The Rewards of Meditation - Part 2

Welcome to the In Touch Podcast with Charles Stanley for Friday, December 1. Proverbs Chapter 3, Verse 5 says, Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding. And today's message reminds us that the key to trusting and leaning is knowing God. I want you to read these prayers in the Bible where God's men cried out to God in times of difficulty and hardship, and you'll learn how to pray. And if you don't know any other way to do it, just take them out and read them and just say, Now, Lord, I want you to show me how to pray as these men prayed.

And you'll find yourself praying less about yourself, more about the greatness and the might and majesty of God, and more about other people because that's the way they pray. But all through the Scriptures, you find men who knew how to sit before the Lord and listen and be quiet and meditate upon Him. Well, David is certainly a beautiful example of that. Reading the Psalms, you know that he did understand what it meant to meditate upon the Lord. Back to 2 Samuel Chapter 7, and you'll recall in this passage the Bible says that David the king went in and sat before the Lord and he said, Who am I, O Lord God?

And then we have his prayer as he talks to God. David knew how to meditate. David knew how to sit before the Lord and absorb God. He knew how to think upon the Lord and absorb the things that God was saying to him.

And so we talked about, there are several recommendations that are found in this passage. First of all, that he reviewed his past and then he reflected upon God and then he recalled the promises of God and then he made his request to God. The last time we talked about the different requirements of real meditation, which were things like a season of time and silence and stillness and seclusion and self-control and being submissive to God.

Because you don't just learn to meditate by saying, Well, I just want to meditate. But it takes time and it takes sensitivity to God's Word. And one of the best things you can do is get in the book and read a prayer.

And there are lots of them in here. Prayers that Jesus prayed in the seventeenth chapter of John. But somehow in the Old Testament, they have been the most rewarding to me personally to read these prayers and then to pray and to ask God to teach me how to pray the way these men prayed. Because you can read this prayer and know that these men were getting hold of God.

They were talking to God as if they expected God to hear and answer them. Of course, in all of these prayers, He certainly has done that. Now, what I would like to do in this message is simply say, here are the rewards that come to anybody and everybody who makes meditation and times of prayer alone with Him in silence, secluded, being still and thinking about Him and absorbing Him. And my feeling is if I were sitting out here and somebody told me that if I learned to meditate upon the Lord and to focus upon Him and to spend time alone with Him and to cry out to Him and to listen to Him and to obey Him. And if all of these things would take place in my life, you couldn't keep me off my knees listening and meditating upon Him.

Here are the things that you can expect to happen in your life, so I want you to jot them down. Our own personal intimacy, there is no other way to build intimacy with Him except in His Word meditating upon Him. There's no way to build intimacy with a spouse than spending time talking and listening to one another and building that intimacy. And so it is with God. One of the rewards of being quiet and listening and being still and being secluded and being away from everybody else and being in the Word is what?

This intimacy begins to develop and I want to say this again, when people say to me, Well, how do you grow in the Lord? I'm telling you, this is the way to do it. You know what people want? They want some real difficult something.

You don't need anything difficult. It's just as simple. It's so simple that a child can begin to build intimacy with God early in life. If I'm willing to give him time alone and be still and be silent and be in the Word and listening and sharing my heart and being open and being transparent and telling him exactly what I feel.

Well, there's another reward. And that is it is a very purifying effect that happens to us when you and I really spend time with Him. What happens is He puts His finger on those things in our life that do not belong there.

And what happens? And I think this is one of the reasons that most people don't spend time with God and in His Word. Because you see, if you spend time in the Word with Him, anything in your life, in my life that's not right, I guarantee you it's coming up. He will surface it and it won't take Him long. You won't have to say, Well, God, please show me something. Forget it. He'll show you.

It'll come up and you won't have to wait long. He will surface those things in our life that do not belong there. And He's going to keep on surfacing them because listen, He wants to get rid of those things that do not belong there. Now, let's think about David for a moment. Here's a man who really and truly loved God.

But look at him. He lied. He murdered. He committed adultery. He violated the laws of God. He violated things that God told him not to do.

He did it anyway. But there's not a man in the Scriptures who is a more beautiful example than David when he comes to meditation. You know why?

Here's the reason. He was always quick to repent of his sin. Now, I want to show you a wonderful passage, but let me see which one I want to give you first. Let's go to Second Samuel twenty-four first.

