The Discipline Of Meditation Part 1

Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith. A believer's effectiveness is determined by the disciplines of the Christian life practiced every day, every week, every month, every year. Today we begin a series outlining four disciplines crucial to your spiritual maturity. From the Moody Church in Chicago, this is Running to Win with Dr. Erwin Lutzer, whose clear teaching helps us make it across the finish line. Pastor Lutzer, give us a preview of the journey that begins today on the disciplines of the soul. You know, Dave, I believe that this series of messages can be absolutely transforming long-term in the lives of all who listen. When I was in Bible college, I remember we would have a speaker who would say, what you need to do is to study more. You need to get up early.

You need to be disciplined. And then the next week we'd have a man come and say, you know, I learned I just had to rest in the Lord. And as Bible college students, we asked, which is it? And then I remember the verse from the book of Hebrews that says labor to enter into rest.

Both speakers were correct. We labor, we are disciplined, and that's what this series of messages is all about. But at the same time, we must recognize that it is through these disciplines that we do get to rest.

I think that there'll be many lives transformed as we listen to these messages and apply them to our personal lives. Wouldn't it be wonderful if all that we had to do was to have good intentions to be like Jesus? And along with those good intentions, attend church once a week, and then God do all the work that needs to be done in our lives while we are asleep. And when we wake up in the morning, we wake up hot for God. Wouldn't that be wonderful?

That might be wonderful, but it's not the way it is. Salvation is a free gift, no question about that. Salvation is free, but when it comes to real discipleship and transformation of life, which is always what we're after, it needs discipline.

Discipline. You know, there are more people who give concern about their houses. They give it more concern to their house than they do to their souls. So if the roof leaks, they fix it.

If the sink is stopped up, they unplug it. And if a wall is beginning to crumble, they rebuild it. But as far as their souls are concerned, and I'm using the word soul almost synonymous with the word mind, as far as their souls are concerned, anything can come in, good thoughts, bad thoughts, anything can find a home, and they do not care for their souls. And yet the Bible says, guard your heart. Above all things, guard your heart, for out of it is the wellspring of life.

The most important part of you is the part that nobody can see. It is your mind or your soul. And we're going to be speaking in the messages that lie ahead on soul care or the disciplines of the soul. And remember, we're after transformation of life and heart. Today we're going to speak about meditation.

And then after that prayer, how you can pray every single day without monotony, without wondering whether or not God is listening. And then we will speak about the discipline of worship and also, most important, the discipline of silence and solitude that can change our lives, the disciplines of the soul. Jesus told a very interesting story. He said that there was a man who had a demon, and then the demon left the man, and the man's heart or soul was swept and empty. And so the demon, as he traveled about, seeking rest and finding none, found seven other demons who were worse than he was. I guess even among the demons, there are some who are more evil than others, and all of them came and inhabited the man. And Jesus said that the state of that man, the end of him, was worse than the beginning.

Wow. What Jesus is talking about is the danger of an empty, swept soul with nothing else to replace it, but evil that comes in. Evil always gravitates toward a vacuum. And as a result of that, if we do not fill our souls with what is good, if we do not protect what comes in and expel what should be expelled, our souls will just be a resting place for all kinds of evil and defeat and discouragement and faithlessness. You see, Paul says, be renewed, he says, by being transformed by the renewing of your mind. Today we're going to speak about that transformation. Today we're going to speak about how to focus on that which will squeeze out all of the unwanted thoughts and make us different people, because we cannot live differently until we think differently, and we can't think differently unless we learn to meditate. And the good news is this, that all of us here can do it. I'm going to be giving you instruction that is so clear, that is so explicit, that no matter who you are, no matter how old you might be or how young you might be, you're going to be able to do what I am suggesting from God's holy word that all of us do together. Transformation, finally, for some of you, is just around the corner.

Aren't you glad you're here? Now, the Bible does talk about the mind, and we're speaking about that today. Why is this so important to think right? Well, first of all, because everybody thinks. Everybody thinks. I can imagine there's some woman here who says, well, you know, my husband doesn't. Actually, he does.

He does. He may not be thinking the right thoughts, but he thinks. In fact, there was a philosopher by the name of Descartes who said that he believes that the mind is thinking all the time, and even while we are asleep, he says we go on thinking, and sometimes we become conscious of it, and we call it a dream. Descartes believed that we are thinking all the time. By the way, did you happen to hear about the preacher who dreamt he was preaching?

And then he woke up and found out he was. Everybody thinks. Even preachers think. Secondly, your mind has power.

It has power. The mind has so much power because it can relate to God. I remember as a boy I used to think to myself, well, God doesn't know what I'm thinking. If I may preach in precisely for a moment, he knew my thoughts better than even the movements of my body, because God exists in the realm of spirit, and your mind exists in the realm of matter and can influence matter, which is a huge philosophical problem that's been debated throughout the centuries, how that can be, how something immaterial can actually affect something material. But your mind can connect with that which is material, but it is also your mind that connects with God. Your mind has power. Another reason is, of course, as I've emphasized, your mind shapes your life. As a man thinks in his heart, so is he. So I want to look you in the eye today and tell you that you're not what you think you are, but what you think you are.

