Job 27:12 Behold, all ye yourselves have seen it; why then are ye thus altogether vain?

Yesterday was one of my worst days. For weeks now I have been waking up feeling absolutely blessed, inspired, and in step with the Lord. Yesterday I woke up feeling out of sorts, disconnected and troubled. Being who I am I started looking within myself to see what I had done wrong. Since God is perfect in all of His ways, I must have done something wrong. I couldn’t see it, I was at a loss for what was wrong.

My wife saw it right away. The one that knows you best always knows when something is wrong. We talked, I poured out my heart, I even wept. Nothing, nothing came to light.

When it came time to post my blog for the day I used one that I had held in reserve. It wasn’t right for those days I was inspired. I posted it because I didn’t have anything in me to give. I felt bad about it, but what is one more thing out of sorts but just one more thing.

“Get up, get out, you have things to do that are still service to you wife.” I told myself.

Everything I did outside the house went wrong. People weren’t cooperating. Things that should have been automatic and normal failed to produce expected results. Everything was out of sorts, or was it just me. Even the card reader on the gas pump was failing to act normal.

Then on the way home in the rain I was the 4^th car in a seven car pileup. Traffic had come to a stop on the interstate and a rather large pickup truck plowed into us. I had three vehicles in front of me and 3 vehicles behind me. I was “in the middle” of it all.

It was a miracle that no one was seriously hurt. Praise God for that. But what is my take away? What has the Lord to say about yesterday? Job 27:12, that is what the Lord had to say to me.

Joshua 1:8 This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth; but thou shalt meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein: for then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success.

My experience is that the majority of Christians do not know how to meditate. When they look to the purpose of meditation they see an end goal. They then begin to look at scripture as a means to an end. They see meditation as an exercise of will, they imagine how the scriptures work. That is not the purpose of meditation.

2 Corinthians 10:5 Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ;

This is the purpose of meditation. Taking captive every thought in obedience of faith. The approach is different in this way, you must see the Word of God for what it is and not what you want it to be. It is within the human experience to relate the Word of God with what we know and understand. This knowledge base, this referral of studies, teachings, sermons, commentaries and personal experience all fill our brains with thoughts which are in many ways a burden. We fear letting go of any of it.

Meditation is letting go of all that is not God’s Word and allowing the Word itself to speak to you from a place of emptiness, humility, and subjection to the Lord.

Letting go of what we think is not easy. Meditation is not thinking. It is letting go of everything which is not God.