Thomas Watson once warned that “the reason we come away so cold from reading the Word is because we do not warm ourselves at the fire of meditation.” So what is this meditation that he deems so important?
It is crucial we distinguish it from a fraudulent form that is increasingly popular today. Christians are not to engage in the meditation of Eastern religions that involves emptying the mind that it may be filled with a kind of self-knowledge. Rather, the meditation the Bible commends involves filling the mind to achieve knowledge of God. It is the meditation of Psalm 1:1-2: “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.”
Packer says, “Meditation is the activity of calling to mind, and thinking over, and dwelling on, and applying to oneself, the various things that one knows about the works and ways and purposes and promises of God.” Thus, to meditate in this way is to call to mind the great truths God reveals about himself—his works and ways and purposes and promises—and then to think about them, to ponder them, to prayerfully consider them, to allow the mind to dwell on them. Just as heat sets the soft clay to become hard bricks, meditation fixes the truths of Scripture within our hearts, our minds, our lives.
