Finding Strength Through Meditation: A Biblical Perspective

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Welcome to the InTouch Podcast with Charles Stanley for Monday, September 15th. God’s Word nourishes the soul of a believer in Jesus. Remind yourself of the importance of dwelling on the truth in part one of Dr. Stanley’s series on biblical meditation.

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This young man walked up with a big old Bible under his arm. He said, Dr. Stanley, I’ve been wanting to meet you. And he said, I’m just beginning to be a pastor. And he said, I could hear it coming because his eyes got real big. He said, I just want you to tell me, what would you say to a young man like me who’s going to be a pastor, and this is his first time being a pastor, and he just went on talking about he’s just beginning, and he’s so excited about the Lord’s work. He said, what would be the one thing you’d tell me? I said, I know exactly what I want to tell you. And what I want to tell him is what I want to talk about tonight. So I want you to turn to Joshua chapter 1. Because I said to him… What I would say to anybody, no matter how old you are, no matter what your occupation is, whether you’re a pastor or a plumber, it doesn’t make any difference. The answer is the same. Look, if you will, in Joshua chapter 1. And let me give you a little background of what’s happening here. Well, the best way to get background of this is just read Deuteronomy chapter 34. So look at that, if you will. Deuteronomy chapter 34, beginning in verse 5. Remembering now Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Moses has been giving the law, starting Exodus and all these things. Then he says, Although Moses was 120 years old when he died, his eye was not dim nor his vigor abated. That means he died vigorously doing the work of God. Isn’t that the way to die? Vigorously doing the work of God. Now, turn to Joshua chapter 1. So it came to pass after the death of Moses, the servant of the Lord, that the Lord spoke to Joshua, the son of Nun, Moses’ servant, saying, Moses, my servant, is dead. Now, therefore, arise, cross this Jordan, you and this people, to the land which I’m giving to them, to the sons of Israel. Every place on which the sole of your foot treads, I have given it to you, just as I spoke to Moses.” Listen to what he said to him. All the days of your life. Just as I have been with Moses, I will be with you. I will not fail you or forsake you. There is not anything God could have said that would have been more reassuring. more upbuilding, more encouraging to Joshua than that statement. Just as I have been with Moses, I will be with you. I will not fail you or forsake you. Be strong and courageous, for you shall give this people possession of the land which I swore to their fathers to give them. Only be strong and very courageous. Be careful to do according to all the law and which Moses my servant commanded you. Do not turn from it to the right or to the left, so that you may have success wherever you go. This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it. Then you’ll make your way prosperous, and then you will have success.” Have I not commanded you, be strong and courageous? Do not tremble or be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go. Now, it’s interesting what God told Joshua to do. He didn’t say to him, this is a crisis. Pick out about 25 or 50 or 100 or 10 of the best statesmen among Israel. You all need to have a committee meeting. You all need to get together. And you all need to decide what you’re going to do. And you all need to listen to me. He said, Joshua, as I was with Moses, so I’m going to be with you. I cannot tell you how important it is to make Your time, private time of meditation upon the Word of God, the absolute priority of your life, second to nothing. It is the key to everything. It is the key to the way God uses a man or a woman. It is the key to the intensity with which He uses them. It is the key to the anointing of the Spirit of God upon that person. It is the key to their wisdom, their knowledge, their understanding. It is the key to everything. There’s not anything, no activity you can place above it in importance. Of all the things He could have said to him, He could have said a lot of things to him. He said one thing, Joshua… You get in the law, and every day you meditate. You meditate on what I told Moses day and night. So in essence, that’s what I said to that young man. You want God to bless you? You want the anointing of God upon your life? You want to be successful in whatever you do in life? There’s only one thing I can tell you. I said, I’m telling you this. Don’t you ever forget what I’m telling you. If you want God to bless you in the ministry, this is what you must do. And so I told him. And this is what I tell anybody. You know what? I tell a banker that, a preacher that, a plumber that, a doctor that, a secretary that, a lawyer that, a painter that, a poor man that, a rich man that, a prominent man that, and somebody that nobody ever know the same thing. Because you cannot tell me, there’s not a single thing that you can tell me tonight that is more important in your daily life than your personal, private devotions with the Son of God in the Word of God. There is absolutely nothing. Do you hear me say amen? There is absolutely nothing more important than that. If you’re a college student, you ought to write that indelibly upon your heart. Some of you are going to seminary, get that in your soul so deep, nothing can ever tear it out. If you’re a mother trying to raise your children alone or a father thinking in terms of your family, you cannot teach your children by example or by word that there’s, you cannot teach them anything more important than what I’m saying to you. There is nothing more important in life than that because that’s where everything of substance