Meditate

 

27. Partake – The Christian disciple and Meditation

Psalm 119vv22-27: Don’t let them scorn and insult me, for I have obeyed your laws. Even princes sit and speak against me, but I will meditate on your decrees. Your laws please me; they give me wise advice. I lie in the dust; revive me by your word. I told you my plans, and you answered. Now teach me your decrees. Help me understand the meaning of your commandments, and I will meditate on your wonderful deeds.

The Psalmist here describes the benefits of reading and meditating upon the Bible. God’s words become a delight as he follows God’s decrees. A sense of wonder is instilled as God’s word is meditated upon. Strength overcomes tiredness as he listens to God speaking through the Bible. These are also true for the Christian disciple!

Photo courtesy of Maggie

For some people, meditation is passive and involves being quiet, saying a chant, letting the mind go blank and seeking to experience God. However meditation for the Christian disciple is active. It is the filling of the mind with the Bible and not the emptying of thought. It is also not seeking to experience God’s presence, as God is always present with the believer through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Meditation is where imagination is involved and allowing God to speak through the Bible. How is this done?

Meditative Practice

Photo courtesy of Linda

Whilst aiming at the positive and the renewing of our minds (Rom 12:1-2), mental prayer is meditation, which involves both reason and intellect. The use of reason and intellect in meditation is achieved through the mental and spiritual process of reading the Bible, so that it becomes a living part of the Christian disciples’ life. By internalising God’s words from the Bible into the heart & mind, God’s thoughts become the Christian disciple’s thoughts. Meditating on the Bible enables the words of the Bible to infiltrate all areas in the life of a Christian disciple.

For meditation to be effective, silence and solitude are prerequisites. However, silence and solitude should not mean loneliness but rather be an aid to meditation, reflection, understanding & peace. One example of how to mediate involves memorization, visualization, personalization and activation. Memorization is to rebuild our thought patterns by memorising words in the Bible passages especially those related to problems we maybe facing or those that glorify God. Visualization is to try and understand God’s words and thoughts from His point of view. Personalization is to stabilize the emotions expressing the words of Bible in the first person. Finally, Activation, which is to draw new conclusions and make new life changing decisions based on the Bible. This all helps in the process of becoming more like Jesus in the journey of the Christian disciple. It also equips us for doing battle with satan and resisting temptation. Jesus fended off and attacked satan by using Scripture correctly so as to negate the temptations. That is why it is a weapon in the spiritual battle. Satan will do all he can to get Christian disciples to compromise their faith, fall into sin and not read the Bible.

Why?

Reading and meditation on the bible does many things for the Christian disciple. It equips the Christian disciple for service of God and to convict people of sin. Then as it equips, it is essential for evangelism and pointing others to Jesus. An example of this is when Philip was talking to the Ethiopian about the Christ; it was Isaiah 53, which was the point of query. It also equips in order to give counsel & help others, such as when Paul urged Timothy to use Scripture when teaching others. Then it equips the Christian disciple to use their spiritual gifts, so that the whole church is encouraged and God is glorified. Spiritual maturity derives from building Bible knowledge into the life of the Christian disciple.

One of the very key teachings from the Bible is that God can be known personally. Personal knowledge of God is ultimately crucial because knowing God personally and developing the relationship is what being a Christian disciple is all about. Christian disciples should be rejoicing that God earnestly desires them to attain this knowledge of Him, in order to know Him more and more. The Apostle Peter commands that we grow in the knowledge of Jesus as part of our spiritual journey. The Christian disciple does this in order to become more like Jesus, developing an intimate knowledge of God and of developing an intimacy with Him.

The Bible reveals that God has a program for the universe and it is only revealed in the Bible. So reading and meditation upon it is vital in the life of a Christian disciple. The overall will of God, is that all people come to believe and trust in Jesus Christ as their Lord and their Saviour. After starting the Christian life, the new Christian disciple discovers God’s program from humbly reading the Bible. Meditating on the Bible helps the Christian disciple to grow into spiritual maturity and into the ultimate goal of becoming like Jesus. The Christian disciple reads and meditates upon the Bible regularly, knowing the desire to be like Jesus is the goal.

For more to think about please do read for yourself: 2 Timothy 3:15-17. Ask yourself the following questions, writing them down if you can, and see how you respond or react to them. Then why not share your answers with your spouse or a close friend, so that you can pray over any issues together.

Q1. What benefit does Paul say I can gain from the Bible?

Q2. What is the relationship between the Bible, God and me?

Q3. How can I adapt my day so that I can spend time reading and meditating on the Bible?

As ever, if you have any comments to make on this, please do contact me at partake(at)hotmail.co.uk. I would love to hear from you and if these are making any difference at all to your continual Christian discipleship! Thank you.

