How to meditate THE WORD

How to Meditate on God's Word

Founders Ministries Blog

by Ken Puls

I love 💖God’s Word and delight in its truth. Yet too often I find that after reading my Bible or hearing a sermon, the truth, so necessary to the wellbeing of my soul, can too easily 📌slip away. The truth that had for a moment captured my attention and my affections can quietly 💥fade amid the clutter and noise of the day.

One of the best ways to remedy this is to practice the spiritual discipline of meditating♨ on God’s Word. It is a discipline that takes time and intention, but one that brings 🍞great benefit to the soul. We need to carve out time to lay 🙌hold of the truth of God’s Word.

It is a bewildering paradox of our day that the Bible can be so accessible and yet so ⚠marginalized. On the one hand our technology has brought God’s Word 🙏close at hand. It’s on our phones and tablets and computers and iPods. We have almost immediate access📚 to several versions of the Bible as well as a wealth 😃of sermons and commentaries.
But this same technology also threatens to distract us and drown out God’s Word. We have become a culture obsessed with noise and comfortable with clutter. So many sources are bringing input into our lives: TV, radio, online news feeds, Facebook, Twitter.... More than ever 🎯we need to make time to meditate, to dwell in God’s Word.

Meditation 🙏is pondering the Word in our 💖hearts, preaching 🔊it to our own souls, and personally 😇applying it to our own lives and circumstances. It is how we 🔥sanctify our thinking and bring it into 🙏submission to Christ—taking every thought captive. Paul tells us in Romans 12:


In Psalms 77 Asaph uses three verbs that capture the essence of meditation. When he finds himself perplexed and troubled and cries out to God, he determines to steady his soul by looking 😃to God and laying hold of truth. He says in verses 11 and 12:

Asaph uses 3 verbs in the Hebrew to describe what it means to lay hold of truth: He says: I will🎯 remember, I will ponder, 💥and I will meditate.

He begins with 💡remembering (zakar)—calling to mind “the deeds of the Lord” and His “wonders of old.” He intentionally takes note of truth and draws it back into his thinking. Asaph reflects on what God has accomplished for His people in the past—events and epics like the Exodus and Passover, the giving of the law on Mount Sinai, the conquest of the Promised Land. He makes an effort not🎯 to forget all the Lord has done.

David also speaks of 🙏remembering God:        

In Psalms 143, when David is overwhelmed with trouble, he uses the same three verbs as Asaph, beginning with “remember.”

We are a forgetful people and God would have us to remember. Meditation begins with 🌷remembering, bringing back into our minds the truths and praises and promises of God.

But, second, Asaph also uses a word that is translated in Psalms 77:12 “I ponder.”

This is the verb hagah in the Hebrew. It is found in numerous places in the Old Testament and is translated as “ponder” ⚠or “meditate”:

In Psalms 2 it is used of the nations “plotting” against God.

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.

It is used also in Psalms 9:16.                              

It is not entirely clear if the use of the word here is a musical instruction for the musicians to play an interlude—letting the instruments resound—or if it is an instruction to the congregation—let this truth 🌹resound within yourselves.

We find the term also at the end of Psalms 19:

In other words: Let the inward tones of my heart be acceptable in Your sight, O Lord...

This is how we want the truth of Scripture to ♨fill us and impact us—as we hear it and sing it 🎯and pray it—as Paul tells us in Colossians 3:16, let the Word of Christ dwell 🍟in us richly! Let it dwell in us in a way that resounds and reverberates in and through our lives.

We see another use of the word in Isaiah 31:4 that helps us understand its intent. Isaiah uses the word in reference to a lion:

The word for growl or roar is this word for meditation. Have you ever heard a lion when he roars? He does not just use his voice. His entire being reverberates. This is meditation. Letting God’s Word 🔥resound from within the very center of our being.

Meditation involves remembering, and resounding, but finally Asaph speaks of meditating.

This word siyach means to muse and wonder and dwell on—to think 🙏deeply about something. Used literally it means to murmur, mumble or talk to yourself.

In a negative sense it can mean “to complain.” It is the idea that something has so taken hold of your thinking that you can’t🎯 stop thinking about it. So on the negative side—it troubles you and disturbs you and draws out complaint; but on the positive side—it captivates 😊you and enraptures your thinking so that you “dwell on” it. This is the way we want 💖God’s truth to lay hold of us—so that we can’t but dwell on it, so that it captures our thinking and finds it way into our choices and decisions.

The Puritans thought of meditation this way as they described it as “🔊preaching to 🙏yourself.” We take the Word of God that we hear 😃and read, and we mull it over in our minds and then bring it to bear upon our lives in personal exhortations.