in a man’s life comes from. It doesn’t come just reading books. It comes from meditation. prayer, listening to God. So I want to define sort of what meditation is. Meditation is not what oftentimes people think it is. And if you’ll notice, he said, meditate on this day and night. Well, turn to Psalm 1. And I want you to hold Joshua and turn to Psalm 1. And if you’ll notice in this first Psalm, David is talking about the happy man, the blessed man. Listen to what he says. How happy and peaceful and blessed is the man or woman who doesn’t walk in the counsel of the wicked, not listening to wicked advice, nor standing in the path of sinners, nor sitting in the seat of the scoffers, but his or her delight is in the law of the Lord, and in his law he or she does what? How long? The wise man of the Psalms and the wise man of the Old Testament in Joshua. What is God saying? The very same thing. Now, when we talk about meditation, what are we talking about? When you meditate upon God and meditate upon some part of His Word, what you and I are doing is we are thinking upon God, upon Jesus. That is, our mind is concentrating on Him. This is not Bible study. This is reading and asking God to let you absorb. Let your heart feel. Let you take it in. You want to know who God is. You want to know his ways. And so you can’t do anything else than meditate. You cannot rush meditation. You cannot hurry up and meditate. And so often people get up in the morning and read the Bible right quick. You know what you did? You didn’t meditate on God. You read the Bible right quick. So you could get on and do something else. Or at nighttime before you get in the bed and you look at the clock and you’ve watched TV and so you’re in a hurry and so you read the Bible right quick and hop in the bed. You didn’t meditate on God. Let me ask you a question. If the Lord Jesus Christ walked in here tonight and said, now I’m going to stay all night and I just want to talk to you all night. How many of you would get up and leave about 8.15? Not a one of us. Isn’t it amazing how we come to church and we go, excuse me. And somehow it never dawns on people that when a pastor is speaking the truth of God’s Word, it’s like God who’s doing the talking. The pastor can’t get any credit. It’s not my sermon, my message, my this, my nothing. God has something to say to us. And I’m here to tell you, you’re not going to hear anything more important in your life than this simple truth. The most important activity in the life of a human being is their time of private meditation before God, meditating, concentrating, reading, listening, backing off and saying, God, what are you saying to me? What are you trying to say to me? What do you mean by this? Now, you cannot teach your children anything more important. You and I can’t practice anything more. Listen, when you and I learn to meditate upon God, all hell can break loose around us. And it’s like God wraps us in this awesome sense of indescribable protective cocoon. And while the winds blow and the storms blow… And the thundering and the lightning and all hell breaks loose. There’s something that can quieten a man’s soul that absolutely cannot shake him loose from what God has anchored him to. And you know what it is? It’s just getting your eyes on God. It’s meditating upon Him. It’s concentrating upon Him. Meditation takes time. It takes concentration. It takes quietness. It’s better to have silence. Sometimes you can do it with others, and sometimes it’s best to do it all by yourself. He says, meditate upon the Word of God day and night. And that means it isn’t just a matter of doing it haphazardly. Listen, if you want to know a few things about God, fine, you do it haphazardly. If you really want to know God’s consistency, listen, when you love somebody, you want to be with them and love When you love somebody, you want them to want to be with you, right? In other words, you don’t always want to be one way. I just want to be with you. I want to be with you. You want them to have the same sense of desire for you that you have for them. Well, God has this, listen, he has this eternal desire for us. It’ll never be satisfied. You say, was God dissatisfied? No, but I’m simply saying God loves us so much. Listen, we’ll never be able to want him and love him as much as he wants to be loved by us. Because listen, his arms are so wide, they’ll always be wide, desiring our love. When we get to heaven, we’re going to be capable of loving him and expressing that devotion to him more. But while we’re here, learning to walk in devotion to him, learning to walk Now watch this, learning to walk out of my time of devotion to him. I don’t mean away from it, but I mean that should be the motivation. That’s how you and I can face any and everything in life and somehow there is this awesome sense of inner quietness. People say, well, you know, I don’t know. Sometimes people say, well, you ought to be upset. Is God who he says he is? He’s exactly who he says he is. Almighty God who said, thou will keep him in perfect peace whose mind is fixed on thee. in quietness and in trust is our confidence, is our real genuine sense of peace. But it is only as you and I meditate upon the Word of God, because you see what that does. Meditating on the Word of God is like an anchor. It doesn’t make any difference how the winds blow. If you’re meditating upon the Word of God, He’s going to keep you anchored in the truth. It is the truth about God. What’s happening is we are absorbing it. It’s coming into our mind. That’s why I say, and people don’t seem to listen any longer. People say, well, I just can’t bring my children to church all the time because after all they can’t hear. They just do this and do that and do the other. And you know what? While that child lies on the pew of sleep, the Word of God is pouring into that ear, into that subconscious mind. We’re going to raise a