Spiritual Formation

Psalm 119:11, 97-100

Thus far this year, we’ve looked at several necessary disciplines for spiritual formation to take place in our lives: Bible reading, communion with God (i.e., prayer), gathering with believers on the Lord’s Day, serving others, and periods of solitude. The spiritual discipline I want to discuss today is at the very heart of how Christ is formed in our lives. You might work some or all of the other disciplines into your life, but if this one is missing, all of the others will lack the vibrancy and vitality God intends you to experience in your spiritual life.

The two things I like best about the work that I do as a pastor are introducing people to Jesus Christ and watching new believers develop in their walk with God. These two things together should remind us that seeing people come to faith in Christ alone does not complete our mission. The task we’ve been left to do is “make disciples” that obey all that Jesus commanded them (cf. Matthew 28:19-20). Consequently, what happens after a person receives Christ is as important to the fulfillment of our God-given mission as the initial decision of the person to trust Jesus as Savior.

Paul uses the image of a mother’s “travail” to illustrate the toil that takes place in a pastor’s heart until Christ is formed in those he leads. He says...

My little children, for whom I labor in birth again until Christ is formed in you… (Galatians 4:19)

In other words, just as a mother “labors” to bring new life into the world, so Paul “labors in birth AGAIN (!!) until Christ is formed in you.” The process didn’t end with the new birth! It isn’t complete until Christ is “formed” in those that claim to know Jesus. That is sometimes a difficult and painful process to see accomplished.

As your pastor, that’s my desire for each of you and the reason I “labor again” in these messages so that you can know the fullness that God intends for you to experience in following Jesus. Jesus called you to something more meaningful and challenging than just escaping Hell. He has called you to a higher purpose that involves giving you “life more abundant.” It won’t be converts alone that will change our world, it will be disciples that have allowed Christ to be formed in them that will change our world.

The problem, as I see it, is that we have too many people that claim to know Jesus but have very little evidence of the reality that comes from Christ being formed in them. There has been very little significant change, if any, that has happened, since they say they began following Jesus.

I suppose that there are several possible causes for this happening, but primary among them is the reality that most Christians have never been taught how to let Christ be formed in them. That’s why I want to discuss with you a spiritual discipline that is at the HEART (!!) of the kind of Christlike development we should all desire in our lives.

I’m talking about the spiritual discipline of meditation, but please don’t think of it as meditation that is found in many eastern religions. In their religious practices they seek to empty their minds of everything that keeps them from “a state of relaxed awareness.” Their practice is actually very dangerous and potentially opens a person’s mind to the demonic realm...which is a subject for another message.

When the Bible speaks of meditation it is talking about FOCUSING our minds or filling them with the right kinds of thoughts. Since the mind is essential to our spiritual development, we will see the transformation of our lives only as we see the transformation of our thinking. Listen to a paraphrase of a well-known passage of scripture that explains how this process works.

So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you. (Romans 12:1-2 MSG)

I think this paraphrase is helpful for at least two reasons:

1. It reminds us that the people in whom Christ is being formed will be increasingly less comfortable with the culture of the world around them. There will be an ever-increasing distinction between the secular cultural in which they live and the Christ that is being formed in them. One of the greatest problems we have with spiritual formation is that we “fit (so comfortably) into [our culture] without even thinking” about how Christ’s Word calls us to a different kind of culture.

2. This paraphrase also hints at the basic meaning of Christian meditation in the words, “...fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out.” Rather than letting the culture around us shape our thinking, we are encouraged to be increasingly shaped in our thinking by the scripture. Simply put...as we meditate on scripture, we start to think more like Christ and less like our culture.

The fact is that someone or something is going to shape the way you think. It can be the scripture or it can be a hodgepodge of ideas that you have jumbled together to establish your eclectic worldview. This shaping process very often involves the media we listen to, watch and read, as well as the educational system that has our attention for hours and days at a time.

Can I just say to all our students, no matter what university (or high school) you attend, there will inevitably be people actively seeking to change the way you think...that can be good or that can be bad, depending on the content they are teaching you. College campuses are especially viewed as the “womb” from which modern culture is birthed. Parents wonder why their children go off to college as believers and come home agnostics or worse, but the answer is often very simple and I’ll show you what it is.

