Meditation in Christ - Be still and know I am God

 

Be still and know that I am God

Be still and know that I am God

Be still and know that I am God

I am the Lord that healeth thee

I am the Lord that healeth thee

I am the Lord that healeth thee

 

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.



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