A few weeks ago, I preached on Biblical meditation from Psalm 1:2. The Puritans believed that meditation was an essential means by which we grow in maturity.
However, meditation is not simply thinking about things, it is thinking in an applied way, with purpose. Today, I have been reading William Bridge. This is what he has to say.
There must be a fixation of the soul upon some truth; a dwelling and fixing of the soul upon some thing.
William Bridge, The Works of William Bridge Volume 3 (Soli Deo Gloria reprint, 1989), 126.
But then this must be in reference to one’s own profit and benefit. Though I do think, and think much of sin, if I do not think thereof to leave it, it is not meditation. Though I think on the life and death of Christ, if it not be to conform unto Him, these thoughts will not amount to meditation. Though I think on the love and goodness of God, yet if it be not to get my heart inflamed with love thereby, it will not amount to meditation.
Plainly, then, meditation, for the true nature and notion of it, is a vehement, an intense application of the soul unto a thing, whereby a man’s mind doth dwell and insist and abide upon it for his profit and benefit.
Biblical meditation is not simply a good thing to do; it has a purpose to change us. May we learn from these giants of the faith from the past and mine God’s word and draw out and apply the glories to our lives.
The best is yet to come 