There is an insightful book written by Rosaria Butterfield entitled, "The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert: An English Professor's Journey into the Christian Faith.” Dr. Butterfield was a tenured professor of English at Syracuse University. She served in their English Department and Women's Studies Program from 1992 to 2002. She was also living in an immoral relationship with another woman. Her story of how she came to Christ and how her life was dramatically changed by Him is a fascinating read. I strongly encourage you to find out more about her story and/or check out her website.

What I want you to see comes from something she writes in her book concerning how a tenured professor and department head was able, along with the other academics in her department, to control the flow of ideas in her classroom and thus, shape her student’s thinking processes.

She writes, “As a feminist scholar, this concept—worldview—was the most important concept in my intellectual arsenal. Worldview is central to feminist studies and to any field of study that analyzes oppressed or marginalized peoples. It helps us to understand how interpretations come from the frames of intelligibility that we use to look at the events that matter. Critical perspective asserts that we make meaning out of our lives not by personal experience but by the frames through which we filter that experience. On my Women’s Studies 101 syllabus, I wrote this about critical perspective:

“NB (nota bene, or, “note well”): Students are expected to write all papers and examination essay questions from a feminist worldview or critical perspective. In Spanish class you speak and think in Spanish. In Women’s Studies you speak and think in feminist paradigms. Examination essay questions written from critical perspectives outside of feminism will receive an automatic grade of F. Papers written from critical perspectives outside of feminism will be allowed one revision. Any student who is unable to write and think from a feminist critical perspective or worldview with a clear conscious should drop the class now.

“How did I get away with this?” she asks. “The secular academic world is bold in its protection of worldview. And, I and all of my feminist colleagues put this statement on our syllabi. We worked as a block. We comprised an interpretive community. An interpretive community consciously and intentionally protects its way of thinking. This is how important worldview is to education—of all stripes and colors. And this is how important interpretive community is to worldview. We do not make meaning in isolation.”

This is a stunningly honest revelation that many people simply don’t know is happening in our college classrooms and departments. The whole idea is to focus the minds of students on secular values and ideals that ultimately gives birth to the emerging culture around us. What she writes is a bold acknowledgment that could likely be repeated about many college classrooms/departments across the country, thus exposing how the thinking of students is shaped to give us the various facets of our present culture.

Again, what this illustrates is that someone or something is going to shape how and/or what you think. That’s why I’m telling you about the importance of allowing the scripture to shape your thinking so that what is birthed in you is an ever-increasing Christlikeness, rather than the secular culture of this age. This is the process that Paul was describing for us earlier in the paraphrase of Romans 12:1-2.

Before moving on with the discussion of meditation and it’s importance to believers that desire a growing spiritual life in Christ, let me quote one more time from Rosaria Butterfield's book about what happened after her conversion to Christ. She writes...

“When I became a Christian, I had to change everything—my life, my friends, my writing, my teaching, my advising, my clothes, my speech, my thoughts. I was tenured to a field that I could no longer work in. I was the faculty advisor to all of the gay and lesbian and feminist groups on campus. I was writing a book that I no longer believed in. And, I was scheduled in a few months to give the incoming address to all of Syracuse University’s graduate students. What in the world would I say to them?,” she asks.

And, in her book, she goes on to share that speech with the readers. She is a powerful testimony to our life-changing God and an illustration that the formation of Christ in you inevitably changes you!

All of this serves to demonstrate my point that meditating on scripture is vital for every believer that desires for Christ to be formed in him/her. The fact is...what controls your thought processes ultimately controls the way you approach and respond to life. Until we begin thinking the thoughts of God we will never see life from His point of view. This is the reason we have so many smart people, but so little real spiritual wisdom in our churches.

The references to meditation in scripture are so frequent that it would be impossible for us to see them all in a single sermon. However, there are two specific passages that I want us to look at because one of them emphasizes the blessings that accrue to those that develop this spiritual discipline and the other demonstrates a pattern for how to develop this spiritual discipline in our lives. Listen first to the words of the Psalmist…

Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stands in the path of sinners, nor sits in the seat of the scornful; But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in His law he meditates day and night. He shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that brings forth its fruit in its season, whose leaf also shall not wither;And whatever he does shall prosper. (Psalm 1:1-3)

It would be a valuable discussion to talk about the opening verse of this Psalm. It is a caution about those that teach, advise and associate with us so as not allow them to determine our way of thinking, speaking and acting.