The real you is your thought life, and today we're going to talk about transforming it. Psalm 1 is the text, Psalm 1, and what I'd like to do as you turn to that in your Bibles is to point out, first of all, the benefits of what we're going to speak about, meditation. The benefits of meditation, you'll notice, and for this we're going to go actually to verse 3. We're going to do verse 3 before we do verses 1 and 2. It says, he, that is the person who delights in the law of God and meditates day and night, he is like a tree planted by streams of water which yields its fruit in season whose leaf does not wither whatever he does prospers. Two blessings that come from meditation.

First, stability. He's like a tree that is planted beside the rivers of water. He has an unseen, unseen root system that goes to a stream, so he will not wither at a time of drought. He can handle adversity. He can handle false accusations. He can handle the pushes and the pulls of life, the emotional and the spiritual drain of relationships that have gone sour. He can handle that.

Why? Because he has roots that extend to a stream. You've heard me say before, but a tree has as much of a root system beneath the ground as that which you can see above the ground, and blessed is that tree that has found a stream, a hidden secret stream that will keep it from withering, a sense of stability but also a sense of prosperity.

His leaf does not wither. The Bible says he brings forth his fruit in his season. Some people interpret that to mean, well, you know, there's a season for grapes and for figs and for bananas and for oranges, and in the same way we have the fruit of the Spirit, and sometimes there's a season for love and a season for joy and a season for peace, but then there are people who say today does not happen to be the season for love.

No, that's not the way it works. What he means is this, that fruit takes time to develop, takes time to develop, and God develops these fruits in us, but notice that whatever he does prospers. There is such a thing as a doctrine of prosperity. Their problem is that as it is preached today, it is often taken out of context, wrenched from the full teaching of the Bible and made to say something that the total Bible teaching would not say. But listen to the words of Joshua. Thou shalt meditate, God says, in the law of God.

Thou shalt meditate therein day and night. Then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success. I believe that every time the word success is mentioned in the Bible, it is connected to meditation. Do you want to be a success?

Anybody here wants to be a success? You must. You must meditate. I have a habit, you know, as a pastor to always say, you know, this is the most important series I've ever preached.

I said that about the last series, and it was right back then, but it's also true now. This is one of the most important. If I say one of the most, I can say that every time, but this is one of the most important sermons and series of messages I've ever preached, and you must hear all of them. Notice now, how do we actually meditate? How do we begin?

Well, let me give you this as a preliminary. First of all, what you do is you pray before you open your Bible and you pray one of the verses of the Psalms. O Lord, open thou mine eyes, that I might behold wondrous things out of thy law. The reason that that is so important is because someone has written, as long as my mind is raging with thoughts, ideas, plans, and fears, I cannot listen significantly to God or any other dimension of reality. That's why we're going to preach a message on the gift and the discipline of silence and solitude. I'm in a learning curve on that one, but I'm discovering that there is such a rich relationship with God that can be developed through silence and solitude, and God knows, God knows how much we need it. Now, first of all, a word about discernment before we get to meditation. Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked or stand in the way of sinners or sit in the seat of mockers.

You see the progression there, don't you? Blessed is the person who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked. He's walking in the counsel of the wicked, just out of curiosity. He wants to see what the wicked are doing.

He wants to, well, here's, here's a good one. He wants to understand the wicked a little better so that he can evangelize them. So he's walking in the counsel of the wicked, and then there's something that gets his attention, and he stands in the way of sinners. He's lingering now in the way of sinners, and then lo and behold, he decides to say, well, you know, actually, I'm enjoying this. And all of the others say, hey, why don't you pull up a chair and sit down? So he ends up sitting in the seat of scoffers and mockers.

Now, that doesn't mean that he's mocking like the rest, but he feels at home among the mockers and among the ungodly, and he discovers that he not only feels at home, but he begins to participate in their attitudes, their beliefs, their world of view. You know, there's a book that's been written that basically says this, that Christians think essentially like the world. We think about like the world regarding child rearing. We think like the world does regarding money, regarding values.

We bought into the whole system and we don't even know about it. First of all, we walk, then we stand, and then we sit. Blessed is the person who does not imbibe the values, the attitudes, and the beliefs of this world.

You want to be like that? The text is going to tell us how. Discernment. We could say contemplation at this point.

Where you ask the Lord, Lord, what is there in my life that I've picked up from the world? What is there within my life that needs to be changed? Could you identify your three main problems? Some people can't, and no wonder they're not working on them. They don't even know what their problems are. Why don't you take a sheet of paper and limit it to three of your main problems?

I say limited because you may not have that much paper with you today. And so what you do is you try to identify those things in your life that God has to change, that you're interested in transformation. And now, notice, if the first is discernment or contemplation, now we get to discipline or meditation. But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in his law he meditates whenever he feels like it. Is that what your Bible says?

