We can assume that Jesus practiced regular times of meditation since He was known as a brilliant teacher with amazing insight and often spent time alone with God the Father. Personally, I wonder if Jesus spent His forty days alone in the wilderness preceding His temptation by Satan meditating on Deuteronomy; He responds to Satan’s temptations by quoting from Deuteronomy, which was obviously at the forefront of His mind.

Meditation has also been a common practice of all branches of Christianity throughout the history of the church. For example, the Puritans were masters at meditation. The lengthy Puritan sermons normally only explored a verse or two of Scripture but did so in a deep and thorough way in an effort to help people learn to meditate deeply on Scripture for themselves. Some Puritan pastors even said that they were more interested in how much Scripture their people understood and obeyed than how much Scripture their people read. They were not discouraging Scripture reading, but acknowledging that sometimes people read too much too fast and remember and apply too little. Slowing down to meditate can be beneficial.

Practically, there are some steps that can be helpful for Christian meditation:

1. Pray for the Holy Spirit to teach you Scripture, convict you of sin, and give you a heart to lovingly obey Jesus.
2. Memorize a word, verse, phrase, chapter, or scene of Scripture that bites you.
3. Write it out in your own words, seeking to grasp the full meaning of what is said.
4. Ask yourself what is revealed about God.
5. Repent of any sin that the Holy Spirit convicts you of.
6. Pray for anyone or anything that the Holy Spirit brings to mind.
7. Determine what God would have you to do in obedience to His Word.

Summary

Meditation is not complicated or mysterious. It can be done anywhere at any time by anyone with a heart to know God better and become more like Jesus. The result is that God the Holy Spirit will honor our time and make the written Word become for us a living Word that transforms our hearts, minds, and lives.

Christian meditation differs greatly from non-Christian forms of meditation practiced in Eastern religions. Christian meditation is not passively emptying one’s mind, looking inward for guidance, or detaching oneself from the world. Christian meditation is actively filling one’s mind with Scripture to hear from God and subsequently being transformed by God to effectively serve Him in the world.

In short, Christian meditation is prolonged, focused, thoughtful, and prayerful deep thinking on the truths of who God is and what God has said and done according to Scripture. Past church leaders have simply called this meditation Scripturanum, or “meditating upon Scripture.”

The concept of meditation is a fairly common theme in the Hebrew Old Testament. There we find two words used for the discipline and they appear some fifty-eight times, including in the lives of such leaders as Isaac (Genesis 24:63) and Joshua (Joshua 1:8). In some ways the entire book of Psalms is a book of meditation and includes many references to the discipline:

Meditation in Psalms

Psalm 1:1–4 Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked or stand in the way of sinners or sit in the seat of mockers. But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither. Whatever he does prospers.
Psalm 19:14 May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, O LORD, my Rock and my Redeemer.
Psalm 77:11–12 I will remember the deeds of the Lord; yes, I will remember your miracles of long ago. I will meditate on all your works and consider all your mighty deeds.
Psalm 119:97 Oh, how I love your law! I meditate on it all day long.
Psalm 119:99 I have more insight than all my teachers, for I meditate on your statutes.

Meditation is also commended in the New Testament in such places as Philippians 4:8, which says, “Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.” Meditation is also demonstrated in the life of Jesus’ mother Mary. After hearing God’s great plan for her, “Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart” (Luke 2:19).