“I’m not feeling well today.”
How many times have you come up with that excuse? Many of us are quick to make ourselves victims of dull minds.
Now, even though it is now widely accepted and usually unquestioned, making peace with an unstable mind is a very strange phenomenon. If you’re talking about whether to spread peanut butter on your breakfast toast, that might not be a big deal. But much more is at stake when this becomes an excuse to ignore God, whether it’s His Word, prayer, or Christian fellowship.
Specifically, this excuse serves to undermine the spiritual health habits associated with starting each day with the voice of God found in the Bible. Some of us, like our world, have learned to follow the whims of our own capricious hearts, and rather than resolve to change our hearts, we have become spindly, feeble Christians. There are some too.
your gentle love
Perhaps his most insightful and spiritual book, Prayer: Experience awe and intimacy with God (2014), the late Tim Keller introduces an aspect of the great British theologian John Owen (1616-1683) that deviates from modern assumptions. Keller said Owen won’t accept the “I just don’t feel well today” excuse anytime soon.In fact, he will probably respond Forcibly — and many of us might be better off that way.
Owen wants to at least challenge whether our initial feelings determine anything important. He would never tell us to skip the Word of God (or prayer or church) to cater to the unspiritual tendencies we woke up to. Rather, as Keller summarizes, he might say, “Meditate to joy.” Don’t give in to your heart’s first desire. Rather, get a grip on them and instruct them. Open your Bible, focus on the most worthy person, and keep your eyes fixed on it and your heart on Jesus until your dull heart begins to respond as it should.
This is shocking for a generation that has been conditioned to “follow our hearts” and eventually reshape the external, objective world based on the subjectivity and vagaries of our own desires. That’s great advice.
How often do we hear even Christians admit to being “wired” a certain way as a hidden excuse? Indeed, God has wired us a certain way. But how often do we agree that we are actually fixed in a much more flexible way? And the world does not help us with this. Our society has come to pretend to be plastic exactly where we are fixed (such as biological sex), and to pretend to be fixed exactly where there is plasticity (desire and pleasure). Ta.
Long before anyone was talking about neuroplasticity, Owen believed in what he called “emotional plasticity,” meaning that desires and pleasures are not hardwired. they are flexible. You can change the shape and readjust it. Can be retrained. You may not be able to completely and effectively spin something in the moment to feel something, but you can reshape your mind over time. Oh, you can.Your desires are not simple, good or bad. Given the. Expanded over time and as a complex of countless decisions, they are wonderful (and unforgettable) Was chosen.
prepare your mind
In Chapter 10, prayerKeller adds commentary to Owen’s pre-modern insights to gain much-needed perspective on the connection between God’s Word and our prayers. through meditation. This is a perspective on the formation and reformation of our flexible minds that challenges readers today. It will frustrate many, but will certainly inspire a few.
In general, we are too easy on our minds and hearts.we admit that we can train your body. In fact, for better or worse, your body is constantly being trained.And most people would agree that it can train the mind –So to speak, “the mind is a muscle.” You can learn how to set it to a specific object and keep it there. It takes practice. Such training is essential for us to grapple with God’s Word as we should, and there are few skills that are more difficult and important to cultivate.
And, even more controversially, train the mind— includes not only sinful emotions to avoid, but also right emotions to enjoy. As Mr. Keller summarizes Owen, with the Bible open in front of you, you can learn to “meditate to joy.”
three stages of meditation
Some well-meaning Christians start reading the Bible, don’t feel much (if anything), move on quickly, pray a few simple, shallow petitions, and then get on with their day. . Owen would say this to CS Lewis. you get satisfied too easily — That is, if you are at all satisfied. Rather, Owen will have us wrestle across the Jabbok River like Jacob. until the light dawns. Struggle with your own dull soul. Please give instructions. Turn it. Work on it until you do what you need to do, feel Rather, it seems that we are supposed to feel the wonder and horror of God’s Word. In other words, say to the God of the Word, “I will not let you go until you bless me,” and train your heart to receive the joy God created for it.
Now, to bring back this lost meditation technique, I will add some explanations. Owen distinguished between study, meditation, and prayer. Meditation is the bridge between receiving God’s Word (reading or studying) and responding to it (prayer). Meditation, Owen says.
is distinguished from study Our main purpose is to learn the truth or proclaim it to others.And also from prayer, whose immediate object is God Himself. but . . . meditation . . . It is about feeding love, joy, and emotion into our own hearts and minds. [humility]. (Quoted in Keller, prayer152)
Meditation, therefore, can be parsed into three successive stages, although distinct from, but overlapping with, study and prayer.
