God commands us to meditate on His Word. The Hebrew word
translated into English as "meditate" literally means "chew the
cud." This notion may not be appetizing to you, but if you were a
cow, you would feel very differently. When a cow wakes up, she
soon starts thinking about having some breakfast. Some fresh grass
perhaps? Delicious! About an hour and a half later, she muses
about how good breakfast was, and she decides to eat it again. She
regurgitates the grass and chews it a second time. Mmmm. It’s
just as good the second time around. About an hour later, she
gets that look in her eyes and thinks, One more time! She
regurgitates the grass and chews it a third time.
Only after she eats the food three times is her body able to
digest it. If she eats it just once, the grass will just pass on
through. After three times, her body will be nourished. The food
actually becomes part of her. This is what God wants to happen to
His Word. The Word became flesh when Jesus took on a human body.
The Word becomes flesh in us when we meditate on the Word
of God.
God may show us something wonderful from His Word, but if we
only eat it once, it will do us little or no good at all. That’s
why it’s so important for us to keep a journal of the things God
shows us. Whenever God speaks to us (be it in our own devotions or
during a message at church or wherever), we need to write it down!
We need to meditate on those things, to ponder them, to mull them
over, to "chew the cud." It is through this meditation process
that we become strong on the inside.
If our times studying the Bible ever become dry, having a
journal to review can help us escape the dryness. The journal is
filled with treasure.
Let the Word of Christ dwell in you richly (Colossians 3:16).
Blessed is the man, who walks not in the counsel of the wicked,
nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of
scoffers; 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, that yields its fruit in its season, and its
leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers (Psalms
1:2-3).
This book of the law shall not depart out of your mouth, but
you shall meditate on it day and night that you may be careful to
do according to all that is written in it; for then you shall make
your way prosperous, and then you shall have good success (Joshua
1:8).
