Wholly Following – Living a Submitted Life (part 4)

We have been considering together what it means to live a life submitted to Christ and his will.   In our previous meditation, we stressed our need for God’s grace to keep us ever alert to the Spirit’s promptings in our daily walk through life.  “As the Holy Spirit says, ‘Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion, on the day of testing in the wilderness.’” (Hebrews 3:7-8).  Our prayer should be, “Lord, grant me ears to hear your words and a will to obey your commands.”  In answer to that prayer, God continues his work in us enabling us to be living, more and more, a submitted life.    

                            

There is a practice of life that God commands us to engage in order to cultivate both an attitude of our heart to believe his Word and an awareness of our soul to perceive the promptings of the Holy Spirit.  This practice of life is meditation upon the Scriptures.  “This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success. Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for the LORD your God is with you wherever you go” (Joshua 1:8-9 ESV).   Meditation upon God’s Word is more than merely reading or even studying the Bible.  Reading the Bible on a daily basis, as well as careful study of the Bible, are both excellent ways to encounter God’s Word, but through meditation upon the Scriptures  we submit our lives personally to what God has to say specifically to me right now in his Word.

Meditation may be understood through the imagery of a seed sown in good ground.  The seed is the Word of God.  The good ground is our heart and mind.  Silently, God works to cultivate the seed, watering it with his Spirit and warming it with his grace until it produces fruit.  God’s particular Word spoken into our lives is then embodied in our thoughts, our attitudes, and ultimately into our actions.  Our lives come to reflect, more and more, the image of Christ as we practice meditation upon the Scripture.  Through the practice of meditation we deny our own individualistic, selfish thoughts and ambitions.  Instead, we begin to yield ourselves to the will of God and, by the strength he gives us, we obey those specific words that he is speaking into our lives.

One of the best explanations of meditation upon Scripture is given by Dietrich Bonhoeffer in his book, Life Together.  Bonhoeffer writes, “In our meditation we ponder the chosen text on the strength of the promise that it has something utterly personal to say to us for this day and for our Christian life, that it is not only God’s Word for the Church, but also God’s Word for us individually.  We expose ourselves to the specific word until it addresses us personally.  And when we do this, we are doing no more than the simplest, untutored Christian does every day; we read God’s Word as God’s Word for us” (Life Together, 82).  So meditation upon Scripture consists in saturating our minds, our thinking with God’s Word as he speaks those particular passages upon which we meditate into our own lives.

Here’s an illustration of how meditation upon Scripture works.  This story comes from the life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer.  Shortly before the outbreak of World War II, Bonhoeffer had been encouraged to travel to America in order to avoid being drafted into the German army.  When he arrived in New York in the summer of 1939, however, Bonhoeffer was very troubled in his spirit because he was thinking of his family members and friends back in Germany who were struggling to keep their fellow Christians loyal to Christ rather than following the ways of the Nazi Government led by Adolph Hitler.  

As Bonhoeffer was praying and meditating upon Scripture, God impressed his mind a verse from 2 Timothy 4, “Do your best to come before winter.”  He did not randomly find this verse.  Instead, the verse was a part of his regularly Bible readings for that day.  He pondered the passage as it stayed in his thoughts throughout the day.  Ultimately, this verse, along with other circumstances and concerns, prompted Bonhoeffer to return to Germany on the last ship that departed New York harbor before the beginning of the war.

God’s Word can speak into our lives in the same way.  Meditation upon Scripture is the habit of life that we must practice in order to submit our lives daily to the will of God.  It is the practice that is essential to denying ourselves if we truly desire to be Christ faithful disciples who are wholly following him.