Getting Past the Noise

And happy Groundhog Day, everybody! So exciting about that. Now, of course we know, we're just kidding, we know that there's another major thing going on that especially has the attention of everybody up in San Francisco. It's Chinese New Year, so happy Chinese New Year also. Hey, listen, the way we look at it, better to root for groundhogs than seedhogs. But anyway, listen. Let's start off with a Face of Life quiz. Ten questions, just kind of keep mental score here. I want to know how many people answer yes to questions in this. In fact, raise your hand if the answer is usually yes in your life.

Ready for this? Number one, do you seem to be short of time to get everything done? How many of you would say that that's true in your life? Okay, most of us here. Number two, do you hate to wait in line or be kept on hold? Like you question the goodness of God when that happens. You know what I mean? God, why? Why? Number three, do you seem to have a little time to relax and enjoy the day? Can I see a show of hands there? Again, most of us. Number four, do you find yourself over-committed? Anybody answer yes to this? Okay, number five, do you tend to think about other things during conversation or during my sermons? Can I see that honest show of hands? All right.

Number six, do you tend to compulsively check things like your personal email and social media on your iPhone even at work, even during my sermons? Can I see a show of hands? All right. It's fascinating. I was just reading a thing about iPhones and how often people check them. The average American checks their phone every 12 minutes, every 12 minutes, whether they're at work or not. And most Americans now sleep with their phones. And if it beeps, they'll wake up in the middle of the night and check to see if they got a text from somebody more important than the Sandman. It's just incredible to me. How many of you do that? Anybody sleep with their phones? Nobody's being honest here.

All right. Number seven, do you ever try to do more than one thing at a time? Like checking your phone right now and raising your hand. Number eight, does slow traffic drive you bananas? How many of you admit on the -- okay, good. Number nine, do you find yourself suddenly realizing that you've got clenched fists or tight neck and jaw muscles during my sermons? And then number ten, does your concentration sometimes wander -- where was it? Why you think about what's coming up later. How many of you answered yes to at least seven of those questions? Can I see a show of hands? Anybody here get all ten? Anybody? Really? That doesn't mean you win. What that means is we are in a distracted, multi-tasking culture. How many of you would agree with that statement? We are. That's for sure.

ABC News had a great story about this recently. Watch this video. Texting and walking, that thoroughly modern epidemic. Look at this guy walk into a wall, where this woman walk into a mall water fountain. And check this out, a bear on the loose and this man texting almost walks right into him. The videos are funny, but the problem is serious. According to the most recent numbers, more than a thousand people went to emergency rooms because they got hurt while walking and distracted on the phone. Double the year before, which was double the year before that.

Bonnie Miller walked off this pier into Lake Michigan and had to be rescued by the Coast Guard. I couldn't let pride stand in my way of warning other people, you know, to not drive in text or walk in text. And ironically, you know how she warned them? By text. Right, exactly. We are so distracted and multi-tasking as a culture that experts say we end up less productive. We end up having less time with family. We end up grouchy and irritable and most importantly less time with God. And as a culture, we are longing for a cure.

Watch this, Time magazine's new issue, it just hits newsstands tomorrow. Cover story, the mindful revolution. The science of finding focus in a stressed out multi-tasking culture. Article says distraction is the preeminent condition of our age, so what's the solution? Well, this article says many people are finding a solution in meditation. Check this out, research published in Health Psychology Journal shows that meditation is linked with decreased levels of the stress hormone cortisol, so it makes you less stressed. Researchers from UCLA found meditation helps decrease feelings of loneliness.

A study in the journal Psychological Science, researchers from Northeastern and Harvard found that meditation is linked with more compassionate behavior. And you know one of the most interesting findings is that the benefits of meditation actually continue long after you are finished meditating. So even when you're not meditating anymore, your stress levels are still down, your compassion levels are still up. Okay, so I want to talk about this, but first I want us to just be very honest here. The term meditation is just kind of weirding some of you out right now. Like what's really talking about here first? It just seems hard, like something I got to go do on a mountaintop somewhere, and who's got time for that?

I got to be some kind of a monk or a guru or an expert in some other task that I don't have time to master. Plus, some of you are thinking it all seems vaguely suspicious, like new agey. Like is René trying to force us into some kind of California culty trend here, right? Well, did you know that the Bible's references to meditation are the oldest references to meditation in any of the world religions? The first time meditation is mentioned in any of the world religions. It's Genesis 24 where it says Isaac went out to his field to meditate. And after that, the Bible describes it dozens and dozens and dozens of times, like Psalm 4:4, meditate within your heart, on your bed, and be what? Still, Psalm 77:12, I will also what? Meditate on all your works. Psalm 145:5, I will what? Meditate on the glorious splendor of your majesty and your wondrous works. And there's dozens more, even Jesus meditated.