generation of children who will have lost something awesomely important because we say we are so concerned about their health when the real truth, we’re more concerned about our convenience. Into the minds of those precious children come the Word of God. That’s why These children who come in here and they’re five years of age and they sit in here and they draw and they listen and it’s amazing what they hear and how many times parents will tell me or these kids will write me little notes and hand them to me and they’ve got all kind of things and they may have two or three words that made me know. They may not have understood it all but they certainly wrote down the right thing. Never underestimate the power of God working in a little mind. In… a little child into that subconscious mind gets poured all this truth, all this truth, all this truth, all this truth. There’s something about the power of the simple message of truth that absolutely changes and alters and influences a person’s life all the days of their life. He said to Joshua, Don’t turn to the right or don’t turn to the left. And what you and I have to remember is when it comes to meditation, we have to begin with an absolute unwavering confidence in what this is. This is the living Word of God. And whatever I need to know, I’m going to find it right there. Turn to Psalm 32. Let me just give you a couple, and we’re going to bring this to a close quickly here. Psalm 32. Psalm 32. You see, if you and I get in the habit of desiring to meet him in privacy in our own time of meditation, you know what will happen? He’ll reveal things to us in those times we desperately need to hear from him. He says in verse 8 of Psalm 32, I will instruct you and teach you in the way which you should go. I will counsel you with my eye upon you. Turn to Psalm 119. 119, he says, thy word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path. Now listen, in the first passage, he said he would teach us the way we should go. In Psalm 119, 105, he says, the word is a lamp to my feet and light unto my path, and the implication is that I will have to walk where? When I can’t see my way clear. When it appears to be dark, that is when you can’t see your way clear, he says, my word will be what? A lamp unto your feet and a light to your path. I will teach you in the way which thou shall go and my word will be a light along the way. You’ll always know where to take the next step. How do you find that out? There is no better place and no better way, no surer way to find out where to take the next step, especially when it’s dark. And we can’t figure out what’s going on. He says, Now that’s all very simple. But you know what? It is the most important thing you will ever hear about your Christian life when it comes to God guiding you and directing you and leading you through difficulties and hardships and trials in life. It is the most important thing you’re going to hear when it comes to understanding the ways of God, of learning who God is all about and what He’s about in your life, of finding the will and purpose and plan of God in your life and finding the source of the real strength And power and anointing and wisdom and knowledge and understanding in your life. What is the source of that? It is God. And how does He give it? He gives it when you and I get alone with Him. And then, suddenly these things hit us. We’re not thrown off course. Why? Because we have this reservoir of time with God. Friend, if you want to be a success in your life and you want to be prosperous, I don’t believe you can beat the Word of God. Neither he told the truth or he lied. What he said to Joshua is true of everybody. That’s why he said in the Psalms, blessed is the man. Meditate upon the Word day and night. He said your life will be like a tree by the rivers of waters. There’s not going to be any withering of your life. Your life is going to prosper and it’s going to bloom and your fruit is going to be there. And he says you’re going to be successful whatever you do. Whether you’re a plumber or a preacher, a secretary or a painter, a doctor, no matter what you are, a student, the wisest thing you can do in your life is to make this your priority. Father, we love you for loving us so much to make the most important thing in our life time with you. And so we humble ourselves before you and acknowledge that that we are indeed so unworthy of that, but because you’ve given us Jesus to live on the inside of us, and you’ve given us your righteousness, and you’ve made us your sons and your daughters, and you said your predestined plan for every single one of us is to make us like you. We just bless you and praise you. And Father, I pray for somebody here tonight who has never trusted Jesus Christ as their Savior. And all this seems so foreign and so distant and so unnatural and so seemingly impossible and so unreal to their heavy heart. Would you help them to understand the very moment they confess their sins to you and ask you to forgive them of their sins? and accept the testimony of your Word, that Jesus is your only begotten Son, whom you sent to this world to die on the cross, and when He died there, you placed all their sin on Him once and for all. And the moment they’re willing to say, I do believe this is the truth, I do believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, I receive Him as my Savior, then you said their eyes will be opened and they too will understand while we can get so excited about you and about your word and your ways. But we ask it in Christ’s name. Amen.

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Thank you for listening to Meditation, the key to spiritual growth. For more inspirational messages like this one, visit our 24-7 online station. And if you’d like to know more about Charles Stanley or InTouch Ministries, stop by InTouch.org. This podcast is a presentation of InTouch Ministries, Atlanta, Georgia.