Steps to Intimacy With Godنموونە

MEDITATE

Reflect on the Scriptures and let the Holy Spirit apply them to our life.

The key to maintaining correct thoughts is to allow God’s Word to transform you by the renewing of your mind. Our inner thoughts must be renewed. The Bible is the inspired Word of God and is sufficient to guard and guide our mind in every area. We must learn to think according to the Word: pure, wholesome, and faith filled thoughts continually.

Regular meditation on the Word is crucial. To “meditate,” in the biblical sense of the word, means to focus our mind on a particular truth and allow it to speak to us. It is thinking and rethinking about God’s word. Meditation is thinking about something over and over again. The idiom “chewing the cud” or “chewing on something for a while” is essentially the idea of meditating. Cows and other animals chew their cud by bringing food back into their mouth and chewing it, often for hours, until it is able to be properly digested. We “chew the cud” of the Word by bringing it to mind repeatedly, extracting everything we can from it and digesting its meaning. The Word of God is food to our heart, like natural food to our body, and what we ingest ultimately becomes part of who we are.

Meditating is different than simply reading. We read for information, but we meditate for transformation. Think and rethink about what you read until it begins to change your life. It must become personal—a word from God spoken directly to your life. Write it down and meditate on it all day long.

Whoever controls our mind controls our entire life. The mind has always been the main battlefield. In the Garden of Eden, the serpent lied to Eve, attacking her through her thoughts, trying to get her to view the tree and its fruit as something other than what God said. Let the Holy Spirit speak to you through His Word and meditate on what He says. Let the thoughts of His Word mingle with your thoughts. Trust the Holy Spirit to reveal what you need to know.

As you are reading in the atmosphere of the flow of God’s presence, you will at times sense an inner stirring about certain passages of Scripture. This is God speaking to you, revealing Himself through His written Word.