The Gospels are packed with things like Jesus withdrew to a lonely place and prayed. So, let's recap. The Bible commands it. Jesus models it. Science backs it up. And so for you to say, "No, meditation's not for me," is really to say, "No, thanks, I'd rather be drained." "No, thanks, I'd rather be strangled by stress." "No, thanks, I don't need what Jesus Christ, the living Son of God, apparently needed in his life." Listen, as your pastor, I want you to hear this. I want you to have the richest life, the deepest life possible, the kind of life we talked about in the series in January of radical, deep, organic change.

You say, "All right, but I read the Bible already. I pray already, great." Reading the Bible, great. Praying, great. But there's something in between reading the Bible and praying that involves both. Meditation that you're longing for. How many times have you thought to yourself, "My prayers are great, but they're really kind of lists of requests or thanksgivings to God. I'm looking for a way to make them deeper. Bible reading's great. I'm looking for a way to make it deeper." What you're looking for is what the Bible calls meditation. And yet, typically in Western Christian churches, we way under-emphasize this.

You'll be lucky if you find a sermon in a year in the average American church on meditation. And I'm convinced this is one reason that Eastern religions have taken off in America. And New Age spirituality has taken off in America because they talk about meditation, which we as Christians, as humans, long for. Listen, I'm not trying to guilt you here. I'm trying to motivate you. This is God's way of recharging your batteries. So let's rediscover the Bible's teaching on this. Grab your message notes. "Still" is the name of our four-week February series. And our theme verse for the series is this, Psalm 46:10, right at the top of the notes. This is the least-obeyed verse in the Bible in our culture today. All right? So let's read this out loud together. Ready? Here we go. "Be still and know that I am God." Circle the word "still." Doesn't that sound great? But how do you do this?

I was talking about this to a friend of mine last weekend, and he said, "I try, René, but the voices in my head just get louder." So this morning, let's talk about getting past the noise. And first, let's define our terms. All kinds of definitions come up when you look at the word "meditation," but two words are always in every definition. Meditation is focused attention. Calm, focused attention. Now, this can be religious or secular meditation. This can be focused meditation on anything. You can meditate on your hand, you know? Wow, I've heard people in Santa Cruz do this at times.

But you combine that with the Bible's recommendation of focused attention on God, and now you've got something super powerful. And so what I want to do today is look at three things. The effects of meditation, the fuel for meditation, and the elements of meditation, and they're all found in the first three verses of Psalm 1. If you have your Bibles turned there, a little context for you, the Psalms were the meditation book for ancient Israel. And the first Psalm is sort of like the gatekeeper to the rest of the book. It's saying, "Here is what will happen to you if you do these things." So let's look at the first three verses of Psalm 1. I'll put them on the screen, and I'd love for us to read them together as a church. Ready? Here we go. "Blessed is the one who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stands in the path of sinners, nor sits in the seat of the scornful, but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in his law he meditates day and night. He will be like a tree planted by streams of water that brings forth its fruit in season, whose leaf does not wither, whatever he does prospers."

All right. Several amazing promises given to people who will meditate. In these first three verses, I want you to jot these down. The effects of meditation according to Psalm 1. First, deep joy. Deep joy. The first word, blessed, is the one. Blessed is often translated happy in English, but it means something much deeper. It means deep joy, complete wholeness, total peace, absolute fulfillment in every aspect of your being. That sounds good, but that's only the first word. There's a lot more. Number two, change and freedom. Change and freedom. Blessed is the one who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stands in the path of sinners, nor sits in the seat of the scornful.

Let me ask you a question. Why doesn't he just say, "Blessed is the one who doesn't do what bad people do, while the walk sits, stands business." It's talking about life patterns. Walking, standing, sitting, the patterns of the world. It's saying the way to put off the life patterns of the world is meditation. The way to put off life-dominating negative patterns is meditation. So change and freedom comes from meditation. Deep joy comes from meditation. Third effect, I find delight. One sign of godly meditation is delight, and this is huge, because the minute they hear the word "meditation," a lot of people feel like the boy you might have heard about or told the Sunday school teacher, "This is boring!" And the little girl next to him said, "Shh! This is supposed to be boring. It's church!" Right? But the Bible says the exact opposite. It says his delight is in the law of the Lord. Meditation gives you joy, freedom, change, delight.