However, what I want you to see is the four-fold promise made in this Psalm to the person that meditates on God’s Law.

1. He says they will be planted by an abundant source of water. Water is always associated with life. Everything that lives needs water. To the person that meditates on His Word He promises an abundant supply of what is needed to thrive in our spiritual lives.
2. He says they will “bring forth...fruit” in their season. Fruit in the Old Testament can be a reference to the produce of the ground/trees, offspring of the womb, or actions that are successful. Meditation on God’s Word will make us fruitful believers, as John 15 describes...and it won’t be something manufactured or manipulated by our own resources.
3. He says the leaves of this tree won’t wither, meaning they won’t dry up...lose their freshness, vitality or beauty. As a result of meditating on God’s Word, every aspect of our being is strengthened and invigorated.
4. He says that what they do will “prosper” (cf. Joshua 1:8). Thayer's lexicon defines this word as, "to rush, to advance, prosper, make progress, succeed, be profitable." The Gesenius Lexicon defines this Hebrew word as, "to go over or through, (as a river)." It is interesting that in Isaiah 55:11, this same Hebrew word is used to describe God's Word, "it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it." Meditating on God’s Word helps us succeed and accomplish the things He has given us to do.

All four of these word pictures overlap in some ways and are synonymous with the “blessed” life. Let’s not draw too great a distinction between them. Their intended purpose is to invite the reader to allow scripture to shape their thinking so they can experience the abundant life. When we meditate on scripture we begin to see God at work in our lives in significant ways. There is an empowerment and vitality that comes to our lives from making God’s thoughts our thoughts and God’s ways our ways.

It is a bewildering paradox that in a day when the Bible is accessible to vast numbers of people, it is so marginalized in too many of our lives. On the one hand technology has brought God’s Word to our phones, tablets and computers. We have immediate access to multiple versions of the Bible, as well as a wealth of material to study the scripture...in the palms of our hands. However, this same technology threatens to distract us and drown out the voice of God in our lives. We are a culture obsessed with noise and most of us are comfortable with the “clutter” of our daily lives. So many sources are seeking access to our hearts and minds: TV, radio, online news feeds, Facebook, Twitter, blogs, etc., etc. It’s no wonder that more than ever we need to make time to meditate, to dwell on God’s Word. And the benefits of “pondering” His Word are a life filled with vitality from God and wisdom that transcends the intellect. It means becoming like a tree that is evergreen and alive, that is immune to the conditions of (intellectual) drought found so frequently in our modern culture. It’s a discipline that makes you useful and fruitful in all you seek to do for Christ so that others are blessed by your presence...and more importantly, blessed by His presence in you!

The good news is that meditation doesn't have to be something complicated, but it does take time and effort. The hardest part may be for us to quiet our minds long enough to be able to think (REALLY THINK!!) about the scripture we just read in our daily Bible reading, but the Bible is filled with exhortations and instructions about doing this very thing.

Consider some examples of the practice of meditation. For instance, Mary was told by the shepherds about what they had seen and heard after they had found the Baby lying in the manger. They also told others about their experience that occurred while watching the sheep. Many people marvelled at the things they heard from the shepherds, but the scripture says…

But Mary kept all these things and pondered them in her heart. (Luke 2:19)

When it says she “pondered” them, it means she meditated on them. She thought about them over and over again. She allowed herself to ruminate on (to think deeply about) the incredible things she had been told.

When Paul was giving his closing remarks to the believers at Philippi, he told them it was important where and on what they allowed their minds to dwell. He said...

Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy—meditate on these things. (Philippians 4:8)

When we read through the Psalms and we come to that oft repeated word, “Selah,” it causes us to pause for a moment. It is literally a musical “rest” that is placed at various points in a Psalm to make the performers and the audience stop so they will think about what they just sang or heard...to meditate on it.

J. Vernon McGee said about meditation, “We are to meditate on the Word of God... We are to allow the Word to shape our lives. My friend, God has no plan or program by which you are to grow and develop as a believer apart from His Word. You can become as busy as a termite in your church (and possibly with the same effect as a termite), but you won’t grow by means of activity. You will grow by meditating upon the Word of God—that is, by going over it again and again in your thinking until it becomes a part of your life. This is the practice of the happy (blessed) man.”

