In his podcast earlier this week, Joel Hayes, an associate pastor at Fellowship Bible Church in Orlando, Fla., reinforced with my pastor, who was his guest, that the many young men today who are so on-fire with learning the grace message and getting it out, needed to take time also just to meditate on God's Word.
It reminded me of this outtake from an old sermon by my pastor, Richard Jordan:
"We were at the summer Bible camp in the mountains of southern California, and when the morning meetings were through some people asked what me what I planned to do with the afternoon. When I said, 'Nothing,' they responded, 'What, you can't do that!' I said, 'Why not?'
They said, 'Well, we're up here to relax!' I said, 'That's what I intend to do.' That's how I relax; I do nothing.
"I watch these young people come up from the city and they traipse bicycles 400 miles into the mountains so that they can ride bikes. It's beautiful country but I mean, you work so hard to get the blooming stuff up there that you're wore out by the time you've got it off to use.
"I said to one of the men, 'Isn't it interesting that some just have to be going and doing and pushing and driving to just relax.'
"The idea that you could sit around and do nothing and relax--I mean, I was raised different. As a little boy in the rural South, how often I could remember my mom and dad sitting on the front porch in the Spring watching the neighbors go up and down the street.
"You ever do that? Some of you have probably never even thought of doing that. My folks would just sit and watch the evening go by and people say today, 'Well, you're just killing time,' Well, they didn't have near as many hang-ups as some of us do.
Here's an outtake from a study Hayes gave over a week ago:
"Webster's Dictionary says that study is literally a setting of the mind or thoughts upon a subject. This is the application of the mind to books or to any subject for the purpose of learning what is not before known. Study is attention and meditation given to a subject. Study includes meditation. Don't forget that.
I Timothy 4:15: [15] Meditate upon these things; give thyself wholly to them; that thy profiting may appear to all.
"Timothy was to meditate upon all that Paul had written to him. He was to give himself wholly to the writings of Paul. Why? So that his profiting may appear to all.
"He was to be occupied with those thoughts and make them his chief concern; he was to be absorbed in all the thoughts Paul had written.
"Timothy's meditation on the writings of Paul would bring him personal profit. His inner man would be strengthened by that word. He might have a new level of joy. Maybe he was a little more loving through the knowledge he gained. His life is somehow enriched even further and enhanced because he spent that time thinking about God's Word.
"His own personal profit from those meditations of Scripture would be apparent to everyone around him. God designed His Word for you to meditate upon it, which will be profitable to you if you just give it a shot.
"We already did a deep dive into meditation and you remember that to meditate is to dwell on anything in your mind. To contemplate, to think, to turn over or revolve concepts in your mind.
"The result is that your thinking has changed; you're thinking is more like Christ's thinking. Your attitude is more like Christ's. Your emotional life is more like His. You more spiritually strengthened; you're more confident in your walk as an ambassador."
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