Helps for Meditation
John Owen, 1616-1683
"His delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night." Psalm 1:2 "I will meditate on all Your works, and consider all Your mighty deeds." Psalm 77:12 "I meditate on Your precepts, and consider Your ways." Psalm 119:15 "Oh, how I love your law! I meditate on it all day long." Psalm 119:97 "I meditate on all Your works, and consider what Your hands have done." Psalm 143:5 "My eyes stay open through the watches of the night, that I may meditate on Your promises." Psalm 119:148
By disciplined meditation, I mean the art of pondering some chosen spiritual subject in an orderly, disciplined way. The purpose of this sort of meditation is to rouse the heart and soul to feel the goodness or badness of the subject being pondered.
Meditation is different from Bible study in which the chief aim is to learn the truth and to declare it to others.
Meditation is also different from prayer —for prayer is directed to God. The aim of meditation is to arouse our hearts to experience a sense of love, delight, and humility.
Meditation is different from being spiritually-minded and having spiritual thoughts arising naturally from a renewed heart. People may be skilled in spiritual thoughts—who are quite unable to think of a spiritual subject in a disciplined, orderly way.
Meditation is an art that must be learned . It needs the use of natural faculties and abilities that, through weakness and ignorance, some have not adequately developed.
So, with many, disciplined meditation may be beyond their ability, yet they still enjoy many spiritual thoughts of God that serve them just as well. Nevertheless, as disciplined meditation is a necessary duty and is the chief way by which our spiritual thoughts are aroused to activity—I will give you the following advice.
Whatever principle of grace we have in our hearts, we cannot easily make use of it for spiritual meditation or for any other spiritual duty—without great effort and difficulty. The following is only for those who intend to set apart some time daily for holy duties, such as prayer and reading the Bible.
1. Choose a TIME which is free from all worldly concerns.
The best time is that which will cost you something. We must not at any time seek to serve God with what costs us nothing. Nor must we dedicate any time that does not demand self-denial. We must not expect to grow in spiritual-mindedness, if we only give to God time for worship when we have nothing else to do, or those times when because of tiredness we are not fit for anything else.This is one great reason why men are so cold, formal, and lifeless in spiritual duties. When the body and mind are tired—then men think they are fit to come to God to learn about those great matters that concern His glory and the salvation of their souls. Yet this is what God condemns (Malachi 1:8). Both the law of nature and holy duties, require that we serve God with our very best. And shall we offer to Him that time in that we would be unfit to appear before an earthly ruler? Yet such are the times many choose for their devotions.
We may do well to stop here for a moment and think of the time we have in the past offered to God for meditation—so that we may be shamed into doing better in the future. The best time is when the natural strength of the spirit is most free and active. Do not trust to chance opportunities. Let the time itself be a free-will offering to God taken from the top of the heap. Let it be the best time possible.
2. Take time to PREPARE your mind for spiritual thoughts.
Do not rush into heavenly thoughts, without first preparing your heart and mind (Ecc 5:1-2). Make every effort to understand the awesome holiness of God and the heavenly nature of the things you intend to meditate on—that you may approach God with due reverence and fear, and heavenly matters with a holy and healthy respect.Our thoughts are like Jacob and Esau—spiritual and carnal thoughts struggle together in the same womb. Often the Esau of carnal thoughts will come out first, and for a while seem to carry the birthright. But where reverence for God has "cast out the bondwoman and her son" (Galatians 4:30), the mind will be free to fix itself on spiritual things.
Do not come to meditate on heavenly things only out of a sense of duty. We must not meditate on God and heavenly things merely because we feel the need for it, or because we think we ought to do so and that it would not do to utterly neglect it.
When the soul has at any time tasted that the Lord is gracious , when its past meditations on the Lord have been joyful, when spiritual things have excited the mind and heart—then the soul comes to this duty with earnest desires to have the same experiences repeated.
In the same way, make every effort to enjoy spiritual things—and your meditations of them will be sweet!
But if you still find, after all this preparation, that you are still unable to concentrate your mind on spiritual things, then take seriously the following advice:
Cry to God for help. Confess your need for more light on spiritual things to remove the darkness from your mind. Confess your weakness and inability to stop your wandering thoughts, when you should be thinking of holy things; and pray that God will strengthen your mind.
If your meditations only make you see and feel your darkness and weakness of mind, causing you to cry to God for more grace and spiritual strength—then your thoughts have done a good work, though not what you had planned.
Take king Hezekiah as an example. When his soul made every effort to have communion with God, it sank into broken, confused thoughts under the weight of its own weakness. Yet he still sought God for help. But though his prayer was no more than babbling, it was accepted by God. Hezekiah cried out, "O LORD, I am oppressed—undertake for me!" (Isaiah 38:14). Likewise, when we are meditating and feel oppressed by the darkness and weakness of our minds—we too should say, "O Lord, I am oppressed—undertake for me!"