Number four, stability and growth. Stability and growth, it says, like a tree planted by streams of water. Now, this was written, the Psalms were written where? What part of the world? What country? Israel, right? Judea. That is a climate a lot like Southern California. And in that arid desert climate, a tree not planted by a stream can't always be sure of being green, because a tree not planted by a stream depends on rain, which we know around here this year is inconsistent.

And listen, that's a picture of a believer who always depends on stimulation just falling on him or her, just sort of randomly. Like you might hear a great song on the radio when you happen to be driving around in the car or in church and you feel the presence of God, "Oh, that was beautiful!" The rain falls on you and you blossom. Or you might hear a great sermon, "That one really hit me!" And you blossom a little bit, "That's rain!" And you get rain, you blossom, and that's great. But the rain's inconsistent. Don't just wait for rain to fall. If you're by a stream of water, you're like a tree putting down roots into a stream that never runs dry. That's there with you every day.

Like this tree. This is actually in the middle of the Judean desert near the Dead Sea in Israel. But it's near a stream. And a tree like that brings forth its fruit in its season and its leaf never withers. Notice there's still seasons. Every life has seasons. But this tree, even though it goes through seasons, barren seasons, fruitful seasons, it doesn't die. Example, Jesus Christ. Jesus meditated in the Bible. In the Bible it says in the mornings he would get up by himself to pray. So when his trials came, he was like a tree planted by streams of water. He had put his roots down deep.

And so when he's going through his trial, his crucifixion, he quotes Psalm 22. You know, the Psalm that talks about, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" He has put his roots down deep. And so he's tapping into this way to express what he's feeling in that moment. That's an example of how meditation, even in times of trouble, leads to stability and growth. And finally, and this one might make some of you uncomfortable, but it's in the Bible. Meditation brings prosperity. Prosperity, that's part of the promise. Whatever he does, what? Prospers. Now that's not necessarily success the way we think about it. It does mean that whatever you do will have beneficial effect. That is quite a promise. Whatever you do will have benefit. And these are all powerful promises, and the key to them all is meditation.

You see, they are all about the law of exposure, which is at the top of page two of your notes. This is one of the most ignored laws of life. The law of exposure is whatever I think about is what I become. And we talked about this all through the Radical Deep Organic Change series. Whatever I think about most is what I become, and you think about most whatever you expose your mind to, right? Nobody in NASCAR fills a race car with diesel. Nobody going out for the Sochi, you know, winter Olympics is going to go on a Twinkies and Ding Dong diet. When people have kids, they are very careful about what goes into that kid. At least the first kid. Then all the bets are off after that, speaking as a father of three.

So everybody gets this, so it astounds me that people disregard the impact of exposure in the most important area of your life, your mind. The thoughts you think, the music you listen to, the material you read, the TV shows you watch, the events you attend, the people that are speaking into your life, the kinds of sermons that you are listening to, the daydreams that you allow yourself to engage in, they are all forming your mind, and your mind is forming your tastes and your character, and that forms your actions, and your actions form your destiny. And it all ties back into what are you thinking about, the law of exposure.

John Maxwell says the law of exposure is as predictable as the law of gravity, and that's a great way to put it, because the law of gravity doesn't surprise anybody, right? Nobody. Nobody jumps off of a second-story ledge and drops 15 feet to the ground and goes, "What were the odds of that happening?" Again! That happens every time. You know, they're never surprised by the law of gravity. And yet you and I are surprised by the law of exposure all the time. I can't believe I did that. I can't believe I'm having trouble with my thought life. I can't believe I'm struggling with anxiety. Well, what are you exposing yourself to? Don't react with shock with what you expose yourself to profoundly shapes your life.

Let me put it this way. You ever ask yourself, "Why do some Christians really seem to love Jesus and yet never grow?" You ever ask yourself that question? Why do some people come to Christ and just flourish, and some people really love Christ? They're truly Christians, and yet they just don't take off. Why? Many people are freed but not fueled. Does that make sense? Jesus set them free. Their sins are forgiven. Even their hurts no longer control them. They're grateful, genuine believers. And yet they kind of meander through life. Not too excited. Not really very fruitful. Freed, not fueled. We all need to get fueled, fed, plugged in.

So what is the fuel for meditation? This is important because, like I said, you can meditate on anything. And this is really where the rubber meets the road. Because first, Psalm 1 says, meditate on the Word of God. The Word of God. It says, "In his law, he meditates day and night." Now, I want to look at this a little bit closer because the word usually translated, "law" in our English Bibles is the Hebrew word Torah. But because of this misunderstanding, the word "law" always being the translation. There's a misunderstanding about what Torah is all about.

