“I will meditate on Your precepts” (Psalms 119:15)

There are times when being alone with God is necessary. We’ll be better Christians if we spend more time waiting on God, and gathering through meditation on His Word, spiritual strength for labor in His service. Truth is something like the cluster of the vine: in order to obtain wine from it, we must bruise it, press, and squeeze it many times. The bruiser’s feet must come down joyfully upon the bunches, or else the juice won’t flow. So we must, by meditation, tread the clusters of truth, in order to get the wine of consolation.

Our bodies aren’t supported by merely taking food into the mouth, but the process which supplies the muscle, and the nerve, and the sinew, and the bone, is the process of digestion. It’s by digestion that the outward food becomes assimilated with the inner life.

Our souls are not nourished merely by listening awhile to this, and then to that, and then to another part of divine truth. Hearing, reading, marking, and learning, all require inward digesting to complete their usefulness, and the inward digesting of the truth comes with meditating on it.

Why do some Christians, although they hear many sermons, remain spiritual babies? Because they neglect their prayer closets, and don’t thoughtfully meditate on God’s Word. They love the wheat, but they don’t grind it; they want the corn, but they won’t go into the field to gather it; the fruit hangs on the tree, but they won’t pluck it; the water flows at their feet, but they won’t stoop to drink it. From such folly deliver us, Oh Lord, and help us  meditate on Your precepts.

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