Joseph Prince - Biblical Meditation, An Easy Way To Get Started
This excerpt is from:
The One Thing That Brings Success In Every Area (14 Feb 2016)
The One Thing That Brings Success In Every Area (14 Feb 2016)
The one thing that you do, that will cause you to prosper. Whatsoever he doeth shall prosper. Meditate! When you read your Bible, it’s not possible to be reading your Bible or reading a daily devo, alright, and then all day long you put your face in the Bible. You will knock in the telephone poles and all that, alright, knock into other people. It’s not possible. But what you do is you take a bite-sized portion of your daily devo and there’s a verse there, memorize it, and all day long, under your breath, mutter it. Because the word "meditate" here is the word "mutter". Mutter, mutter. Alright, mutter means you speak to yourself. "Like two times two is four, three times two is six, four times two is eight, five times," you know, you mutter to yourself, like talking to yourself. Amen! Right, you mutter to yourself.
"People will think I’m crazy"! Does it really matter when crazy people think you are crazy? Does it really matter? Alright, honestly even Shakespeare calls it soliloquy, a man talks to himself. You know, it’s normal! Amen. At least you are talking to a gentleman. And even in your Korean dramas, they talk to themselves. There is no one else there, he says: "Wow, if I do this, she will leave me for him… I do not know if I can afford this, but if I do that, they will know that I am the one… How can I just do this and not do this"? Keep your thoughts to yourself! You speak out loud for what? He wants the audience to know, you understand or not? That’s why they speak out loud. Amen. So meditate day and night. "Hagah". You say: "Pastor Prince, I do not know how to meditate". Do you know how to worry? Same principle. Worry is like you lie down there in your bed, you start to revolve your mind around: "Oh boy, the boss wants it by this coming Wednesday. Today is Sunday, oh man". Or you think about your child: "His first day in Primary One. Will people bully him or not? You know, he’s not good with money. How can he handle himself? Oh no, I see him under the car, oh no".
Alright, you are revolving around your mind on the dark side. Listen, do not go to the dark side. You are meditating! So don’t tell me you do not know how to meditate. So instead of that, revolve your mind around Scripture that you have memorized. You say "Pastor, I’m looking for this. My doctor says that I have a very unique disease. I am trying to find that in the Bible". You don’t have to. Just memorize verses like: "The Lord will take away from you all". I think that includes yours. "All sickness! The Lord will take" Just meditate on that when you bathe, under your breath, when you sleep at night, meditate on that instead of your thoughts, being terrifying thoughts as you lie down there, meditate on that. You might just wake up in the middle of the night and there are terrifying thoughts again, just quote that. "The Lord will take away from you all sickness". It is written: "The Lord will take away from you all sickness". Amen!
The Bible said, for God’s Word in Proverbs 6. It says in Proverbs 6: "When you walk, it shall lead you". God’s Word shall lead you. "When you sleep, it shall keep you. When you wake, it shall talk with you". So in the middle of the night, you wake up and you got bad thoughts about your family, or your future, whatever it is, alright? Worrisome thoughts. Straight away, quote that verse. It is written: "The Lord will take away from you all sickness". Not too long ago, I was in Israel. We were on one of the highest mountains in Galilee, near the lake of Galilee, Mount Arbel. Many of you have been there. And then we decided, instead of going down the easy way, we will go down the hard way, because all the boys. Amen. We got Pastor Mark with us, Pastor Lawrence, all the macho guys. So we said: "Let’s go down the hard way". So we were clinging by the side of the mountain for dear life.
