Psalm 46:10 “Be still, and know that I am God;
How often are you just quiet before the Lord? How often do you tune out he static of life to truly listen to what is going on within you?
New age calls it meditation, but followers of Christ call it meditation as well. The process is the similar because the principal of meditation doesn’t change.
Psalm 48:9 Within your temple, O God, we meditate on your unfailing love.
The temple of God is not a place. You are the temple of the Holy Spirit.
1 Corinthians 6:19 Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God?
So what does it mean to meditate on the word? When I worked in a large city I had a masseuse who taught me to mediate because she said I was too tense. She said I had to get to a quiet place in my mind and the way to do that was to count back from 100 to 1 with each breath until I could do so without any other thoughts of things to do, thoughts of breathing or anything else that came to mind to distract me. Honestly, I was never able to do that. My mind would wander and I’d forget where I left off in the breathing. It’s impossible to not think about anything, so I changed my meditation time in to learning to be still before the Lord. Have you ever tried to still your mind? It’s very difficult. Yet, the bible says that God speaks to us in that still small voice. (1Kings19:12) The only way to hear a still small voice is to be as quiet as possible. When people whisper you have to be quiet and draw near to hear.
The noise of the world often drowns out the possibility of hearing from God. We have noise wherever we go. We have even created noise machines so as not to sleep in silence. The very thing we need to exist in peace, wisdom and love, we drown out in the chaos of life. Jesus often went away from the crowds to be still. You must often get to a quiet place in your life where you are still. In those moments of stillness are where revelation comes, where problems can be resolved, and where wisdom is imparted. In those quiet moments is where God speaks to the scared part of your heart, the wounded part of your heart, the healthy part of your heart, and the inquisitive part of your heart. Is it any wonder that the enemy of your soul surrounds you with noise? Televisions that are on all night, music in elevators, can you ever find a quiet place unless you make room for it? Some people I know actually feel edgy in quiet times. Simply they have not learned to be still. Quiet makes them nervous because they’ve never learned to dwell in the peace of stillness. Quiet can be scary because it forces you to face fears.
Noise is sent to distract us from the union between God and us. I’ve heard people say that they decided to shut the TV off for a set number of days and that boredom caused them to read the bible. Do you have a quiet place? Can you access it regularly? If not, I urge you to find one. Try to find a place where you are still. To find a place where you are able to hear God’s still small voice. It’s the direction and the peace you need. Sometimes my best prayer time with God is when I am quiet and I listen rather than speak.
Pastor Susan 
Though I know this is God’s will for my life (stillness), I forget or avoid doing it sometimes. I know I need it, but find this weird reluctance to quiet everything down and just be quiet. After a while, I notice how edgy, frustrated or stressed I am about even small things that wouldn’t have been an issue before and I quiet my soul again.
I’m not good at it all the time, but I know it works and am determined to give it more effort in the future.
But there’s another issue that crops up that you alluded to: guilt. I feel guilty about being quiet and meditating—like I’m being selfish or something.
Like you said, it’s all a ruse of the enemy to keep us from being at peace in Christ or demonstrating that peace to the world.
Thanks for the reminder.
I too feel guilt at taking time for meditation. I am discovering though that it is self-inflicted. I have bought a lie. To take time for myself and feel the guilt means that I am more externally focused, how I will be perceived by others, who may view me as lazy, becomes the focus, rather than internally focused, how this will add to my well-being. I am working on it!
i sometimes think the comfort with physical silence is a bit of an introvert/extrovert thing. where the introverts tend to draw energy from alone time, they also seem to thrive more with silence that comes with it.
interesting timing with this topic though… as one of my main struggles on this is that i really suck at achieving mental silence when there is any physical background noise… its hard to just ignore it and not get annoyed at its intrusion of being noticed, thus getting further from mental stillness.
but this makes things interesting when i have a major ear infection right now. constant ringing is enough to drive me nuts when its quiet! soft music helps reduce my notice of the ringing to make it easier to sleep, but helps not a bit on the mental silence struggle.
which i suppose i ought to take as a flag of an area i need to work on… being able to focus and detach from the world in spite of distractions rather than only by removing them.
I’m actually someone who loves silence, it’s shutting down my mind which is difficult, and then the amount of time spent to do that, seems wasteful (or may be perceived that way), when there are so many other things to do. I’ve been allowing myself this time these days and learning to deal with the guilt of it. We aren’t meant to meditate and think of nothing and I think when we think of meditation we think we are supposed to clear our mind and think of nothing, but I think that’s impossible. I think rather, it means still your own agenda, and meditate on the who, what, where, how, why, of God.
Feel better Blue, I had a cold in March and got an ear infection (from ignoring the problem and being still), and the ringing drove me nuts. It seemed to last forever. I can so relate. I’ll be praying for you!