1) Correct your heart
Start by taking in the Bible, read it, and reread it. The later the better. And when we encounter various knowledge gaps about the content and meaning of the text, we may turn to a little “studying” to “learn the truth” or to get the text right. Beginners have more questions and need to decide how often to stop and study, or just keep reading and finding clues as they go. But the important point is that meditation begins with immersion in God’s Word.
Unlike Eastern “meditation” which seeks to empty the mind, Biblical meditation requires filling the mind with the truth of God’s self-revelation in the Son and in the Bible. We don’t just wake up and meditate. I don’t mean it intentionally. We begin with the Bible and anchor our ideas about God and His Son through the content of God’s Word.
2) tilt your heart
Modifying your thinking is difficult enough; tilt one’s heart It is unfathomable to many people. It’s not because we can’t do it, it’s because we’re socialized to believe we can’t do it. So this is where Owen (and Keller) look powerful and amazing. However, Owen advises those of us who have heeded God’s Word to “remain spiritually minded.” for your refreshment”(John Owen’s works, Vol. 7, 393). That is, Meditate until you begin to feel the words..preach to yourself Until then You start to feel like you should be doing it more. Do the words proclaim the majesty of God? Feel the awe. Is it a warning to sinners? Feel the fear. Do you want to announce good news? Feel the joy.
The goal is to meditate, not to meditate for a specific amount of time. Until the moment of joy, persists “until it can be refreshed”. The apostle Peter speaks of the present, not just the future, and the joy that Christians will experience not only in the age to come, but in the present. [Jesus with your physical eyes]“You will believe in God and rejoice with joy and glory indescribable” (1 Peter 1:8). But there is no better way to do that than to focus our minds on God’s own words. meditate until He smiles at us and warms our souls with true joy.
Owen gives hope to those who think this is impossible. [this] Duty gives you the ability to do so. Those who sincerely adhere to its implementation will increase in light, wisdom, and experience until they can manage it with great success. ” Keller then leans into his Psalm 1 and comments: “A tree does not grow overnight. Meditation is a continuous process, like a tree growing its roots towards a water source. The effects are cumulative. We must stick to it. I have to meditate.”day and night“—regularly, steadily” (161-162).
Questions arise not only because of our sins, but also because of our humanity. Owen knew this as much as any of us, if not more. Anticipating our opposition, Keller writes:
Owen is pretty down to earth. He admits that sometimes no matter what he’s doing, he simply can’t concentrate or his thoughts don’t become big and impactful, but instead become boring, exhausting, and distracting. Then, Owen says, just turn to God and ask for help briefly and fiercely. Sometimes that’s all you have to do for the rest of your scheduled time, and sometimes the very cry for help helps focus the mind and soothe the mind. (prayer161)
There is a big difference between occasional realism and a pattern of daily resignation. There is a difference between a lazy beginner and a wise veteran who has learned a lost art and has come to experience the third stage regularly, despite its blandness and distraction “sometimes.” There is a world of difference.
3) Enjoy God
The final stage lets the fun (or screaming) that began in the second stage vent, or give space. We fan the flames of love worthy of the truth before us. This is the high point of meditation: enjoying God in Christ. This fills our souls with “answerable responses.” As Keller comments, we “listen to the Bible, study it, think about it, ponder it, and ponder it.” until there is a reply in our hearts and minds” (55, emphasis added)—which leads us to prayer. According to Keller,
Meditation before prayer consists of thinking, then leaning, and finally enjoying its presence or acknowledging its absence and asking for God’s mercy and help. Meditation is thinking of a truth and thinking about it until the thought becomes “big” and “sweet” and touches and affects the heart, until the reality of God is felt in the heart. (162)
And this “feeling God in our hearts” is manifested in our response to prayer by meditating on God’s words.
Without immersion in God’s Word, our prayers can become not only limited and shallow, but also disconnected from reality. We may be responding to what we want God and life to be rather than who we really are. Indeed, if left unchecked, our minds have a tendency to create gods that don’t exist. . . . Without prayers answered by the God of the Bible, we are only talking to ourselves. (62)
Therefore, we want prayer to be prompted by and connected to the ingestion of God’s Word. “If we began our prayers according to our own inner needs and psychology, we would never be able to fully express the prayers of the Bible. It is produced only if we respond in prayer accordingly” (60).
Not only the truth but also Jesus
Keller concludes this blessed chapter 10 with Jesus Himself as the main focus of our meditation. The God-man not only delights in the Word of God, like the happy man of Psalm 1, but he himself is “the one to whom all Scripture points” (v. 163).As Christians, we learn to meditate on both and with him upon he.
As we read, reread, study, and ponder the Bible, we seek to know and enjoy not just the truth, but the truth itself. For Christians, the ultimate focus of meditation is personal, both fully human and fully divine in the person of Jesus Christ.