3. It is good and helpful to choose a SPECIFIC SUBJECT to meditate on.
Some have already been mentioned. Subjects may also be taken out of some spiritual experience we have just had, or some warning we have received from God, or something that reading or hearing the Word of God has brought to our minds. But the most frequent subject of our thoughts should be the person and the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ .4. Lastly, do not be discouraged when, after all your efforts, you find you accomplish little.
Do not be put off by the difficulties you meet with. Remember that it is God you are dealing with. He will not break the bruised reed—nor quench the smoking flax (Isaiah 42:3). It is His will that none should despise the day of small things (Zechariah 4:10).If in this duty, you have a ready mind—then it is accepted according to what a man has and not according to what he has not. He who can bring into this treasure only the mites of broken desires and humble prayers— shall not come behind those who cast in, out of their great abundance, much ability and skill. To give up because we are not immediately successful, is a fruit of pride and unbelief. If we get nothing out of meditation but a renewed sense of our own vileness and unworthiness—then we are still the gainers.
Yet those who conscientiously persist in this duty, shall grow daily more enlightened, more wise, and more experienced in spiritual things—until they are able to meditate on them with ease and success.
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John Owen (1616 - 1683)
Read freely text sermons and articles by the speaker John Owen in text and pdf format.John Owen, called the “prince of the English divines,” “the leading figure among the Congregationalist divines,” “a genius with learning second only to Calvin’s,” and “indisputably the leading proponent of high Calvinism in England in the late seventeenth century,” was born in Stadham (Stadhampton), near Oxford. He was the second son of Henry Owen, the local Puritan vicar. Owen showed godly and scholarly tendencies at an early age. He entered Queen’s College, Oxford, at the age of twelve and studied the classics, mathematics, philosophy, theology, Hebrew, and rabbinical writings. He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1632 and a Master of Arts degree in 1635. Throughout his teen years, young Owen studied eighteen to twenty hours per day.Pressured to accept Archbishop Laud’s new statutes, Owen left Oxford in 1637. He became a private chaplain and tutor, first for Sir William Dormer of Ascot, then for John Lord Lovelace at Hurley, Berkshire. He worked for Lovelace until 1643. Those years of chaplaincy afforded him much time for study, which God richly blessed. At the age of twenty-six, Owen began a forty-one year writing span that produced more than eighty works. Many of those would become classics and be greatly used by God.
Owen was by common consent the weightiest Puritan theologian, and many would bracket him with Jonathan Edwards as one of the greatest Reformed theologians of all time.
Born in 1616, he entered Queen's College, Oxford, at the age of twelve and secured his M.A. in 1635, when he was nineteen. In his early twenties, conviction of sin threw him into such turmoil that for three months he could scarcely utter a coherent word on anything; but slowly he learned to trust Christ, and so found peace.
In 1637 he became a pastor; in the 1640s he was chaplain to Oliver Cromwell, and in 1651 he was made Dean of Christ Church, Oxford's largest college. In 1652 he was given the additional post of Vice-Chancellor of the University, which he then reorganized with conspicuous success. After 1660 he led the Independents through the bitter years of persecution till his death in 1683.
John Owen was born of Puritan parents at Stadham in Oxfordshire in 1616. At Oxford University, which he entered in 1628 at twelve years of age, John pored over books so much that he undermined his health by sleeping only four hours a night. In old age he deeply regretted this misuse of his body, and said he would give up all the additional learning it brought him if only he might have his health back. Naturally, he studied the classics of the western world, but also Hebrew, the literature of the Jewish rabbis, mathematics and philosophy. His beliefs at that time were Presbyterian, however, his ambition, although fixed on the church, was worldly.
John was driven from Oxford in 1637 when Archbishop Laud issued rules that many of England's more democratically-minded or "low" church ministers could not accept. After this, John was in deep depression. He struggled to resolve religious issues to his satisfaction. While in this state, he heard a sermon on the text "Why are you fearful, O you of little faith?" which fired him with new decisiveness.
After that, John wrote a rebuke of Arminianism (a mild form of Calvinism which teaches that man has some say in his own salvation or damnation although God is still sovereign). Ordained shortly before his expulsion from Oxford, he was given work at Fordham in Essex. After that he rose steadily in public affairs. Before all was over, he would become one of the top administrators of the university which expelled him and he even sat in Parliament.
He became a Congregationalist (Puritan) and took Parliament's side in the English Civil Wars. Oliver Cromwell employed him in positions of influence and trust, but John would not go along when Cromwell became "Protector." Nonetheless, many of Parliament's leaders attended John's church.
John's reputation was so great that he was offered many churches. One was in Boston, Massachusetts. John turned that down, but he once scolded the Puritans of New England for persecuting people who disagreed with them.
He also engaged in controversy with such contemporaries as Richard Baxter and Jeremy Taylor. Through it all, John focused his teaching on the person of Christ. "If Christ had not died," he said, "sin had never died in any sinner unto eternity." In another place he noted that "Christ did not die for any upon condition, if they do believe; but he died for all God's elect, that they should believe."
John wrote many books including a masterpiece on the Holy Spirit. Kidney stones and asthma tormented him in his last years. But he died peacefully in the end, eyes and hands lifted up as if in prayer.