You Tube Theology

Notes 👇 are taken from The Puritan Practice of Meditation, Ch. 55, 📙PURITAN THEOLOGY: Doctrine for Life by JOEL R. BEEKE & MARK JONES.

📖 One hindrance to growth among Christians today is our failure to cultivate spiritual knowledge. We fail to give enough time to prayer and Bible-reading, and we have abandoned the practice of meditation.

The Puritans never tired of saying that biblical meditation involves thinking upon the triune God and His Word. By anchoring meditation in the living Word, Jesus Christ, and God’s written Word, the Bible, the Puritans distanced themselves from the kind of bogus spirituality or mysticism that stresses contemplation at the expense of action and flights of the imagination at the expense of biblical content.

. . . the Puritans wrote of TWO KINDS of meditation: OCCASIONAL and DELIBERATE. “There is a sudden, short, occasional meditation of Heavenly things; and there is a solemn, set, deliberate meditation,” Calamy wrote.

Occasional meditation takes what one observes with the senses to “raise up his thoughts to Heavenly meditation."

The most important kind of meditation is daily, deliberate meditation, engaged in at set times. Calamy said deliberate meditation takes place “when a man sets apart…some time, and goes into a private Closet, or a private Walk, and there doth solemnly and deliberately meditate of the things of Heaven.” Such deliberation dwells upon God, Christ, and truth like “the Bee that dwells and abides upon the flower, to suck out all the sweetness.”

👉 The Puritans would say to US, “If you continue to neglect meditation, it will dampen or destroy your love for God. . ."

P.S. If you are not familiar with the term Puritans, this video provides a good overview  https://youtu.be/yPLP1T1RA_A