The traditional meditative practices of the church is a form of prayer
reciting the bible or the name of the saints. We become one with whom we
medidate on. In meditation, we enter into a spiritual world where we can
touch the mind and Spirit of Jesus Christ. Our focus should be on Jesus
Christ. We know the mind of Christ, by meditating on Jesus as revealed
in the bible. Meditation also exposes us to a spiritual realm where
there are many gods and spiritual forces hence we should be discerning.
Meditation increases our self awareness, our senses and power of
comtemplation. In our stillness, quietness, and simplicity, we begin to
put aside ourselves, and let the quiet voice of Jesus Christ dwells
within us beyond the clutter of noises that fills our lives.
There are dangers to meditation, but there is also incredible power. The
dangers of meditation is that we can be too self absorbed, the goal
being self awareness of exalting our inner selves as somehow being the
sinless image of god. The kindom of God "is within us" is not an
assertion of the purity of our true self rather in that quiet place of
our heart is a place of decision where we can decide and choose to
believe in Jesus and enter into the Kingdom of God.
The Mystics approached meditation with a stillness and an emptiying of
our mind which is good because we often have too much ego and self to
see the spiritual but there is a danger of not being aware of the
spiritual forces of harm. Jesus met and debated with Satan in the
quietness of the desert. Our Christian meditation is necesarrily
different from other faith traditions for it seeks the presence and a
connection with Christ who dwells in heaven. In meditation,
we seek the bridge to heaven for Christ to dwell within us by the Holy
Spirit of God.
We all come from different Christian spiritual world views. Many of us
would like Jesus to be condeming of sin and calling upon hail fire, or
alternatively a champion of the outcasts against the oppressors.
However, Jesus was contrary to the bible believing religious leaders of
those days, who spent their effort condeming sin and insisting on
persecution and judgement. In John 3:18 "... those who do not believe
are condemned already...", ie the only relevant "sin" concerns our
rejection of Jesus as Lord and Saviour. It was the Kingdom of God with
Jesus as the King. The rules were simple concerning a belief in Jesus
and not about the thousands of Jewish laws.
We make Jesus out to be a champion of the poor and the outcasts, yet he
hardly raised a finger against the Romans, nor criticised His captors.
His was about a Kingdom message which transcends the wordly power and
rule of the Romans. Jesus understood that Rome ruled the physical world,
but our problem was a spiritual one. When the Kingdom of God comes to us
by faith in Jesus Christ, it becomes real within our hearts through a
decision of faith in Jesus. In meditation, we go beyond our
physical world.
Meditation is a flight from self and our religious world views, a
clearing of our minds, to let the mind of Christ comes in. It should be
coupled by meditative reflection of the Jesus of the Gospels and not an
emptying of the mind per say. For when we empty our mind, we also allow
other spiritual influences to come in.
Meditation helps us to walk by the Spirit of God. We often come to the
cross roads of life where our paths are many, for example, God would
call us to pray for a person, to call him or her, or to give funds to a
certain ministry. Meditation helps us to follow that sweet gentle voice
of the Holy Spirit for which there is no Law ie a matter of right or
wrong. The voice of God is different to different people, some are
called to the streets of Geylang (a prostitute area in Singapore),
whilst others to minister to the foreigners.
Christian meditation has given me peace and closeness to God, an
awareness of Christ. An approach would be to start by spending time
reading the bible, and to meditate on the verses, chewing on the Word of
God.
My escape from this hostile anti-gay Christian environment when growing
up was through Christian meditation where I would spent hours reading
the bible, praying, and then meditating on the Word of God. Soon, I was
no longer there but being transformed and removed into another spiritual
dimension almost as if sitting together with the disciples as Jesus
preached to them.
As a young child growing up in a homophobic and anti-gay Christian
world, meditation helped me to separate the loud noises of society,
church and friends, and to listen to the small quiet still voice of God.
I knew that God loved me and accepted me as a gay person even though I
didn't understand why or how. When the likes of Sy Rogers of Choices
came into City harvest church to preach about ex-gay, I saw through
their inconsistencies and half truths using humanistic psychology, and
Sy was obviously a flaming transexual and not any gay person.
Meditation has helped me to come out of the closet. I had chosen the
most quiet place I could find, in the very well kept and tidy lounge of
a gay sauna at the roof top in Chinatown. There I start reflecting on a
my life and prayed silently looking up to the heavens.
God was seemingly there, and He sent an "angel" from the New Creation
church and soon we begin to talk about God and sang hymns all in a gay
sauna!. It was his first time in this sauna and he didn't know why he
came that evening. I knew who he was because we had been debating online
earlier whether being gay was a gift from God! Surely, God has a
sense of humour and brought us together.
The key to meditation is the chanting. We need a spiritual power
and authority to overcome the forces of darkness. When we loose
ourselves in meditation, we reach a point where we begin to discern a
spiritual environment where there are different forces, powers and
principalities. Chanting in a new spiritual language gives us that Holy
Spirit power.
Matt 11:12 From the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of
heaven has suffered violence, and the violent take it by force.
The spiritual world is as real as the physical. The growth that we would
like to see in our churches must first happen in the spiritual realm.
The bible says that the Kingdom of heaven suffers violence from the days
of John the Baptist because John proclaimed a new move of the Spirit of
God, a new Kingdom, through Jesus Christ. After Jesus death and
resurrection, the kingdom power which first begun in John, spread
through the disciples in the upper room through the gifts of tongues.
The gift of tongues allows us to transcend beyond our minds and self
because the Spirit in us begins to pray in a spiritual language through
the Holy Spirit thus enpowering it with the will and supernatural
annointing, authority and power of Jesus Christ. As we meditate by
praying in tongues, we are praying with the power of the Holy Spirit and
we in turn receive the revelation and the word of knowledge and the gift
of the prophetic for the church and for our ministries.
If we want the kingdom of God to be welcomed in the rainbow tribe, we
need to meditate to discern where God leads us. Meditation is for
communion with God, and for the purpose of ministry.
In order to move further, and to develop and manifest the five fold
ministry of the:-
- Apostle
- Prophet
- Evangelist
- Pastor
- Teacher
for a healthy church to expand in the Kingdom of God requires us to
cultivate and move into new grounds, where we need to go in and take
these grounds by force by the Holy Spirit and power of God. As we begin
to meditate, we begin a new journey of faith each day.
Let us seek after God with all our Spirit, Soul and strength that we may
extend the kingdom of God to the Rainbow Tribe for Jesus is coming back
to the least of these My brethren.