Study this book of instruction continually.  Meditate on it day and night so you will be sure to obey everything in it.  Only then will you prosper and succeed in all you do.  Joshua 1:8 (New Living Translation)

Background:    Israel facing a huge task – to shift their enemies out and create a new nation in the land.  God was preparing Israel to enter their inheritance – (a land of milk and honey.) 

The church in NZ has God’s assignment to shift the devil and his kingdom out of Aotearoa (New Zealand) by building the Church of Jesus Christ.      

 NOW is the time!  The Key is to “step up” to prepare to overcome the pressure and darkness ahead.  Isaiah 60:2 ‘… darkness covers all the nations, but the Glory of the Lord rises and appears over you.’

 The word for now is PREPARE and here’s how:

 Meditation in God’s word will build your life.

 Warning!!  False religions, “ists” and “isms” release the power of meditation but they draw from the wrong source.  They use demonic power, and are ultimately limited and destructive (e.g, sorcerers in Pharoah’s court versus the “finger of God”)

 We need the quickened, inspired, God breathed word to gain victory, and victory begins with meditation in God’s Word.

God’s Word is God’s food for us to live on.  Meditation scriptures: Matthew 4:4; Psalm 19:14; John 4:32

 Meditation means to: mull over”, “ruminate”, “to ponder”, “imagine”, “mourn”, “to speak”, “study”, utter”, and roar!

 We are to meditate in the Scriptures in order to live!  First of all!  If we are really serious in countering the devil’s schemes we need to read the Scriptures adequately and accurately, as well as live them.  Ware not to live them as a prerequisite to reading them, BUT WE ARE TO LIVE THEM AS WE READ THEM. 

 The reading of Scripture is NOT an activity that is separate and distinct from living the Gospel, but one that is integral to it.  It is vital to really live it.  It means – “let another have a say in everything we are saying and doing; – it’s as easy as that.”

 Take a look at Isaiah 31:4: “…as a lion growls over his prey…!”  Just as a dog with a bone, a lion makes throaty rumbles of pleasure as he growls and gnaws over his prey.  The Hebrew word for ‘growl’ is hagah which means ‘to meditate’ as in Psalm 1:2 ‘…he meditates day and night.

Meditation ignites the spirit.  Psalm 39:3 says “as I meditated the fire burned then I spoke with my tongue.” (New International Version).  The New Living Translation says “the more I thought about it, the hotter I got, igniting a fire of words.’ 

Hagah is a term used for reading the kind of writing that deals with our souls.  However,  “meditate” is far too tame a word for what is being signified with a lion growling.  Meditate in our postmodern world means to find an idyllic place, quiet and still, with a Bible on our lap, staring into space.  BUT when a lion or a dog meditates, tearing and chewing and swallowing, using teeth and tongue, stomach and intestines – both are in meditation on their prey.

 There is another type of writing (i.e, soft purrs and growls) where we taste and savour, anticipate, taking in sweet and spicy, mouth-watering, soul energising morsels of words.  Psalm 34:8 says ‘O taste and see that the Lord is good’.  Isaiah 38:14 uses the same word (hagah) for the cooings and mournings of a dove.  Reading these texts you catch the spirit of the word.  The term “hagah” (meditate) means a person is lost in his pursuit,  just like the lion with his prey.

  Hagah makes so much sense in terms of meditation.  You literally have to eat it!  Revelation 10:9-10 – “eat this book!”  (The prophets Jeremiah and Ezekiel both ate books.)  John walks up to the angel and says!  Give me the book?  The angel hands it over – “here it is – eat it!”  And John ate it!  He got it into his nerve endings, his reflexes, his imagination.  The book he ate forms part of the Holy Scriptures.    The book he ate “metabolised” (i.e, changed by metabolism) into the Book of Revelation.

 Friends! – it’s time for us to ‘EAT THE WORD!”  Jesus said: “my meat is to do the will of him that sent me.”  (John 4:34)

 It is very clear – we live out of the meditations of our hearts.  (Psalm 19:14).  As we live out of the meditation in our heart, in the Living Word, we are inspired, and fired, ready for work.

 Message by Pastor Max Legg