Anyway we were there and somewhere down here, on the right, we passed by, we saw a huge cave. Most of you don’t go by there because it’s a hard way down. There was a huge cave and guess who was in that cave? I’ve been meditating, I’ve been going over the importance of meditation and meditating on Psalms 1. Alright? And in the cave was a cow! And the cow was sitting down looking at us. "Strangers". And he was chewing his cud. And all of a sudden when I saw that, my goodness, it was like, I remember all of a sudden. Now a ruminant, whether a sheep or a cow or a goat. A ruminant, one that has four compartments, not four stomachs. People say a cow has four stomachs. No, they have four compartments in one stomach. So when they take the grass in, the first compartment, alright? The rumen mixes with the bacteria and fermentation happens. Okay, and then he brings it up again. Now he chews the cud. And it goes in, the ball of cud, it comes up again, and he will chew it. That’s where you get the curd on your milk.
And then after the second compartment, he brings it up and he brings it into the third compartment, now this is very interesting, where all the water is extracted from the cud. That tells me when I meditate on God’s Word and I bring it up again, and I chew on it again during the day, alright? Here and there I chew it again, there are always pockets of moments where you are lining up for example, people are bored, people are, you know, feeling frustrated, you can just meditate. "Surely He shall deliver you. A thousand shall fall at my side". You’re having a personal revival, you’re having church all by yourself. Amen. And you bring it up again. What you have fed, you bring it up again. And now the third compartment, the third stomach, the third compartment rather, extracts all the water out of the cud. Every time you meditate, God wants you to meditate until you suck all the juice and the nutrients out of God’s Word, as if you can do it completely. God’s Word is, you know, inexhaustible. But it’s like you extract the Spirit, the water from the Word. The anointing. And the fourth one is like your normal stomach, it goes into the excrement.
So this was the cow we saw. Alright, he is chewing the cud. You see, he will stop for a while, and regurgitate, watch this, he brings it up again. There you go, he brings it up again, alright? Any resemblance to any of your relatives, alive or dead, is just purely coincidental, alright? This was exactly the cow that we saw in the cave in Mount Arbel where you saw us climbing, okay? So when I saw this, I said: "God you are speaking to me in a very... who put the cow there"? Ever since we passed by Mount Arbel, I’m always looking out in the caves to see if there is a cow. There’s no more cows. It’s amazing that day. There’s a cow, huh, Lawrence? A cow was there! The first time ever. I’ve been to Israel so many times, I’ve never seen so many cows there. And they were all chewing, chewing looking at me, chewing and chewing. It’s like God is saying: "If you don’t get it now, you’ll never get it. Bring meditation back to the church. You’ve been enjoying it all these years. Son, it has prospered your life. Bring it back to the church".
I remember when I was in basic military training, Pastor Henry would prepare for me 3 by 5 cards of verses and I put them in my camouflage uniform. Even when I’m training, here and there, we have some pockets of time, where we lie down there for some drinks or some snacks or whatever. I’ll take it out and I’ll read one verse. There’s power in that. There’s just power in that. I don’t have time to read the Bible but I have time to read the 3 by 5 cards. It’s amazing the nutrients you get out of it. The strength, the perspective, the rest in place of worry. Are you listening, people? By the way, there is another verse I would like you to meditate on. If you do not know what to meditate on, it’s Romans 8. "He who did not spare His own Son". Remember I preached on this and I preached so much, from little nuggets here and there, like "if God did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things".
And I am telling you this verse won’t last you one day. Probably one week. One week plus. Just take the first part: "How, if God did not spare His own Son". Now who did God not spare? His own Son. The word "own" is very precious. His own Son. Justin is my own son. And then that’s the first day you meditate. Then after that you come to: "But delivered Him up for us all. Delivered Him up". God gave Him up for who? For angels? No, for us. For us. And then maybe another day you start meditating, your friends tell you: "You know, sometimes God answers prayer, sometimes He doesn’t, sometimes He…". You hear all kinds of teachings you know. But then you’re meditating. Your friends do not know that streams of living water are coming into you. Amen. Pure water. They are listening to stagnant water.