It is a word that is found often in the Old Testament, especially in the psalms.

When we meditate we🏆 think about God’s Word. We 💡dwell on it and then as opportunities arise, we 🎯preach it to ourselves. We inject it into our thoughts as we make decisions, as we admonish and instruct our souls to choose right things and walk down right paths.

This is the essence of meditation. It is evoking the truth, 😃embracing it and embedding it in our lives. It is intentionally 🍟focusing on recalling God’s truth that it might 🍑resound in our hearts and become that grid through which we sift and measure our thoughts and actions.

Meditation is a crucial Christian discipline and a vital means of grace that we must treasure 🍭and practice. But it is a discipline that takes time and effort. Accessibility can never beat intentionality. Don't assume that having God's Word close at hand means you have it close💖 at heart. Carve out time in your day to remember,🎯 time to ponder, time to preach 🔊to yourself.
The world around us can too easily choke💥 out what is needful and good for our souls. Don’t allow God’s truth to slip away from you. Be intentional and diligent🙌 and your meditation.

Dr. Kenneth Puls is the Director of Publications and the Study Center for Founders Ministries, Cape Coral, FL.

Dreams and intimacy with God

🌷JOHN ARNOTT: "DREAMS AND INTIMACY WITH GOD"

Dreams, as common as they are to all of us, are nonetheless very often overlooked, ignored, or dismissed as a curious result of a double-cheese pizza the night before. Sometimes, as in the case of recurring nightmares, they can be feared or even hated.

But the Bible has much to say about dreams and visions, and it’s important to understand that they have great power to change your life. I remember years ago, in the mid-1980s, as Carol and I had planted our first church in her hometown of Stratford, Ontario, I started to take dreams seriously and began studying them in Scripture. I did a word search on my primitive computer, looking for every time the words dream and vision are used in the Bible. I then printed out the whole list on fanfold paper, and it stretched the entire width of our church. It was a graphic reminder of how abundant and important dreams and visions are in Scripture. I began to take dreams even more seriously.

I remembered that Joseph believed Mary’s story of her virgin conception because of a dream he had and also that after Messiah was born, Joseph fled with his family to Egypt, saving Christ’s life from Herod’s butchers, all because of another dream (see Matt. 1:20- 25; 2:13-15). Wow!

Let me tell you of a life-changing dream I had over thirty years ago.

In the dream, I was told to go to Buffalo, New York, to bring home three pint-sized bottles of cream. Some of you older readers may remember when milk was delivered to your door in quart-sized glass bottles and cream in pint-sized glass bottles (for you younger readers, a pint is about half a liter). Well, in the dream, it was the best cream ever.

I woke up excited, sensing something was up. I related my dream to Carol, and together we immediately took the two-and-a-half- hour drive to Buffalo to see if God would open up anything to us. I knew only one person in Buffalo, and that was Pastor Tommy Reid from The Tabernacle. I didn’t know him at all, really. I had merely said a brief “hello” to him while attending a recent conference at his church.

We arrived at The Tabernacle in the early afternoon. Pastor Tommy was not in, but we met with Gordon Spiller, who was then the dean of the newly formed Buffalo School of the Bible, a Bible school based out of this church. I was very interested in the courses of study that were shown me.

We soon met Mark Virkler, one of their main teachers, and began a friendship that has endured for more than three decades. We have since met his wife Patti and his children, Charity and Joshua, on many occasions.

Well, Carol and I returned home with a manual on “Hearing God’s Voice,” which turned out to be spiritual “cream” of the highest and best order. We had no idea of the fantastic journey of the heart that was being put into our hands. That dream of the cream bottles changed the course of our spiritual destiny!

We brought home what was soon to become one of our four core FIRE values that have formed the basis of our ministry: “intimacy,” or hearing the voice of God. This wonderful teaching from Mark has transformed our lives. It became the fountainhead of all that we hear from the Holy Spirit, including words of knowledge, prophetic words, visions, and even dreams. It amazes me to this day that had I not had that dream of the cream bottles over thirty years ago, our ministry today would be very different indeed.

Our four core values are layered on top of a biblical, evangelical, charismatic statement of faith. They are as follows:

🌲 F—A revelation of the Father’s love (see Matt. 11:27; Luke 10:22 NIV).
🎺 I—Intimacy, or hearing the voice of God, a value whose discovery we owe to Mark Virkler. Our life and ministry were transformed through this dialogue and intimacy with God.
🍦R—Restoration, teaching, healing and deliverance for life’s hurts.
🎶 E—And finally a power and love encounter from the Holy Spirit. This took everything in our ministry to a whole new level of relationship, healing, and evangelism.