The word Torah can specifically mean the first five books of the Bible because they contain the law of Moses. But the word is actually broader than that. It comes from a Hebrew root word that's a verb, "yara," that means to flow or to throw. This can be the flowing of an arrow from an archer's bow or the flowing of a javelin or the flowing of a finger to point direction. Now, let's meditate on this. Why would the word that came to mean the Torah, the Hebrew law, originate in a verb that means a javelin or an arrow hitting the mark or a finger pointing the way? Because the law at its foundation is not about the rules. It's about hitting the mark. It's about connecting with God.

And this imagery is referring to the power of his word. When you meditate on it, you can get zinged by it. When you meditate on it, you can get power from it. When you meditate on it, you can get direction from it. When you meditate on it, it can fly you to a new destination. So it's a very exciting word. But listen, this is important because there's a lot of material that can be helpful about meditation. Listen, that is not based on meditation on the scripture. And I really... This is one of the reasons I wanted to talk about this because I'm hearing this kind of thing more and more, even in Christian circles.

Just the other day, a friend of mine came back from a Christian retreat center. And he was very concerned because he said what was being taught in meditation was, "Okay, everybody, just sit still and ask God to..." Not even ask God, "Just cleanse your mind. Cleanse your mind of all imagination. Just stop thinking about anything." And now the first thing that pops into your head, that's God's word to you. Now, what's wrong with that? Can anybody see a flaw in that thinking? How do you know that the next thing you're thinking about is even true, let alone God's direction for you, unless there's some standards, unless there's some guidelines for it, unless your mind is being conditioned, your imagination is being formed by the word of God.

You meditate on the word of God. You let it feed you. You let it nourish you. You let it shape the contours of your character and your imagination. And then you can meditate very powerfully on the works of God. Now, the works of God means a couple of different things. That's why I put two verses there in your notes. Psalm 77:12 says, "I will also meditate on all your work and talk of your deeds." This is talking about the great things God does in history, your personal history, the personal history of other people, your kids, the personal history of Israel, the redemption history in the Bible. When you meditate on that, you can be inspired.

And Psalm 145:5, "I will meditate on the glorious splendor of your majesty and on your wondrous works." That's talking about meditating on, you know, the flowers or your hand if you want to. That's pretty cool. Or the ocean or whatever. The idea is you let your imagination be affected by the word of God and then you meditate on the works of God, and you can be really lifted up and really just blown away by God. See, the thing is I'm always meditating, but on what? You're already always meditating. You meditate all the time, but on what?

There's a really interesting verse about people not walking with God in Isaiah. It says, "Your heart will meditate on terror." Is that you? Meditating on terrible things? That creates worry. In fact, you know, "worry" is just another word for negative meditation. That's what worry is. You already know how to meditate. You know how to worry. Worry is negative meditation. So what are you meditating on? Honestly, true confessions. For the last several weeks, I've been meditating on football, honestly. So much so that literally about four days ago, I had a dream that Colin Kaepernick was throwing me football after football and I couldn't catch any one of them. So I think I'm meditating on football a little bit too much right now.

But maybe you meditate on that house you wish you had or that guy or girl that you wish you had. That's the thing you meditate on. So how do I discipline my thoughts, especially in this multitasking culture? How do I make my meditation positive? What's the act of meditation? Well, I really want you to hear me on this. Nobody's got one way that is the way. In fact, a huge problem I see is making one way of meditation into a formula, a technique. This is the magic formula for getting through. This is the magic recipe for a God high. You know? How does that happen?

I think what happens is all of us have the experience once in a while of feeling close to the Lord intimately in worship with God. And what often the logical fallacy that follows is we go, "What was I doing when that happened? I was listening to that song where I was at that Christian retreat center or I was down in Big Sur." And so we try to recreate that moment by making whatever was happening to us at the time into a technique that is valid for everybody else. But that's not the way God shows up, not if you read the Bible. He just shows up on a threshing floor in somebody's dream, suddenly at a gate. There he is with a message.

So what you do is you make yourself available to the Lord. You kind of put up the sails to catch the wind in whatever way fits with the way God made you. Some of you are early morning people. Some of you are late night people. Some of you can do this when you're driving around on your long commute. Somehow, some way, you focus your attention on the things of the Lord, the Word of God and the works of God. And let me give you four elements of meditation that you can do in a variety of different ways and techniques. But these four elements are always there. You see this all through scripture for it to be biblical meditation.