Man has put their thoughts in it but you are listening to streams of living water. You come to this part another day: "How shall He not with Him, how shall He not"? God doesn’t answer prayer? "How shall He not"? I know English, in English, "shall" is a powerful word. "How shall He not"? And another day, you hear your friends saying: "You know something, I know that God answers people who are really holy. Holy people get answered prayer". Now we are all for holiness. But is that true? Amen. No. Holy people are people whose minds are holy because they focus and meditate on God’s Word. How about this, because you hear your friends saying that kind of thing, it disturbs your spirit. Then you meditate: "How will He not with Him freely. Freely". How does God answer prayer? Freely! How does God give? Freely! How does God give? Freely! And the word "freely", you jump up. Freely! Freely! And you are in a café or you are in a cinema, you get excited! You feel like jumping. I’m not saying you jump. Right, that’s how you meditate.
Remember from here I said, God gave up His highest, any other request is lowest. It’s lower than the highest. If God gave His best, what is the rest? So there are a lot of angles to meditate. You can chew this for a whole month. And then you tell me whether faith is bursting forth in your heart? Learn to meditate. Something about God’s Word, it has a, don’t touch it. If you don’t want prosperity, don’t touch God’s Word because it has power in it to prosper your day. How many of you found that when you neglect reading the Word, that day it seems like the day is short, the day is like there is not enough time to solve your problems, the day you give time to it, although you have other things outstanding, when you give time to God’s Word, it seems like the day was long and full and you were able to make quick decisions. I mean the problem is there but your attitude is different.
But those days that you don’t, I like what Jonathan Edwards, the great revivalist said, who lived in the 1700s. Jonathan Edwards says this: "How it cometh about, I do not know, but this I have found out. The more I read the Scriptures, the greater frame I have been in". In those days, he used this language, that means his body is the best, he feels the freshest and the strongest, the more he reads the Scriptures. How it comes about I do not know. I myself can tell you I do not know how it comes about but the more time we spend in the Word. So how do you spend time in the Word? You cannot be carrying your Bible the whole day. Chew on it. It has a prospering virtue. It has a healing virtue. It has a purifying virtue. You’re hearing all kinds of language spoken around you. It has a purifying virtue. Coming back to this again.
"Pastor Prince how do I"? I’ll just let you know, if you need help, you really want help in this area, this might sound like a promotion, but honestly God gave me this message only at the end towards very late at night, I start calling up to ask, you know, about my own App which I have for daily devo. So this might sound like a promotion, let it be. I want to help you because a lot of people in America are enjoying this already. I have a Joseph Prince iPhone App that has a daily devo. It looks like this. It’s free. Alright? It’s free and when you download it, okay, it has a daily devo with a daily meditation right on top there. Okay, today’s one happened to be the book of wisdom, the book of Proverbs, talking about friendship, okay? And you’d be surprised how many times when you read that daily meditation, it is the Word exactly for that day. Amen.
And there’s a bite-sized devotional, thoughts to share with you that we have put it down for you and I can’t begin to tell you the number of people that say how that is the Word in season. And by the way, in this App, there’s also a reminder for you. Alright? You can just set up for example 10am, to remind you to read your daily devo. It’s all in this App and it’s free. It’s free. And you can also keep all your MP3s in this App. And by the way, it does not take up your iPhone space in case you are worried. Many of you want to take pictures of your kids and all, and you find that your phone is always running out of space. This is not stored in your iPhone, it is stored in the Cloud, in the heavenlies. Amen.
So all doesn’t take up space, that’s a good news. And also if you want to purchase any message you want, it’s at a click. At a click, okay? So just to let you know so that you can be blessed. Amen. Sometimes we advertise this on television and all that, I feel like we’re not doing you justice. We didn’t let you know and many a times I don’t like to appear like I’m promoting things from the pulpit but I think that yesterday, when I thought of this, I really think it’s gonna bless you. Okay? I think New Creation Church of all people, as well as Grace Revolution Church ought to be the first people to enjoy what their pastor has. Amen.