The Value of Right Meditation
The Value of Right Meditation
The most deeply spiritual men and women that I know are people who have given much time to meditation. You cannot develop spiritual wisdom without meditation. God told Joshua this fact at the very beginning of his ministry after the death of Moses. Joshua 1 :8: "This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth, but thou shalt meditate thereon day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein; for then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success." (or you will be able to deal wisely in the things of life). Take time to meditate in the Word. Shut yourself in alone with your own spirit where the clamor of the world is shut out. If you are ambitious to do something worth while, I would suggest that you take ten or fifteen minutes daily for meditation. Learn to do it.
In other words, begin the development of your own spirit. You have gone to school, or you are going to school, for the development of your intellect. Some of you are taking physical culture for the development of your muscles. If you will take time you can develop your memory. A man told me of one the other day who had developed his memory until, riding from Seattle to Chicago, he could remember the license of every car that he made an attempt to remember. He could not only remember things like that, but he could remember everything else connected with the trip. An Indian friend told us one night that there was a time when the Indian could commit to memory the entire New Testament. He would sit and listen to the white man read it through three or four times, and he had it committed to memory.
Memory is of the spirit. You may develop any gift that you wish, but the most important gifts that God has given to you are the spiritual gifts. It is the development of this spirit that is going to mean more to your life than any other one thing. Let me show you some tremendous facts in connection with the development of your spirit life. When Jesus went away He promised to send the Holy Spirit. John 14:16,17: "'And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another comforter, that he may be with you forever, even the spirit of truth: whom the world cannot receive; for it beholdeth him not, neither knoweth him: ye know him, for he abideth with you, and shall be in you." There is coming, Jesus said, a Spirit that is going to recreate your spirit.
Then He is going to take charge of your spirit and dominate you spiritually. You are going to yield your spirit to the domination of the Holy Spirit through the Word. The psychologist told us that we had a subconscious mind, but it was the spirit, the real man. The next problem was how my spirit could be developed. He said that the Holy Spirit would come and guide us into all reality ; not the reality of the intellect, but into the reality of spiritual things. That is the reason I want you to get quiet a little while. I want you so quiet that the Holy Spirit may communicate with your spirit through the Word and unveil these truths to you. It will make you a master. The great body of men do not meditate in the spirit. They live in the realm of the senses. Their meditations are guided by the senses. The Sense-governed mind is limited. Your spirit has practically no limitations.
You can develop your spirit life until you dominate circumstances.
Your spirit can come into vital union with His Spirit, the Father Himself.
Your spirit becomes a partaker of the Divine Nature.
It is not your intellect or your body, but your spirit that fellowships the riches of His gracious presence. Your spirit, with God's Nature in it, can fellowship on terms of absolute equality with God Himself. Do you see your limitless possibilities? Someone came to me the other day and said, "In your little book on healing you say that diseases are spiritual." It is true. They could not grasp it. They thought that diseases were either mental or physical. Christian Science says that disease is mental. So Mrs. Eddy became the most outstanding mental healer that the world has ever known. Jesus brings us into contact with spiritual things, not mental. Spiritual things are as real as physical things. They are as real as mental things. Your spirit can reach the point where the things in His Word will become as real to you as Jesus is real to you, as any loved one is real to you.
That can be true. Hear what He said in John 16:13: "Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth is come, he shall guide you into all truth; for he shall not speak from himself ; but what things soever he shall hear, these shall he speak : and he shall declare unto you the things that are to come." He is to take the things of Jesus and the things of the Father and unveil them to us. I sat by a sick one the other day who had a cancer. I got her mind off the disease and her physical body, and I began to unfold the Word to her as quietly as I could. I held her down to that Word because I knew the Word could heal her. When I went into the room she was filled with fear; she thought that she had to. have that cancer cut out at once or death would come.
I began to deal with her spirit. I did not tell her so. I did not tell her that healing was spiritual. I did not tell her that the cancer was spiritual, and had been manifested in her physical body. I made her see that back yonder God laid that cancer on Jesus. It was laid upon His Spirit. His Spirit became cancerous with her cancer and the cancers of the world. He was made sin, He was made sick. This woman saw that her cancer was laid on Him just as others have. She lay there ; and after a bit she said, "The pain is gone. I am healed." The Word healed her spirit. That healed her mind and her body. We have never given the Word its place in our thinking. The Word is God speaking. The Word takes Jesus' place in life today. The Word living in us, means that it functions in us, acts in us, rules in us. We do the Word.
The Two Kinds of Life