Your deep insights and revelations come from spending minutes, that turn into hours, that turn into days, that turn into weeks. It’s once the truth of Scripture has been so branded on your heart that you finally begin to draw out the deep meanings of the text. This is why, very practically speaking, I encourage folks to memorize chunks of Scripture. Because the hours, days, and maybe even weeks and years it takes to commit passages to memory will have an eternal impact on your life with God.

Meditation is an often-neglected aspect of Christianity but in the introduction to the longest book in the Bible, the Psalmist tells us that this practice is a vital part of what true “blessedness” looks like. Psalm 1 begins, “Blessed is the man…[whose] delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night” (vv. 1-2).
Now, there may be many reasons why we pull back at this word but let me state two. First, often folks associate mediation with eastern, non-Christian religions. So, in an effort not to accidentally do what is un-Christian, we end up intentionally failing to do what is a good Christian practice.
A second hesitation I often come across is far more practical. Many simply tell me, “Matt, I just don’t know how to meditate on God’s word. I don’t even know what that means. I wouldn’t know how to begin.” However, I’m confident—whether you know it or not—you do know how to meditate on God’s word. And I can say that with certainty because I’m sure you know how to hold a grudge.
Holding Holy Grudges
Think about it. What are you doing when you’re holding a grudge? You’re constantly throwing yourself back into whatever the instance was that offended you. All your spare, quiet moments are consumed with bitterness that eventually turns to rage and hatred because you’re constantly thinking about the offense.
Whether you’re mowing the lawn or doing the dishes, you’re imagining the person that upset you and what you’d say to them now if you had the chance. You probably win every argument you have about it in the shower. You spend so much time thinking about the instance you’re able to pull out every little detail of the offense, or the offender, that you can remember the whole interaction with vivid clarity.
This is what we ought to be doing with God’s word.
Biblical meditation is filling your mind and heart with God’s word. It’s swishing it around and around again in your head until the wakes of His word splash down into the depths of your heart. It’s like thoroughly chewing a piece of meat before you swallow it so that you know you’ve got all the rich flavor out of it.
And when you do this, one of the most interesting things you’ll find is that your deepest and most meaningful insights about Scripture don’t come from reading it once or spending a passing moment with the verse of the day. No, your deep insights and revelations come from spending minutes, that turn into hours, that turn into days, that turn into weeks. It’s once the truth of Scripture has been so branded on your heart that you finally begin to draw out the deep meanings of the text.
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In suffering, we tend to draw inward and isolate to protect ourselves from further pain. Satan preys on that instinct, convincing us that we don’t need anyone else, and that others will only add to our grief, rather than easing it. He wants us to feel alone and self-righteous in our pain. Yet as we lean into God and his people, the Lord can transform us into humble servants, sanctified and shaped by our suffering.

One of my dearest friends lost both parents to suicide. Her father died when she was a teenager, and her mother passed away more recently. I was stunned and speechless when she told me about her mother’s death. How does anyone endure that kind of loss?
I was sure my words would be inadequate and unhelpful, yet my friend kept calling, asking my advice, letting me minister to her. She humbly shared both her pain and her struggles. She confessed her anger at her siblings’ callous response and asked me to pray for her. When she told me that our conversations had helped her, I was convicted by how rarely I let people into my pain. I had often assumed that if they hadn’t experienced what I had, they wouldn’t be able to understand it.
Rather than inviting others into my pain and grief, I’ve often pushed them away. I’ve felt a vague sense of self-righteousness, confident that no one could speak into my life except God himself. I’ve dismissed others’ experiences, even the comfort of friends, because they couldn’t fully relate to my suffering.
Temptation to Isolate
Right before my son’s death, my husband and I had worked through a significant marital struggle that intertwined with my grief. Messy and muddled, there were parts of my pain I felt I couldn’t share with others, so I was sure that no one could know how I felt. I withdrew from fellowship, hesitant to share deeply with others—it felt too vulnerable to be that exposed. Besides, I looked stronger and more spiritual when I didn’t let people in.
My attitude unknowingly intensified my pain, cutting off an important means of God’s grace and rescue: his people. My grief isolated me, ushering me into a silent silo in which I felt compelled (or perhaps entitled) to deal with my struggle alone. I said I was tired of hearing platitudes, but in truth, I was tired of hearing anything. I had closed everyone off, and no one dared to enter in.
