12-27-17 Daily Devotion

December 27, 2017

Basics of Effective Meditation

You may wonder, How can I incorporate genuine meditation into my Christian life? I believe that there are several basics of meditating that will reap tremendous benefits in your walk of faith.
1. Season of time. Do you hurry through your prayer time so that you can get to other things? Think about the model Jesus gave us. Did He ever rush through His prayer time? No, He made communing with the Father His priority, and everything else fell into place around that.
2. Stillness. We read the call to stillness in Psalm 46:10 (NIV), yet we may wonder, What does it mean to “be still”? Simply put, it means that we stop everything else. This can be difficult for us in this fast-paced, multi-tasking world. We’ve gotten used to doing a dozen things at once! However, true meditation requires that we focus our minds on only one thing: almighty God.
3. Seclusion. This is something that the Lord really had to fight for in His ministry, as He was constantlysurrounded by people. While attending to their needs, He also guarded His need for seclusion. Often in the gospels, we see Jesus retreating for some private, intimate time with the Father. No matter what else was going on, Jesus always made a point to safeguard chunks of time here and there to rest in the Spirit, focus on His relationship with the Father, and build up His strength.
Is your prayer life characterized by time set apart and safeguarded so you can be alone with God and still? Commit today to build these essentials into your day.
Bible in One Year: Revelation 1-4

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