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Eritrean Christians tell of torture

Eritrean Christians tell of torture
By Tanya Datta
BBC News, northern Ethiopia

An Eritrean refugee lies contorted on the ground. Balanced on his belly, his hands clutch his feet behind his back, bending his legs back almost double. Paulus is demonstrating a torture technique known colloquially as “the helicopter”. It is one he knows well. It was in this excruciating position, he claims, that soldiers left him tied up for 136 hours, in an attempt to force him to recant his faith.

“They kept asking me to sign a document,” he recalls, “and agree to not participate in church activities or express my faith in any form. I was told I would be untied and released the minute I agreed to their requests.”

Paulus is an evangelical Christian from Eritrea, one of an increasing number fleeing the tiny Red Sea state because of religious persecution. Home these days is Shimelba refugee camp in northern Ethiopia, close to the disputed border with Eritrea. Here, in the Ebenezer Evangelical Church on camp, Paulus is free to worship in a way that is unthinkable back in his homeland.

Jailed

During the past five years, a brutal campaign has been waged in Eritrea against Christian minorities, focusing mainly on the evangelical and Pentecostal movements. Weddings, baptisms, church services and prayer meetings have been raided by security forces. Guests or congregation members have rounded up and detained en masse. According to Compass Direct, a non-governmental organisation reporting on the persecution of Christians around the world, it is estimated that almost 2,000 people are being held in jails across Eritrea because of their religious beliefs.

The crackdown on Eritrea’s minority churches followed a government announcement in May 2002 that only its four oldest faiths – Orthodox, Catholic, Lutheran and Islam – would receive official sanction. The rest were invited to register and declare their sources of funding. To date, none has been registered.

Beatings

Evangelical Christians who have been arrested face severe pressure to recant their faith. Some prisoners have been held in metal shipping containers. Accounts of torture, lack of food and terrible conditions are commonplace. Samuel (not his real name) is 24 and university-educated. Along with 19 others, he was arrested in 2005 when he attended the wedding of a friend. For the next 12 months, he was imprisoned and forced to do backbreaking manual labour. He was also regularly beaten.

Patriarch Antonious used to have good relations with the president. On one occasion, Samuel said, he was suspended by his arms from a tree for three days in the form of a crucifixion. He was also constantly pressured to leave his faith. “They asked me if I would like to leave it. They asked every night for four months,” he said. Some of his friends did recant after endless beatings.

Samuel, as well as Paulus, were repeatedly asked about their links with the US. Evangelical and Pentecostal churches are widely perceived by the Eritrean authorities as having originated in the States, even though many fund themselves. The US is threatening to declare Eritrea a rogue state for its alleged support of terrorists, and the mood of President Isaias Afwerki and his Marxist-oriented government is now openly anti-American. Yet even official, long-established faiths have not escaped government interference. Patriarch Abune Antonios, the head of the Eritrean Orthodox Church – a faith followed by more than 40% of Eritrea’s population – has been under house arrest for almost two years.

‘No repression’

Four months ago, the 80-year-old who suffers from diabetes was moved to an undisclosed location. Since then, there has been little information about what happened to him. No official reason has been given for his disappearance. His supporters, however, claim that he was arrested after he objected to the jailing of church leaders from the Medhane Alem, a spiritual renewal movement within the Orthodox church.

In May this year, a new patriarch was installed with the support of some Eritrean bishops. But the new patriarch has not been accepted by the Coptic Church in Alexandria, Egypt. Abba Seraphim is the head of the British Orthodox Church, which is launching an online petition to protest about the plight of the patriarch.

He told me the patriarch was put under house arrest after he refused to do the government’s bidding. “The only thing we’ve heard is that he’s being kept in a darkened room. He managed to get a message to someone complaining about this,” Mr Seraphim said. But, according to Girma Asmeron, the Eritrean ambassador to Belgium, the disappearance of Patriarch Antonios is far from sinister. The patriarch, he claims, has retired to an isolated monastery and is very much “alive, kicking and praying”.

Mr Asmeron denies that there is any repression of religious freedom in Eritrea. He says persecution claims have been made up. And allegations of torture, he says, are stories invented by refugees “simply as a certificate” to enable them to get political asylum. Refugees certainly continue to pour out of Eritrea. In two years, the number of asylum applications by Eritreans to the West has increased by 57%. The UNHCR recently described the exodus as “one of the world’s most protracted refugee situations”. My last contact with Eritrea’s persecuted Christians came in an e-mail sent to me last week.

“The situation in Eritrea is getting worse and worse after the president stated that the US is funding the Pentecostal church in Eritrea,” it said.

“Many Christians are suffering in military concentrations [camps] and police stations… Pray for the Christians in Eritrea, and pray for the prisoners and their families.”

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