As a staff, we are focused on practicing the spiritual discipline of meditation over the next month. I thought this would be a great place to lay out what that looked like for me this morning if any of you are interested in practicing meditation yourselves.And let me tell you something…when I am talking about meditation here, I’m not talking about crossing your legs and chanting “Ommmmm” while holding your thumb and forefinger together. Just cuz’ I have long hair does not mean I am some kind of new age meditation guru. There is a huge difference between Eastern meditation and Christian meditation. Eastern meditation is about emptying the mind and Christian meditation is about filling the mind and heart with God. Very different. When Christian theologian Dietrich Bonheoffer was asked why he meditated, he said, “Because I am Christian.” Give it a shot…I think you will see the benefits.
I started out by sitting back in my chair. Feet flat on the ground. Hands on my knees. Eyes closed. Quiet.
I have the door closed in my office. The lights are off. The droning sound of my fan is cancelling out most of the ambient noise around me. I focus for a time on relaxing. I breathe deeply in and out. I quiet my mind when it starts to wander. I begin to slowly open myself up to God. I know that sounds strange, but that is exactly what I am doing. I am using my imagination to imagine my heart opening inside of me, like a giant conduit ready to be filled with the Spirit of God. I ask God to fill me with His presence…with His love…with His wisdom. I imagine myself being filled with God.
Next, I start to think about the things inside me that need to be released. Worries. Anxieties. Guilt. I realize that I have been a little whiny about the extra work I have had to do since my wife had ACL surgery. I release my selfish frustration and ask God to remove this burden from me. I literally lift my hands as I release this issue and ask God to help me humbly serve my wife. I see myself flippantly joking with Dave as he approaches a tough sermon topic this week and I feel guilty about it. I release that guilt and pray for his sermon preparation…asking God to guide him through a difficult subject (You’ll see on Sunday). I continue to work through any other issues I need to deal with to wholly commit to seeking God’s face.
When this process is completed, I sit quietly for a few minutes “listening” to God. Allowing time for God to work in my heart and mind. Allowing Him time to shape me as I sit quietly, because the majority of my interactions with God involve my endlessly yapping without any thought to allowing God space to respond.
Then I open up my eyes and open my Bible to today’s reading – I Corinthians 5:11.
To meditate on scripture, I don’t want to come to the text with any agenda. I just want to read it. Chew on it. Mull it over. Drink it in. I want to allow it to roll around in my brain. I want to allow God to speak freely to me through this verse, without allowing my own bias or somebody else’s to enter into the equation (I know this is almost impossible because the brain that is “mulling” this passage over is my flawed human brain with all my hang-ups and biases…but I do my best to approach the text with a clean slate).
I read the verse several times. I read it slowly in my mind…allowing myself to concentrate on each word. I read it out loud, to make sure that I am not inadvertently skipping over any words in my mind. I go back and focus in on particular words that jumped out at me from the text. I meditate on God’s Word. I ask God to speak to me. I ask Him to show me why I am reading this verse today and what He wants to do in my life through this verse.
Here is what I received from my time of meditation on I Corinthians 5:11…
This verse by itself seems so harsh and unmerciful, that I instantly want to push back against it. Have nothing to do with people? Broken sinful people? Don’t they need to be in relationships with people who know the truth? How does this verse line up with the merciful heart of God that we see lived out in the person of Jesus Christ?
Yet, I know that Jesus came to offer hope to the hopeless. I know that he died once for all…offering himself as a sacrifice for the sins of the world. These truths come through to me loud and clear in my time of meditation and so I push deeper. Why does Paul write these words?
I am drawn to the words, “not to associate.” Why is Paul instructing the Corinthian Christians to disassociate with people? For starters, what does it mean to “associate?” To associate means to be interconnected…it means to have a relationship…if you associate with someone; you are giving them your stamp of approval. Things start to become a littleclearer. Paul is not telling the Corinthians to be angry or bitter or hateful towards anyone…he is instructing them to safeguard their faith by refusing to associate with people who are living anti-Christian lives.
And these are not just people are they…these are people that consider themselves to be Christians. I am drawn next to the words, “anyone who bears the name brother.” Paul is telling the followers of Christ in Corinth to disassociate with people who call themselves Christians while living lives in opposition to Christ. This still sounds harsh…why is he calling for this kind of action? Immediately Hebrews 10:26 jumped into my mind. “For if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins.” Verse 29 continues, “How much worse punishment, do you think, will be deserved by the one who has spurned the Son of God, and has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has outraged the Spirit of race?” Paul is not telling Christians to reject sinners…he is telling Christians to refuse to associate with other Christians who claim to believe in Christ, yet who spit on his sacrifice and deny the Spirit within them by living in unrepentant sin. That is a big deal…a big deal that negatively impacts the Gospel of Jesus Christ in this world!
One final thing really stuck in my mind from the meditation on this verse…“IS!” Yes, the word “is”…anyone who IS an idolater, reviler, drunkard, swindler, etc. Paul is talking about people who do not simply have struggles. These are not people who are dealing with temptation and are trying to live in repentance and turn towards Christ. These are people who call themselves Christians, but who are really only focused on serving their sinful desires. They are not Christians. They are idol worshippers…they have given themselves over to these things and are doing nothing to change their sinful behaviors. Paul is not giving us harsh words here…he is giving us words of wisdom. If you go back to I Corinthians 5:1-5 you will see that he has already instructed the church to confront sin in their congregation. They are supposed to call people to repentance…call people to change…call people to Christ likeness. But when those people refuse to change…when they refuse to honor God with their lives and believe they can live however they want…you make the choice to disassociate with them. Not out of anger or bitterness, but out of respect for Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross.And the hope is that when you refuse to give them your stamp of approval, they will miss the community of the Body of Christ and they will change their ways and turn back to God. That is the hope, and that is the reason why Paul is so adamant that Christians confront the issues in their congregations.
That is what God spoke to me through this passage. What is He speaking to you?
- Brandon Forsythe
- Brandon Forsythe
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