This temptation to isolate, to pull away from community, assuming no one can help, is common in suffering. So how do we fight this temptation to pride—to believing that no one understands us and therefore no one can help us?
Pain and Loss and Sin
As someone who has dealt with layers of losses, I have seen this temptation to pride and isolation more than once. Pain, like sin, has a way of hardening my heart and blinding me to my real need.
When I was a single parent dealing with a significant physical disability, I was less concerned about being rescued from my sin than I was about being commended for my faith. In fact, I saw myself as a righteous victim in anything related to my suffering. Yet even those commended by God for their righteousness were not sinless, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23). For instance, while Job was a righteous man, his suffering humbled him, and he repented in dust and ashes for pridefully speaking of what he did not know (Job 42:5–6).
I hadn’t fully considered my own sin as it related to my suffering until I heard Joni Eareckson Tada share about how pain and loss had sanctified her. She was paralyzed in a diving accident at age 17 and often spoke about how God changed her, transforming her once-sour and peevish disposition as she submitted daily to Jesus. Most of us would expect, or at least excuse, a quadriplegic with an irritable attitude, but Joni was determined to let God use her disability to refine her character. She writes in Lost and Found:
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That the foremost sufferers of our present deeds are those that are tempted with homosexual lust. For they need to be encouraged diligently with the assurance that their sin belongs to the old man that was crucified with Christ (Rom. 6:6), and that they are new creations (2 Cor. 5:17) who have been cleansed of their sin and who can and will finally overcome it (Rom. 6:12-14). And yet we set before them as leaders and models men who proudly claim their sin as an essential part of their identity, and who name themselves by it.

That a defective doctrine of sin makes impossible all right thinking and practice in ethical matters.
That all same sex attraction is a species of lust. “For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life—is not from the Father but is from the world” (1 Jn. 2:16, emphasis mine). And again, scripture in speaking of such desire always portrays it as illicit and contrary to the right order of nature (Rom. 1:26-27), and as having the same effects of defilement of body and mind as other forms of sexual immorality (Rom. 1:24, 27; comp. 1 Cor. 6:18; 1 Pet. 2:11).
That sin consists not only in unlawful deeds of the body or tongue, but also in the principle of corruption that animates such deeds, and in various perversions of desire, thought, or will. For as our Lord says, “everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Matt. 5:28).
That the teachings of those associated with Revoice imply that sin lies only in deeds and not in the corruption that issues forth as such deeds. Thus do they bring near Pelagianizing tendencies whose influence is apt to work corruption in other matters: for a little leaven leavens the whole lump.
That the teachings of those associated with Revoice have the practical effect of categorizing homosexual attraction differently than the right doctrine of the church. For we have ever held that it is a question of morality, of sin that needs to be repented and mortified; yet they often speak as though it is rather a burden to be borne, and thus conceive of it in therapeutic terms. In other cases they speak of it positively, as though it gives its bearers special grace that might be used to the benefit of others.
That it is well outside the bounds of propriety for members of the papal communion to be employed in conferences held at churches that are members of our denomination, or for their teaching to be permitted in other circumstances. A distinction is made here between Rome as she has been since the time of her depravity in the middle ages and the earlier church prior to her ‘Babylonian captivity.’
That the teachings of those associated with Revoice have brought near again the doctrine of concupiscence of the papal communion – which is no wonder, many of Revoice’s teachers being associated with that body. Having escaped from the errors and tyranny of Rome with such suffering and difficulty, are we content to again expose ourselves to its baleful influences?
That the Revoice position proceeds on the same assumption that was used to justify the recognition of so-called same sex marriage in society at large, viz., that sexual desires are the result of a largely immutable genetic or hereditary disposition (orientation).
That sexual orientation is a very recent and suspect concept, holding as it does that homosexual desires are exclusively a result of physical and psychological constitution, rather than being acts of the will or habits resulting from one’s behavior.
That sundry sins sometimes have a genetic or hereditary lineage, and that they are further propagated by example and environment; but these extravolitional factors do not comprise the whole body of sin, nor do they excuse it.
That all positive discussion of Revoice and the same-sex attraction controversy is an act of disobedience to our Lord. For he says in his word that “sexual immorality and all impurity or covetousness must not even be named among you, as is proper among saints” (Eph. 5:3); and yet we have discussed this matter openly and blithely before the whole world.
