Meditation

Meditation is something I've been thinking about for a while- thinking about how bad I am at it and wondering what exactly it is. I found the chapter on meditation in David Mathis' book, Habits of Grace helpful:

Think over what I say,

for the Lord will give you understanding in everything.

2 Timothy 2.7

Keep the Book of the Law always on your lips;

meditate on it day and night.

Joshua 1.8

Three times in chapter 1 God tells Joshua to be "strong and courageous". How? Where will he  fill his tank with such strength and courage? Meditation. God means not for Joshua to be merely familiar with the Book, or that he read through sections of it quickly in the morning, or even that he go deep in it in study, but that he be captivated by it and build his life on its truths. His spare thoughts should go there, his idle mind gravitate there. God's words of instruction are to saturate his life, give him direction, shape his mind, form his patterns, fuel his affections and inspire his actions.

Blessed is the man...[whose] delight is in the law of the Lord,

and on his law he meditates day and night.

Psalm 1.1-2

The blessed one, the happy one, who delights in God's Word doesn't avail himself of the words of life merely with some quick breadth reading, punctuated with a block of study, but "meditates day and night".

Thomas Manton:

"The Word feedeth meditation, and meditation feedeth prayer....meditation must follow hearing and precede prayer...what we take in by the Word we digest by meditation and let out by prayer."

Thomas Watson:

"The reason we come away so cold from reading the Word 

is because we do not warm ourselves at the fire of meditation."

William Bates:

"The great reason why our prayers are ineffectual, 

is because we do not meditate before them."

Matthew Henry:

"As meditation is the  best preparation for prayer, 

so prayer is the best issue of meditation."