The first three, on which we worked faithfully throughout the ’80s and early ’90s, are the fulfillment of my dream about the. three cream bottles. These values prepared us and our church teams for the 🌲fourth bottle of cream: a mighty outpouring of the Holy Spirit in power and love that would become known as the🌷 “Toronto Blessing.” God is so much more than history, tradition, and Bible study. He pursues us for a dynamic love affair with Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.💒

Dreams and their interpretations are therefore of the utmost spiritual importance. There is a promise from the Book of Joel that is quoted by Peter on the Day of Pentecost. Peter says that God’s Holy Spirit will be poured out on all flesh and they will prophesy, see visions, and dream dreams (see Joel 2:28; Acts 2:17). Dreams are absolutely the will of God. They always have been—and so much the more now for us who live in the last of the last days. Joel’s prophecy is pointing to you and me.

As Dr. Charity Virkler Kayembe points out in her book, 🎵Hearing God Through Your Dreams, dreams are one of the main avenues that God uses to communicate with His people. Numbers 12:6 clearly states, “If there is a prophet among you, I the Lord make Myself known to him in a vision; I speak with him in a dream” (ESV).

I strongly encourage you to read this book. Read it carefully, as a new adventure into the promises of God and new experiences with God.

In Hearing God Through Your Dreams, Dr. Charity—daughter of Mark and Patti Virkler—writes out a complete inventory of all the dreams recorded in the Bible, walking the reader through the 🎻various kinds of dreams that one may have from the Lord. Dreams are usually 🌷subjective, she explains, but occasionally objective and intended for others. They are usually🌹 figurative, symbolic, and allegorical, but not always, as occasionally there are literal dreams such as the Angel of the Lord’s message to Joseph in Matthew 1:20-23.

She explains how there is a 🎷symbolic language to be learned. It varies for every person, as the same symbols often mean different things to different people. If you learn this language, you’ll be able to discover powerful and meaningful messages and💒 insights from God.

All of humanity is desperate to hear a word from God. People are seeking bizarre and unbiblical experiences. They are even searching for occult communications because so many do not know🔥 how available God really is. He truly is available to each and every one of us through 💡dreams, through His Word, and through two-way communication with Him. Jesus said, “My sheep hear My voice... and they follow Me” (John 10:27).

I was greatly challenged by this book and motivated to focus again on the importance of 💤💤dreams from the Lord. It helped me to change some things. I now prepare 🚘my heart before going to sleep at night, putting paper and pen beside my bed. I take care to see that my final 🚞thoughts for the day are biblical and wholesome instead of going to sleep after watching the evening news, which is full of problems and disasters. I am asking God in🔦 faith to speak to me more than ever in dreams and revelations in the night.

And do you know what? He’s doing it!

- Dr. John Arnott, Catch the Fire and Partners in Harvest Toronto, Canada

Praying with authority

Praying with Authority           “Elijah the Tishbite... said to Ahab, ‘As the Lord, the God of Israel lives, before whom I stand, surely there shall be neither dew nor rain these years, except by my word.’” 1 Kings 17:1-2 NASB Elijah stood before King Ahab, all alone. Not backed by armies or the faces of friends and colleagues. In the flesh, this could have been a moment to panic. To hesitate or back down. Yet Elijah was fearless and resolute. He was confident that God was with him. He knew that God had given him an assignment and His authority. He was bold enough to speak God’s words to the king. To step out in faith, not concerned about his personal reputation or what the king might do. Faced with similar circumstances, others might have reacted with fear or felt timid in the face of the power of the king. Nineteenth century evangelist, Reuben Archer (R. A.) Torrey, used Elijah’s example to encourage believers to understand the real power of prayer. Torrey, who was born on this day in 1856, realized that most Christians were praying, but few really prayed with authority. He discovered that most believers were hesitant or afraid. Writing more than 100 years ago, Torrey reminded readers about the “astounding things” that were brought to pass because of Elijah’s prayers. At his word, the heavens were closed. And only at his word were they opened again. The Bible reminds us that Elijah did not have superhuman powers, but was a human, just like us (James 5:17). If his prayers had such power, so can ours! Are you willing to pray with authority? Or will you hesitate? Will you allow doubt and disbelief to dominate your heart? Accept the challenge of believing God at His Word. Exercise the authority He already has given you. Believe that prayer changes things. Pray for your country. For leaders. For your family. Your community. For a move of God. For miracles. Prayer Father, I commit these needs to You: ________. I believe that all things are possible. I believe You for miracles. I humble myself before You. In Jesus’ name. Amen.