That to even have such a controversy is a loss for us and indicates how worldly we have become. For it should be unthinkable that such things would be contemplated or acted out in the church of God, and their first mention should have been censured in keeping with the urgency with which Scripture enjoins the suppression of destructive ideas (Deut. 13:6-8).
That we dishonor our brothers throughout the world in other bodies of the faith, for many of them suffer poverty or persecution at the hands of unbelievers, and yet while they languish we give ourselves to comfortable and orderly discussions of matters which ought not to be discussed at all.
That we dishonor our forefathers by acting contrary to them and dishonoring the heritage that they have bequeathed to us. We are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses (Heb. 12:1); and who can maintain that those witnesses would discuss these matters as we now do? Can we imagine Moses or Peter or John Knox or Daniel Baker regarding it as an imperative of justice and ministerial effectiveness to plead the case of immorality as is now done?
That we ill serve the world that we ought to labor to save when we engage in such matters. For the world needs to be told to flee the wrath that is to come, not to see and hear that the Presbyterian Church in America is proud to have same sex-attracted ministers in her midst.
That the foremost sufferers of our present deeds are those that are tempted with homosexual lust. For they need to be encouraged diligently with the assurance that their sin belongs to the old man that was crucified with Christ (Rom. 6:6), and that they are new creations (2 Cor. 5:17) who have been cleansed of their sin and who can and will finally overcome it (Rom. 6:12-14). And yet we set before them as leaders and models men who proudly claim their sin as an essential part of their identity, and who name themselves by it. Paul says that “those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires” (Gal. 5:24), and that former homosexuals were among the saints in Corinth that “were washed . . . were sanctified . . . were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Cor. 6:ll) – and yet we would hang the moniker ‘same-sex’ about the necks of the tempted or permit them to hang it upon themselves, thus constituting them a separate class of believers.
That the reasons put forward for the propriety of having publicly identified same-sex attracted ministers are self-refuting. For it is intimated that this is an important measure to reach the lost, especially those that struggle with homosexual lust, and yet our previous position, in which something like the Revoice conference would have been unthinkable, did not dissuade many of these same agitators from joining us in past years.
That the scriptural injunction about quarrels about words does not mean that the language we use is a matter of indifference, or that we may use any words we please. Paul’s prohibition in 1 Timothy 6:4 and 2 Timothy 2:14 is upon petty or needless controversies of no real consequence that are engaged (as among the ancients) rather for the amusement of the disputants than for the benefit of their audience. Paul’s ban prohibits the church from becoming the Areopagus (Acts 17:21); it does not condemn the necessity of controversies – as of the Orthodox against the Arians, the Reformers against Rome, or the Fundamentalists against the Modernists – which seek to preserve the true meaning of terms of great consequence, the mis-definition of which are matters of spiritual life and death.
That it is seldom wise and sometimes sinful to use terms taken from unbelieving society at large.
That it is not right to use the contemporary terms of our opponents (and in some cases, persecutors) in our contemporary discussions of sexual ethics. “For the sons of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than the sons of light” (Lk. 16:8), and they have deliberately chosen terms such as gay, same-sex, and Side B because they portray homosexuality as at least morally neutral, and often as positively wholesome and good.
That God in his word only denominates this sin with terms of strong, unambiguous denunciation (as “dishonorable” and “shameless,” Rom. 1:26-27), ever regarding it as contrary to the proper course of nature.
That it is proper for the church to use the terms of Scripture and of traditional Christian moral teaching rather than those of the world. For he who controls the terms that are used and defines their meanings determines how such matters are conceived, and thus controls the debate.
That it is the purpose of language to illumine, not obscure, and that any language which tends to minimize, hide, or deny the egregious nature of anything to do with homosexual sin is not appropriate for use by the church or her ministers. For such euphemisms are a form of dishonest speech, and as such have more to do with the kingdom of Satan than that of God.
That much of the language which has been used hithertofore has been worldly and euphemistic, and taken from hostile, unbelieving sources.
That the use of such improper language ought to be repented forthwith for the sake of all parties.
That unbelieving homosexuals are those who are most ill-served by the use of euphemistic language that obscures the nature and severity of their sin. For one cannot repent unless he realizes his behavior is sinful, and this process includes a proper understanding of how severe his sin is and of how urgently repentance is needed.

Tom Hervey is a member of Woodruff Road Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Simpsonville, S.C.