Oxygen To My SoulSample

Meditating the Word of God

Psalm 119 calls us to meditate on God’s Word. Don’t merely read the Bible, but meditate on it. Ponder, reflect, consider, pray through, think it over. Chew on it like your dog chews on a bone. “Oh how I love your law! It is my meditation all the day.” “I will meditate on your precepts and fix my eyes on your ways.” “I have more understanding than all my teachers, for your testimonies are my meditation.” “My eyes are awake before the watches of the night, that I may meditate on your promise.”

George Müller oversaw an orphanage in England during the nineteenth century, in which he took care of more than ten thousand orphans. He never asked for money but relied on prayer alone. He did not just read God’s Word, he meditated on it. He described his daily practice:

The first thing I did was to begin to meditate on the Word of God; searching every verse, to get blessing out of it; not for the sake of the public ministry of the Word; not for the sake of preaching on what I had meditated upon; but for the sake of obtaining food for my own soul. The result I have found to be almost invariably this, that after a very few minutes my soul has been led to confession, or to thanksgiving, or to intercession, or to supplication; so that though I did not give myself to prayer, but to meditation, yet it turned almost immediately into prayer. When I have been for a while making confession, or intercession, or supplication, or have given thanks, I go on to the next words or verse, turning all, as I go on, into prayer for myself or others.

When you read God’s Word, be all there. Soak in it. Pray through it. Meditate upon it. Let it marinate in your heart all the day.