| Practicing Spiritual Disciplines Part 2: Meditation | | Posted on Monday, October 5, 2009 at 5:00am |  This is Part Two of a series of blogs on practicing spiritual disciplines. Last week we looked at prayer. Spiritual disciplines are tools that help us and our children fulfill the greatest commandment.
Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, (Luke 10:27). (See All Your Mind Oct 7, 2009 on Christian Momlogic).
Read on for a FREE Book Give Away!
Meditation
Often people object to meditation because of the connection with Eastern religions and New Age practices which emphasize losing yourself in order to “become one with the Cosmic Mind.” As a young mom, I attended Yoga classes with a Christian instructor who ended her 12 week sessions with her testimony. She shared how, after years of practice with the “masters,” she finally reached the state in which she stood on the edge of losing all her thoughts and becoming “one with the Universe.” She said she felt a deep sense of evil and if she crossed the line her soul would be lost. If not for a phone call from her sister, who was praying at that moment for her, she would have taken the leap.
So when I speak of meditation in a biblical sense, it means drawing close to God and filling our minds with his presence and Word. The spiritual discipline of meditation quiets our souls to hear God’s voice.
Within your temple, O God, we meditate on your unfailing love, (Psalm 48:9).
Oh, how I love your law! I meditate on it all day long,(Psalm 119:97).
Satan is the deceiver. If he cannot convince us to follow a lie, he will produce a parody of the truth to scare us away from the real thing. Jan Johnson, a spiritual director and retreat speaker, says,
“The process of spiritual formation allows every part of our being to be embraced and schooled by God, and the imagination needs retraining as much as anything else. If we ignore our imagination, it finds entertainment of its own. When activated by the images and truths of Scripture, the imagination enables the penetrating Word of God to become active in our lives.”
Children have wonderful imaginations. While they are still young, we have the opportunity to train their imaginations to focus on the Lord. Here are some ways to train their little minds to meditate on God.
- Read stories from the Bible to your child at bedtime so that he meditates on God’s provision and love as he drifts off to sleep.
- Take walks with your child, allowing him to explore at his own pace. Talk to him about how God made the sky, grass and trees. These memories and words will later tumble around in his thoughts and dreams.
- Surround them with sights and sounds that point to God. Hang pictures of Bible characters and scripture verses in child’s room. My Granny use to make her own.See Lasting
 Impressions. Provide praise music for your child to listen to during the day. Play games that have a biblical base or moral to them.
- Form the habit of a daily quiet time early in your child’s life. Encourage them to retreat for 10-15 minutes after school each day. This gives them a time of “shake off” worldly influences, rest their minds, and start anew in the evening.
Give Away: My Bible Dress-up Book
.jpg) It’s that time of year when our kids are surrounded by “scary monsters and creepy things.” With books and movies, such as Harry Potter and Twilight, our kids receive messages that witchcraft and sorcery is acceptable. Revelation is pretty clear about what happens to those who practice magic arts. While our kids are young we need to give them characters that they can imitate. That’s why I wrote My Bible Dress-up. I will give away five free copies to the first people who leave a message or a question to this blog. I’m giving away an additional five copies on Christian Momlogic on Wednesday.
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 All comments are moderated. There will be a delay before your comment appears below. Julie Surface Johnson says: This book looks like the perfect resource for my daughter and her three little ones (ages 8,6, and 3).
I love your blog, Carla, and am subscribing to it now. BTW, please check out my blog at http://JulieSurfaceJohnson.blogspot.com.
Hope all is well with you. I'm so glad to have met you at OCW summer conference.
Carla says: Nice blog Julie. We were just talking about you this morning and your great book, Over Coffee. Thanks for posting!
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