Pilgrims

Pilgrims “We are aliens and pilgrims before You, as were all our fathers; our days on earth are as a shadow, and without hope.” 1 Chronicles 29:15 NKJV When he was 31, John Bunyan was arrested for preaching the Gospel. Refusing to compromise, he spent 12 years in prison. But these years weren’t wasted. There he wrote several of history’s most important books, including Pilgrim’s Progress. Writing in allegorical terms, Bunyan illustrated the challenges faced by all believers. He described how a young man (“Christian”) journeyed toward his ultimate home in the “Celestial City.” This journey brought him to places with vivid names, such as Vanity Fair, the Slough of Despond, the Hill of Difficulty, Lucre Hill, Doubting Castle, and Mount Caution. Along the way, he was distracted and deceived by people such as Obstinate, Mistrust, Talkative, Envy, and Little-faith. But Christian was encouraged and helped by characters like Evangelist, Faithful, Good Will, Hopeful, Knowledge, Experience, Watchful, and Sincere. The names and characteristics of these people were reminders of Biblical principles that can help us on our journey. Yet Christian struggled, forced to decide between compromise and faithfulness. He continually wondered how to react to people and situations. In the end, he persevered. Pilgrim’s Progress, first published on this day in 1678, has been widely read, and is a source of great encouragement. Next to the Bible, it was the most read book during early American history. Countless thousands have been impacted by Bunyan’s imagery of the struggles faced by Christian and the way to walk in victory. Each of us is reminded that we all are pilgrims on a journey through life. We face real temptations, opposition, and dangers, and we can’t make it on our own. We need the help of other believers. Most of all, we need to depend on God, drawing on His Spirit, standing on His Word. Prayer Father, help me to stay faithful to You on my journey through life. Thank You that You are present with me. Give me discernment and strength. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Biblical meditation

For many years I studied the Bible incorrectly, and it produced death rather ♨than life. Even though I had a knowledge of the Scriptures, I did not personally 🙏experience the life and the realities they revealed. The Bible calls this the ministry of 💥death, rather than the ministry of 💡 righteousness (2 Cor. 3:6–9). Upon coming out of Bible college, I found myself just like the apostle Paul, attacking those who disagreed with my theology.

Once I learned to hear 🍎God’s voice, I let God lead me to the Scriptures, I let God ⛅reveal the Scriptures to my heart, and I experienced what the disciples experienced—my heart burning 🔥within as Jesus opened up Scriptures for me (Luke 24:32). When I read the Bible, I began to expect encounters 💖with the Holy Spirit. It was no no longer a draining chore, but a delightful 🍎adventure! I was becoming like David, who wrote, “Oh how I love your law! It is my meditation🙏 all the day” (Ps. 119:9 ESV).

Bible verses started leaping off the page, revelation 📌was flashing, and I discovered this could happen every single day, every time I opened the Bible—or any book for that matter. God knows a lot about a lot of topics, and He is able to grant⚠ revelation in every area I read if I approach the book with the proper heart attitude. What an insight!

This book is a practical, interactive, usable guide, designed for the general public, leading them into the process of Biblical meditation. The body of this book contains user friendly, easy devotional 🍓applications of the process of Biblical meditation. Heady research on Greek and Hebrew words for Meditation have been put into the appendix.This book will be your coach, leading you into experiencing daily revelation from Scripture.

The Bible was meant to be 🙏meditated on, and yet most of us have never had any training on exactly 🍭how to do Biblical ♨meditation. Eastern meditation and New Age meditation are inferior counterfeits to revelation-based meditation which is centered in Scriptures.

Let's do what King David did. He said his thoughts were troubling until he came into 🍎the sanctuary of the Lord, then he 💡perceived (Ps. 73:17). Wow! He stepped beyond his own thinking, and came into⛅ God's presence, and then experienced🍎 perception, Holy Spirit 😊revelation.

I didn't approach Scripture with a listening heart for my first decade as a Christian because I didn't believe God was 🙌speaking anymore, so Bible study needed to be all about me and my 📌efforts. Yuck!

Then I discovered that the verse in the King James Bible which says, "Study to show yourself approved..." (2 Tim. 2:15) was more correctly translated in the New King James Version as, "Be diligent🍓 to present yourself approved to God...." This was the only command in the Bible to study and it should have been translated as "diligence," which of course is an attitude🍭 of your heart, not🎯 a function of your brain!

Do you know how much I hate memorizing and living mistranslations of the Greek? A lot! So what is God's better idea? It is to let Him reveal 🌹truth to our 💖hearts as He opens Scriptures to us. The disciples on the Emmaus road said, "Were not our hearts🔥 burning within us as He opened Scriptures to us?" (Lk. 24:32) Got it!

So this is my current approach to Scripture: 🙏Invite God, through His Holy Spirit Who is within me, to 💡reveal insights from Scripture to my heart (Eph. 1:17,18) and ask for revelation🔥 to burn in my heart every time I open the Bible. And I do mean every time. Why not? He is always at my side (Acts 2:25). Why wouldn't I invite Him to be part of the exploratory process?

If I invite the Holy Spirit into the process, it is called "meditation" - a word which shows up about 60 times in the Bible and is translated in various ways. Meditation📌 means I study the Bible in the presence of God, asking for revelation 💡from the Holy Spirit, so that God gets to speak🍎 afresh to my heart every morning as I walk with Him in the cool of the day. Wow! Restoration to the Garden of Eden, to daily walks and talks with the God of the Universe, my Father, who loves to reveal Himself to me.

There will never be another day where you come to the Bible and it will be a dull and dusty book. We guarantee, if you use these simple steps, which involve posturing your 🍑heart properly in the presence of the Lord, you will have verses leaping off the page every time you come to the Bible.

I love this quote from Bill Johnson: "It's hard to have the same fruit as the early church when we value a book they didn't 🍭have above the Holy Spirit they did have." Let's restore the place of honor and respect 🌹that the Holy Spirit 🔥deserves as we come to His Word.

Mark Virkler biblical meditation

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.