Oh, how I love Your law! It is my meditation all the day. (Psalm 119:97)

The Transforming Power Of The Word of God

And so you should now see this current craze of contemplative mysticism within the apostatizing evangelical community for exactly what it is: spiritual laziness. As I have pointed out many times here at Apprising Ministries today we have so many of the supposedly spiritual learned like Living Spiritual Teacher Richard Foster yammering on about Zen-like so-called “Christian” meditation. They tell us if you want to experience God you need to empty yourself, “practice His presence” and simply sit in silent meditation.

Ah, but you just have to love the Lord’s sense of humor. After all our Lord Himself has already told us – And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to Him must believe that He exists and that He rewards those who earnestly seek Him. And the following devotion from A.W. Tozer shows that God still rewards people the old-fashioned way. The Lord is not going to teach you by some process of osmosis while you just sit there contemplating emptiness.

Do you really want to know God? Then pick up your Bible and try meditating on that for a while. As you will see demonstrated in Tozer’s piece below it is also written in Psalm 119 – Your commands make me wiser than my enemies, for they are ever with me. I have more insight than all my teachers, for I meditate on your statutes. I have more understanding than the elders, for I obey your precepts.(vv. 98-100)

I remember James M. Gray, the noted Bible teacher, telling of a Christian brother, a Michigan farmer, whose spiritual life had suddenly blossomed until there was an overflowing of God’s presence. Many in the man’s community recognized the change in his life and personality and sought spiritual counsel from him. Dr. Gray had opportunity to ask the man about the transformation of his spiritual life and witness.

“Dr. Gray, I began to devote myself to the Scriptures for my own need,” the man humbly explained. “Something happened when God opened my spiritual understanding as I studied the book of Ephesians. I cannot really explain what the Lord is doing for me and through me, but it has come through prayerful meditation in the Word of God.”

None of us can expect to get the rich, transforming blessings from God apart from the Scriptures…

Too many of us ministers and Sunday school teachers are content to reach for a commmentary on the Scriptures. What we need most is to search the Scriptures for ourselves. MMG047.

“Deliver me today from the short-cuts, and help me to discipline myself to long, concentrated study of the Scriptures themselves. Amen.” (Tozer on Christian Leadership, January 14)