Meditate on the scriptures

If you want to grow spiritually, you need a consistent diet of scripture. In fact, you will never outgrow your diet of scripture. There is no substitute. There is no supplement. The poet T.S. Eliot said, “Everything we eat has some…effect upon us. It affects us during the process of assimilation and digestion; and I believe that exactly the same is true of anything we read.” We are what we read. But let’s take that a step further. Reading without meditating is like eating without digesting. If you want to absorb the nutrients, you can’t just read it; you have to chew on it. Meditation is the way we metabolize scripture. That’s how it gets into our spirit and our soul. The French writer Jacques Réda had a particular habit. He would walk the streets of Paris with the purpose of seeing one new thing every day. It was how he renewed his love for the city. We renew our love for God in a similar way. Our love grows as we see new dimensions of His personality, and His personality is predominantly revealed in the pages of the Bible. What if we approached God’s Word the way Jacques Réda walked the streets of Paris? Here is the secret of spiritual growth: you can’t merely read the Bible, you have to meditate on it. Reading provides breadth to our understanding, but meditation provides depth. If all we do is read scripture, our understanding of God and our experience with Him is one-dimensional. The Bible is a kaleidoscope. Each time you turn it, another beautiful pattern of truth is revealed.