Warren Wiersbe said, "What digestion is to the body, meditation is to the soul. It is not enough merely to hear the Word or read the Word. We must inwardly “digest it” and make it part of our inner persons (see 1 Thessalonians 2:13)."

He also said, "Unless a Christian spends time daily in meditating on the Word of God, his inner man will lack power."

Dr. Paul Meier, a Christian psychiatrist and cofounder of the Minirth-Meier Clinic said, “Among the many tools I learned to use, by far the one that has been most valuable in helping people attain spiritual well-being is scripture meditation.”

As you can see from these scripture quotes and exhortations from others, meditating on scripture works to our benefit, is expected of those that are followers of Jesus, and is the means by which Christ is formed in our lives. To neglect this spiritual discipline is to neglect the source of all spiritual growth. It is here that the roots of our spiritual lives reach the life-giving waters of His Word that produce in us the fruitfulness and vitality of Christlike living.

But, someone might ask, “How do we go about meditating on God’s Word?” Well, the answer to that can be found in Psalm 77:11-12, where Asaph, one of the worship leaders of Israel, gives three basic truths about Biblical meditation. Listen to these verses from the ESV.

I will remember the deeds of the Lord; yes, I will remember your wonders of old. I will ponder all your work, and meditate on your mighty deeds. (Psalm 77:11-12 ESV)

In these two verses he uses three Hebrew words to describe what the Bible means when it speaks about meditation.

1. The first thing we do when we meditate is “remember” the “deeds of the Lord” and His “wonders of old.” The person who meditates seeks to bring back to memory the truth he has read and/or the works of God he has known. He makes a conscious effort not to forget what he has read and learned in the scripture (ex. Psalm 63:6; 143:5).
2. The second thing we do when we meditate is to “ponder” what we have read and learned from the scripture. The word literally means “to let resound.” It is used in Psalms 92:3 of the sound or tones of a musical instrument as it resonates. Consequently, we are to let the Word of God resonate/reverberate within us. Colossians 3:16 says it in a slightly different way...we are to let the Word of Christ dwell in us richly (i.e., be at home in us)!
3. The third thing we do when we “meditate” is we muse and wonder and dwell on—think deeply about, the Word of God. This Hebrew word used literally means to murmur, mumble or talk to yourself. The Puritans thought of meditation as “preaching to yourself.” When we meditate we take the Word of God that we hear and read, we mull it over in our minds, and we then bring it to bear upon our lives in personal exhortations.

Put another way, Biblical meditation consists of: (1) recalling the truth of God as it is contained in the Scriptures (information), (2) reflecting upon that truth frequently (meditation), and (3) responding to God in thanksgiving, worship, and obedience as you consider that truth (application).

Meditation itself is really not that hard, but it takes discipline to see it happen in your life! There will always be something else to listen to, watch, or read to distract us from this vital spiritual practice.

Meditating on God’s Word allows the scripture to become part of our lives in tangible ways that affect the way we view the world around us. It establishes a foundation in our lives for God to do an even greater work in us and through us. It empowers our lives by enabling us to see life from God’s point of view so we will make wise decisions that God can bless. It changes us from the inside out so that Christ is being formed in our lives.

Let me share a few practical thoughts about how to get started:

1. Read the scripture every day and don’t rush to get through the text.
2. Choose one or several scriptures from the passage you’ve read and put them in your notes app on your mobile device or write them on a card to carry with you.
3. When you are riding to work, laying down at night for bed, have a few minutes during your break at work...instead of dialing up your latest playlist, firing up your computer to surf the web, turning on the TV for the latest news, or reading another mind-numbing magazine article, recall the scripture you’re considering and focus your mind on it during that time.
4. Learn the practices of meditation...such as:: replace the pronouns and nouns with your name, ask what it teaches you about God, consider how it applies to your circumstances, take specific words in the verse(s) and ask deeper questions about them, think about how the original audience would have received those same words, turn the scripture into a song, read it out loud to yourself, pray the scripture back to God, find the promises, instructions, and exhortations that are given in the text, always ask yourself how the Gospel intersects with the passage, etc., etc.
5. Read the text you are meditating on from different translations and look up any words you don’t understand.
6. Look for a way each day to use what you learned from that particular scripture.
7. Write down your thoughts about the scripture and save them for future reference.
8. Don’t be discouraged if you miss a day or two. Pick up where you left off and keep developing the spiritual practice of meditating on God’s Word!