First is you read. You take a piece of scripture and read it slowly, over and over. And the shorter the better because you can memorize it and then you just say it to yourself from memory. Most of us only read the Bible for comprehension. Reading for meditation means you let the Word soak into your soul. And then second, ruminate. You know what the word ruminate means? R-U-M-I-N-A-T-E. Ruminate. It means to chew slowly. Like a cow chewing its cud. What are cows doing when they chew like that? I was running out at Wilder Ranch the other day and the cows were all in the field. They all looked like they were chewing gum. They were just going for it. Like this.

What's that all about? You might know cows have four stomachs. And what happens is they chew the hay or the grass and then it goes down to stomach number one and it gets digested a little bit, then back up, chewed on a little bit more, and then stomach number two, a little bit more digestion, back up, chewed on some more. This happens four times, four stomachs. Sounds gross, but that's how we get ice cream. So relax. That's what ruminate is. You take a thought, you chew it on a little bit, then you send it down to the subconscious level where it kind of gets digested. And then mental burp. You think on it again a little bit and chew on it, then down to the subconscious. You digest the thought.

Let me give an example from my own life. Some of you are new. If you've been here any length of time, you know that occasionally I talk about a formative event in my life was my father passing away when I was four. Well, much later when I was probably nine years old, I was crying again, coming to a new apprehension and comprehension of this, and my mom came up to me and she ministered to me in a way that I never forgot. She quoted to me a verse, Psalm 68:5. And Psalm 68:5 is this. "A father to the fatherless, a defender of the widow, is God in his holy dwelling." And that verse just zinged like an arrow into my brain and just stuck and instantly got it memorized.

And I probably thought about that verse thousands of times in the 40 or whatever years since then. "A father to the fatherless, a defender of the widow, is God in his holy dwelling." Psalm 68:5. "A father to the fatherless, God, God has got my back. I'm not alone. I'm not alone. God's got my back. A defender of the widow, God's got mom's back. Mom's not alone either. Is God in his holy dwelling." We've got a special place in God's heart. You know what ruminating on that verse did for me? It gave me deep joy. It gave me stability and strength. It gave me freedom and change and growth. It gave me prosperity in life. It gave me all the benefits of meditation, of rumination, just like the Bible promises.

And what happens when you expose yourself to the Word of God is sometimes you find a verse that zings right into your brain. And it lodges in there and you memorize it. And as you ruminate on what God is making one of your life verses, it seeps into your soul and it changes you. You ruminate on it. And then you respond. You respond to God in prayer, just like, "Wow, thanks," or "Help." You know Anne Lamont says that all prayers basically boil down to three words. "Help, thanks, wow," and I love that. Either you're going, "God, wow," or "God, thanks." "God, help. Help me, a sinner. Help me to comprehend what you're saying here." You respond to God.

And then finally rest. You just sit there and you rest for a moment in what you've just learned about him. Meditate-- Listen, meditation is not about trying harder. It's about letting your imagination be captured by him. Now, I really want to help you do this. So we have formatted the daily meditations of your notes there in these four elements. I hesitate to call them steps because again, I don't want to describe this as a technique. These are things you can do whatever is going on in your mind, whether you're driving or riding a bike or jogging or sitting looking at the ocean, you can do these four things.

So this isn't a technique. These are elements to incorporate in whatever works for you. And here's your February challenge. I urge you to do this every day in February and you will be developing a habit that will change your life. It'll change your life. So we're going to start with this this morning. In just a minute, I'm going to ask Trent to come back up and actually lead us in meditating on some verses as we prepare our hearts for communion. But first, something super important. And if you don't get this, you could just short circuit this whole thing. Listen, you are not meditating to earn brownie points from God. He already loves you unconditionally.

So what motivates you to meditate? The fact that God is meditating on you. God's thoughts are turned toward you. God has a plan for you. God is thinking of you with love and tender mercy. God loves you so much that he said as one and only son to die on the cross for you and rise again so that if you believe in him, you'll have everlasting life. And everlasting life doesn't start when you die. It's a quality of life that starts when you have focused attention on him. The big idea here is that all great life change starts when I change the way I think. And thinking about God's love shown on Calvary is the best thought of all to start with.

Heavenly Father, thank you that you're not a God who's far away but that you're a God who wants to come close. In fact, the whole purpose of the cross was so that we could know you. And if that was the whole purpose of the cross, if you want to move toward fellowship with us, then certainly when we open our hearts to you, you are going to come near. So God, teach us, teach us this month, teach us this week, teach us in these closing moments to come close to you, to soak in your grace, to ruminate on your truth. And we pray these things in Jesus' name, amen.