There are three passages I want to mention here to you. Here is the heart of this man about whom God says that he's a man after his own heart. Because David was a man in whose life meditation, everything centered around his relationship to God. Listen, in the twenty-fourth chapter, God had told him not to number the men of Israel to find out how many soldiers they had. You know, the reason that God told him not to do this is because he wanted, God wanted David to trust God, not in his army. Well, he violated that in this twenty-fourth chapter. And when Joab, one of his generals, questioned him about it, he said, do it anyway. And then he found out that they had a million, three hundred thousand valiant soldiers.

But listen to what happened. In the tenth verse, look at this. Now David's heart troubled him after he'd numbered the people. So David said to the Lord, I have sinned greatly in what I have done. But now, O Lord, please take away the iniquity of thy servant, for I have acted foolishly. Go to Psalm fifty-one.

The fifty-first Psalm is the expression of David's heart after his adultery with Bathsheba. And if you'll notice what he says in this fifty-first Psalm, he starts out by asking God to be gracious to him. And then he says, according to thy greatness, of thy compassion, blot out my transgressions.

He's not trying to soft peddle it. Blot out my transgressions, wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, cleanse me from my sin. I know my transgression and my sin is ever before me, against thee the only I have sinned. And so he goes on in verse seven, he says, purify me, wash me, make me to hear joy, hide thy face from my sins, blot out my iniquities. Verse ten, create in me a clean heart, renew a steadfast spirit within me, restore me the joy of my salvation, sustain me with a willing spirit, deliver me from blood guiltiness.

And on he goes. Here is a man who knew how to confess and repent sin. Go, if you will, to Revelation twenty-two.

And this is very significant. Not only did he say of David, here's a man after my own heart, a man whom he loved. When the Lord Jesus Christ was speaking to the beloved John in the Isle of Patmos and giving him the Revelation, the last book of the Bible, listen to what he says. Jesus in verse sixteen of Revelation chapter twenty-two. He says, I, Jesus, have sent my angel to testify to you these things for the churches. I am the root and the offspring of David, the bright morning star.

Now, think about this. Here is Jesus giving John on the Isle of Patmos the last final revelation of Scripture. Now, how does he identify himself? He says, I'm of the offspring of David.

You mean that liar and murderer and adulterer? Yes, yes, yes, that's right. But the man after my own heart whose life was a life of meditation and prayer and devotion to me, when he sinned, he was quick to confess and repent of that sin. You see, it isn't what we do and what we don't do.

It is our attitude about what we do. And you see, when you and I are in the Word of God, we will deal with those things that God brings to our heart. And so somebody says, well, how am I going to know that I'm confessing the right thing or, and once in a while somebody says, well, suppose I miss something.

You don't have to worry about that. God doesn't miss anything. If you get in the Word, He will bring to your mind and your heart and mind those things that don't belong there. One of the rewards of spending time alone with Him is a pure heart. Then two more and that's all. Number seven, and that is a passion to obey Him.

Friend, let me tell you something. You will never develop a passion to obey God until you learn and are willing to spend time with Him. You see, when you and I love Him, we will have a passion to obey Him. And any form of disobedience is going to drive us quickly to our face to ask Him, God, forgive me, this sin does not fit who I am. It doesn't fit you.

It doesn't fit our relationship. It's a foreign element in my life. We're going to be quick like David to repent of our sin. Because obedience and sin don't mix. And a passion to obey Him, that is this deep, yearning, burning, driving hunger to obey God. How does that come into a person's life? It isn't listening to sermons, though that may stimulate something.

I'll tell you how it is. It's spending enough time alone with the Heavenly Father and growing in our love for Him that we want to do what He wants us to do. A passion to obey Him is one of the rewards in our life of meditation, spending time alone with Him. We just, we love Him.

We just want to. You see, it's the difference between a person who has a problem, for example, let's say watching things on television that are not good and not something about edifying and upbuilding and uplifting. Now there are two different ways to do that. A person says, I better cut that off before I watch that.

Or the person who says, I don't even want to watch that. You know why? Because my love and devotion to Him is such, I know that doesn't fit who I am. That is the fruit of reading this book and being in it.

One last one and we'll stop. And that is there will be power in your living and power in your service when you spend time alone with Him. I think one of my favorite passages about that is in Acts chapter four and there are lots of them, but let me just give you this one quickly. Acts chapter four, if you will look at that passage for a moment and you'll recall what's happening here.

