are doing. I am trying to figure out where to read in Scripture without bouncing around. What do each of you do?

If you have a Bible reading schedule that you use, what is it?

If you don’t have a formal schedule, how do you decide where you will read each day?

I would love to hear your thoughts. Thanks ahead of time.

Michael

How devoted are you to Christ? How devoted to you is He? Remember that these are not meant to beat you down, but rather to challenge you and properly motivate you. What do you think?

Do you have any questions or comments from this past Sunday?

Michael

Hey everyone!

The opportunity is now open for thoughts or questions. I know I was challenged but still encouraged by what we discussed on Sunday and I hope you were too. Please feel free to comment. Thanks too for being patient as we work through these issues together.

In Him,

michael

Hello everyone! So sorry that it has been so long, but as teh commercials say, “Life comes at you fast.”

Please feel free to comment or ask questions related to last Sunday’s message on “Christian Hedonism.” I also ran across a quote by Edwards that is very thoughtful and relates to our recent discussions about not stopping at knowledge as the end. Piper quotes it in his biography message on Edwards. Here is the quote.

“Seek not to grow in knowledge chiefly for the sake of applause, and to enable you to dispute with others; but seek it for the benefit of your souls, and in order to practice . . . Practice according to what knowledge you have. This will be the way to know more. . . . [According to Psalm 119:100] “I understand more than the ancients, because I keep thy precepts.” (Works, II, 162f)

There you go. Any thoughts?

Michael