Wow! It is hard to believe that it already day 7 of the Journey Challenge.  Praise the Lord for all that He is revealing to us from His Word. Today we don’t plan to add a new verse to memorize but rather we want to encourage everyone participating in the challenge to take time to really meditate on the verses they have already memorized. 

The most important part of the Journey challenge is not just memorizing the verses but really meditating on them and treasuring them up in your heart. I want to share with you one aspect of meditation and encourage you to get alone with your Bible and take some time to do it. Take one verse that you have already memorized and quietly, out loud repeat the verse over and over to yourself. In Psalm 15:2 we hear about the importance of speaking the truth in our heart.

When we take a verse of Scripture and spend time repeating it over and over to ourselves we are speaking the truth to ourselves and receiving it into our hearts. Meditation is a lot like eating. The Word is to you spiritually what food is to you physically. The more you eat the Word of God the more you will grow in His life. (See 1 Peter 2:2, Jeremiah 15:6) A major part of eating your food is chewing it again and again. If you just swallow your food you will not be nourished and strengthened by it. Just memorizing the Word without meditating on it is kind of like swallowing your food without chewing on it. One of the main ways to extract nourishment from the Word is to spend time really receiving it and speaking it to yourself.

As you have been memorizing and meditating on Ephesians 1 you may be feeling like you don’t understand a lot of the verses or that you are not fully seeing all that God is trying to speak through them. That is okay! You don’t chew your food to understand your food, you chew your food to be nourished by it and because you need it to survive and thrive! It is the same way with the Word. Don’t memorize and meditate on the Word primarily to understand it, go to the Word primarily to receive it and be nourished by it because you need it to survive and thrive. Understanding and revelation may well come later but it will be a fruit or by product of meditating on the Word.

This Journey Challenge our desire is not just that you would memorize the verses each day and quote them at the end but rather that you would take each verse that you memorize and meditate on it and receive into yourself and allow God to transform your mind through His Word! May the Lord continue to shine one us as we mediate on His Word!

~Gabe Cleator