Central to a simpler spiritual life is doing the will of God. While all Christians know they should do the will of God, there are two common reasons why we often do not do the will of God. Sometimes it’s because we don’t know God’s will, and sometimes it’s because we know it but don’t feel like doing it. Often the simple answer to both problems is meditation on God’s Word.
The Bible clearly links meditation to obeying the will of God. We see this in passages such as Joshua 1:8 where the Lord said to Joshua, “This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate in it day and night, so that [that is, in order that] you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success” (emphasis added). Likewise, God tells us in James 1:25, “But one who looks intently at the perfect law, the law of liberty, and abides by it, not having become a forgetful hearer but an effectual doer, this man will be blessed in what he does” (nasb, emphasis added).
Notice the sequence. In both verses, meditation on Scripture precedes obedience to Scripture. An occasion in the life of King David illustrates how this works. He wanted to speak angrily to someone, but didn’t. The more he thought about what had happened, the more his heart blazed with anger. He describes it this way in Psalm 39:3: “As I mused, the fire burned.”
There’s another, holier kind of inner fire that can burn within us. “‘Is not My word like fire,’ declares the Lord” (Jeremiah 23:29, NASB). As King David experienced a growing fire of anger within him as he meditated upon his circumstances, so our meditation on the fire of God’s Word causes it to burn with more intensity in our experience. Meditation works like a bellows on the fire of Scripture. As it does, both spiritual light and spiritual heat increasingly emanate from the fiery Word.
As we receive more spiritual light, we better understand the meaning of a text and how to apply it. “That’s what it means! Now I get it,” we find ourselves saying more often as a result of meditation.
Much of the time, as I said above, our problem in obeying the Bible is not that we don’t know what to do; rather, we just don’t feel like doing it. We know, for example, that we should turn off the television or the computer, or put down the phone, or that we should speak to someone about Christ, but we just don’t feel like it. This lack of the spiritual zeal to obey is one of the main reasons why we need to meditate on the Bible. The fire of Scripture rarely warms our hearts to action when we merely read it. But meditation upon our reading heats the passion of our obedience. The temperature of our spiritual fervor for doing the will of God rises as the bellows of meditation blows upon the flaming Word of God.
If the hindrances to a simpler spiritual life for you include a struggle to know the will of God and do it, meditate on Scripture for light and heat.
