- [Narrator] We'll be giving away free b ooks this week
so make sure to watch to the end for details.
- Well first of all, I've been pastor long enough
that I have to say five minutes with God is not the goal.
I think any believer would want to say I want to spend
more time alone with God.
But I've also pastored long enough, and been a professor
long enough and a Christian long enough to know
that's a reality many days.
So if a person only had five minutes, what would
they do with that five minutes?
Well first and most importantly I would say
don't read for five minutes.
There's an almost universal problem with the intake
of the Word of God and it looks like this.
People will read a chapter, maybe read three chapters,
10 chapters, but as soon as they close their Bible,
if pressed they would have to admit,
I don't remember a thing I read.
And the reason people don't remember is, let's say as
they read the Bible it takes them two seconds
to read the first verse,
two seconds to read the second verse,
two seconds to read the third verse, you can read
a thousand verses, two seconds each, and you probably
won't remember a single one of them.
I mean what do you ever remember that you look at
for two seconds, hardly anything.
Well you can even be looking at the most important truths
in the world, but if you look at them only two seconds
for each one, you're probably not going
to remember anything.
Well that does very little good, it does some good
I wouldn't want people to stop doing that,
but people tend to think, I guess it's just me.
I'm a second rate Christian, something is wrong with me.
I never had a good memory anyway, I never had a high IQ,
I never had a good education, so the problem is with me.
And I say to those folks it's not your age, it's not
your memory, it's not your IQ, it's not your eduction,
it's your method.
Reading alone was never intended to be the primary means
of absorbing the scripture.
Reading is the exposure to scripture but meditation
is the absorption of Scripture and it's the absorption
of Scripture that leads to the experience with God
and the transformation of life we long for
when we come to the Scripture.
And the problem is not that people can't meditate
on Scripture, they just don't.
Maybe they've never been taught how, or they basically
equate daydreaming with meditation and they're two
separate things, but in my book "Spiritual Disciplines
for the Christian Life", in the third chapter I talk
about seventeen different methods of meditation
on Scripture, so there's not just one way
to meditate on Scripture.
To pray the Bible, for example, can be a way to meditate
on Scripture, ask some prepared questions of it, to squeeze
that verse one word at a time, emphasizing one word
at a time to focus on that one word at a time
is another method of meditating on Scripture.
There are many, many ways to meditate on the Bible.
The problem is people just don't do that.
So if a person only had five minutes I'd say for starters
don't read for five minutes.
Read let's say for three or four minutes and then
at the end of that reading, come back and choose a verse
or a phrase from your reading that stood out to you,
maybe you just never noticed it before,
maybe it just kind of really applied to your life today,
and meditate on that verse for a minute or two.
Well what if nothing stands out, then just choose one
of the key verses in that passage that you read,
what's the really most important idea do you think,
one of the main ideas, one of the main key verses there
because we never think enough on the great themes
of Scripture, we never meditate enough
on the cross, for example.
So the general rule every day is read big, meditate small.
Read a big section, a chapter or so, or more if you can,
and then come back and meditate small,
one verse, one phrase.
And by so doing, you will absorb something
from the Scripture that you can then take with you
on your very busy day and as you're driving to work
you might be able to say, "okay what was that verse
this morning? oh yeah", if you meditate adequately
you'll remember it.
If you're in the drive through at lunch, you can say
"what was that verse? oh yeah", you wake up in the middle
of the night, can't go back to sleep, you'll be able
to say "what was that verse? oh yeah" , and you can continue
to think about it, all day all night as the Bible says.
But if you don't meditate, you won't remember.
You won't remember if you can't do that.
So if you only have five minutes, don't read
for five minutes, read for three or four, meditate
for one or two minutes and I think what will happen
is you'll find that that time is so sweet, so good,
you'll say to yourself I think I can find another
two or three minutes for this.
- [Narrator] Thanks for watching, you can submit
your questions by e-mail, Twitter,
or in the comments section below.
And don't forget to subscribe to find out the answer
to next week's question.
We'll be giving away three copies of Dr. Whitney's
book that was mentioned in this episode.
Go to the link in the description below
to find out how you can enter.