I must be reading from the reversed vision. He meditates during the day and during the night because he goes to bed meditating. And so he does meditate in the law of God all night. Blessed is that person. And you and I can be that person. And I'm giving you instruction today on how you and I can be that person.

Wow. So how do we meditate? Now, there are two ways to read the Bible, just like there's two ways to take a trip. My wife and I have driven across this country in many different places, sometimes with our children. And oftentimes there is only one goal, and that is to get there.

Just get there. You fill the car with gas. If you stop, along the way it's for a hamburger that you eat in the car while you're driving. Because remember, there's one goal, you get there.

And the trip is fine, and sometimes you enjoy the scenery and sometimes you say, well, you know, we saw a beautiful mountain, or we saw, depending on where you drive, a beautiful hill, or we saw a tree. And you say to yourself, you know, and we got there. Now that's the way some people read the Bible. And this is the danger for some people who want to read the Bible through in a year. They're going to read and read and read and read, but they're like D.L.

Moody who said that when he was hoeing potatoes he used to have to put a little marker in the soil because he could never tell where he had hoeed and where he had not yet hoeed. And so we've all had the experience of needing to put a marker in our Bible because suddenly we're reading and we get to the end of the chapter and we say, hey, I read this chapter yesterday and didn't know it. Now there's nothing wrong with that, and we encourage you to read through the Bible.

As a Christian, if you've never done it, you should. But there's another way to take a trip, and really we need to take a trip in both ways. The other is to say, you know, if I don't get there, that's not so serious. If I don't make it by nightfall as to where I have decided I'm going to be, I'm going to enjoy this trip. You know, when you're driving along and it says historical marker one mile ahead, we're actually going to pull off and see what's there. And when it says scenic overlook one mile ahead, we're going to stop, we're going to breathe the air, and if you're like my wife, we're actually going to take some pictures.

And then when we come home, we've got all of these pictures that we've taken and we just really have enjoyed this and we didn't get quite as far as we wanted to, but who cares, it was just great to drive and to enjoy the trip. Right now I'm talking about the second way to read the Bible. Well, my friend, this is Pastor Lutheran. Of course, as you know, here at Running to Win, we are absolutely convinced that salvation is a pre-gift of God given to those who repent and believe. But we also believe that it is necessary to have the disciplines of the soul so that we learn to walk in faith, live by faith, and as a result of that we discover there is a sense of peace and rest that comes as a result of those disciplines.

That's why this series of messages is so critical. I also need to tell you that I've done a DVD or a CD, depending on which you prefer, entitled Finding Purpose in Grief and Loneliness. In it I discuss good grief, bad grief, and by the way, as a pastor I've seen both. What is the distinction between good grief and bad grief?

How do we handle certain situations? And did you know that there is grief and loneliness after the death of a loved one, but loneliness actually has a trap door? What is that trap door? And why is it so important for people to not stay there in that trap door? All of this is discussed and you are given biblical hope in the DVD or the CD, Finding Purpose in Grief and Loneliness.

For a gift of any amount, it can be yours. Here's what you do. Go to rtwoffer.com. That's rtwoffer.com or call us at 1-888-218-9337. It's time again for another chance for you to ask Pastor Lutzer a question you may have about the Bible or the Christian life. Now, as a famous pastor, Dr. Lutzer, people see your name on lots of books, endorsing the contents or the author. Today's question comes from a listener who wonders how good of an idea that is.

Ron writes to us from Illinois. He says, you are listed among the ESV Bible endorsers. Can I get your thoughts regarding Bible translations? Well Ron, yes you can, and I'm not sure that my view is as important as many other scholars throughout the country, but here at the Moody Church we use, I preach from what is known as the ESV, that's the English Standard Version. It's been out for several years and it is more literal, but also more readable than say the King James Version. King James was a great translation, but as you know, language changes and there are many, many old constructions and old words in the King James that we don't really use and understand anymore. So modern translations are a good thing. Now what you can do, for example, if you find that the ESV is even too literal for you, there's nothing wrong with choosing the NIV, the New International Version, and it is a more readable translation. And then you can even go to paraphrases, and there's the Living Bible, and a new version of that is very good to read. So let's understand that we do have the original language, but because of the changes in language, and because it's possible to say the same thing in different words, that explains why we have different translations today.

Bottom line, choose a translation, use it, read it, love it, and move on from there. Thank you, Dr. Lutzer. If you'd like to hear your question answered, go to our website at rtwoffer.com, that's rtwoffer.com, and click there on Ask Pastor Lutzer. Or call us at 1-888-218-9337.

That's 1-888-218-9337. You can write to us at Running to Win, 1635 North LaSalle Boulevard, Chicago, IL 60614. Running to Win is all about helping you find God's roadmap for your race of life. We can't run life's race if our minds are not disciplined. Through a din of competing voices, we need to hear the voice of God, and meditation in the Scriptures is the way we do this. Are you hearing God's voice? Next time on Running to Win, we'll turn again to Psalm 1 for more on the hows and whys of meditation, a key to getting close to God. For Dr. Erwin Lutzer, this is Dave McAllister. Running to Win is sponsored by the Moody Church.