Let me give you a little idea of what's going on. You remember that Peter and John have gotten themselves in trouble and the other disciples and they've been brought before the magistrates and a lot of things going on in Jerusalem now, persecution and so forth. And in this fourth chapter, the Scripture is talking about these things that are happening and things that are going on. Beginning in verse thirteen, and Peter being filled with the Holy Spirit is preaching. And if you'll notice in the twelfth verse, he says, And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men by which we must be saved. Now look at this next verse. Now as they, that is, his critics, as they observed the confidence of Peter and John and understood that they were uneducated, untrained men, they were marveling at them.

Why? And they began to recognize them as having been with Jesus. Listen, if you spend time alone with the Lord, you won't be able to hide it. Folks will know there's something a little different about you. Here's what'll happen. There will be authority in your words that were not there before. What you say will have impact that it didn't have before. What you do will make a mark deeper than you made before.

Because here's what's happening. When you and I spend time with Him, the Spirit of God begins to operate in our life on a level that He cannot operate unless, listen, unless we are daily feasting and feeding and absorbing and meditating and just becoming one with Him. Listen, I don't know how to say it in any other way than to say that there is no substitute for that. There's nothing else you can substitute for it. And people talk about power and authority in serving God.

It isn't because of training and it isn't because of education, it isn't because of eloquence, it isn't because of charisma, it isn't because of any of those things. It's just spending time alone with God. If you want authority and power and fruitfulness in your life, there it is. It is the most important time of the day.

It is the most important activity of the day. And I want to say again, if you want to be a success in whatever God's called you to do, there's the solution. And there's the answer. You say, well, I'm a student.

Same thing. What did He say? You meditating this book day and night? Does He say you get all A's? No.

But He said you'd succeed. Let me ask you something. Have you ever seen anybody who flunked out of college, who was in the Word of God in the morning and in the evening? Anybody? I can't witness. I meditated on the Word of God day and night. I can't witness. No, you're not going to say that.

You know why? Because God, my friend, has made the Christian life just that simple. If you and I will be in this book meditating upon it day and night.

That doesn't mean all day and all night, but at least morning and evening, getting my direction for the morning, checking myself out at night, see how well I've done during the day. What does God want to correct? Here's what He says, Thou shalt make thy way prosperous. I just want to challenge you to do this. I want to challenge you to read the first psalm. It's just a few verses.

Look at it now. Turn to it just a moment. Look at this first psalm. Now don't anybody tell me you don't have time to read six little verses.

Here's what I want to challenge you to do. I want to challenge you to take these six verses and read them for one solid week with a pad beside you. And every time you read it, you ask God, Lord, what are you saying to me today in this passage? But what I want to challenge you to do is to read it every morning and every evening for one week, seven days.

Now, let me just say this. If you really want God to change your life for that psalm, you know how many days you have to read it? Twenty one.

If you read the first psalm, twenty one days, morning and evening and meditate upon that, I guarantee you God will change your life. You say, why twenty one days? I don't even know. But I can tell you this. Whatever you do, twenty one days will transform you. Now, let me ask you, how many of you want to be a success? I challenge you.

I dare you to try it. But twenty one days in the first psalm, day and night with a pad beside you, asking God to speak to your heart about what that psalm is saying, about business, family, you name it, and see what happens. Now listen, it's just six verses. I'll tell you what to do.

We're going to close with this. How blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, nor stand in the path of sinners, nor sit in the seat of the scoffers. But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in his law he meditates day and night. And he will be like a tree firmly planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither.

And in whatever he does, he prospers. The wicked are not so, but they're like chaff which the wind drives away. Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous.

But the Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish. How many of you do not have time to read that? As you read that passage over and over and over again, God will give you understanding.

And He will show you how to apply that. I challenge you for the first seven days, and then I challenge you to read it twice a day for twenty-one days, and see what happens in your life. Father, we thank You for making it so simple and so plain.

And Lord, when we really analyze it, we are absolutely, totally inexcusable, and we confess that to You. And Father, I pray in Jesus' name that every single person here, before they go to bed tonight, either kneel down beside their bed or sit in a chair or whatever they choose to do, read this passage in some translation, or maybe more than one, and ask You to give them understanding of how to apply that to their life. And Lord, would You just sort of etch it in their mind and heart and bring it to their attention every day, that Psalm 1 is the key to their success. And You are sitting on ready, waiting to bless those who are willing to meditate upon it in Jesus' name.

Amen. Thank you for listening to Part 2 of The Rewards of Meditation. If you'd like to know more about Charles Stanley or In Touch Ministries, stop by intouch.org. This podcast is a presentation of In Touch Ministries, Atlanta, Georgia.