Meditating on the Word
If you have embarked on the Walk with the Word Scripture Reading Plan, you have no doubt been blessed with a simple, easy method for reading through God's Word entirely in just over 3 years. Most likely you are gaining valuable knowledge about the Bible from the numerous learning opportunities available through the church— the Sunday School study, the message from the pulpit, the midweek small group Bible study. It's astonishing how much we can learn about God and His plan for our lives simply by reading His Word!
Reading God's Word on a regular basis is a good thing to do. God's Word provides knowledge. Knowledge is important because it is the basis for knowing truth. Knowledge helps us to understand God's Person, God's ways, and God's interaction in human history. And God's Word helps to understand ourselves.
But there is a difference between reading God's Word and meditating on God's Word.
Reading for reading's sake can easily become nothing more than the accumulation of facts or a spiritual discipline that needs to be completed. One of the dangers of a Scripture reading plan which moves rapidly through the Bible is that little time will be given for reflection and meditation, much less personal application.
To meditate on God's Word means to reflect on it. To reflect on God's Word is to think something through in its entirety; to ponder, to scrutinize, to "knead" something through. It's during reflection that we come to the point of personalizing God's Word; that is, we begin to ask the question, "What does this mean to me?"
It's through meditation and reflection on God's Word that the knowledge and facts which come from our reading begin to take on real substance; that is, they become personally relevant to us. King David didn't just read God's Word. He wrote,
"I will meditate on Your wonders"
—Psalm 119:78