Meditation

Whats up everyone!
So this weeks devotional was feakin awesome because I love mediating! The very first verse that is quoted Psalm 63:6 is one of my favorites and when I first read that a few years back I really took it to heart and tried to apply it to myself but it was hard because I thought meditating was like the yoga meditating where you empty your mind but it really wasn't. Now that I have figured out how to meditate FOR God it makes it so much more enjoyable than frustrating. My favorite definition about meditation come from Knowing God by J.I. Packer (which I referenced last post but I just love his book) and it says "Meditation is the activity of calling to mind, and thinking over, and dwelling on, and applying oneself, the various things that one knows about the works and ways and purposes of and promises of God". I definitely find meditation challenging to me because my brain doesn't completely function properly because I have damaged almost all of my frontal lobe, so meditation can become a struggle because my mind decides that we are done with that when I don't want to be. But a form of meditation for me is painting (like the one below). I try to encorperate God somehow either in my paintings or in the act of painting.

Working for the art department of USD gives me a ton of time to meditate, especially when critique was the day before because no one shows up for lab, and I truly feel that there is no one act of meditation. Yes the first is when you do meditate you hear God maybe not his voice but maybe its trough an image or maybe a thought or a stream of thoughts that you know you would never think about come to you that's God and the second is obeying what he has to tell you is. That is the most challenging thing that I have had to do not just this week but every single day of every week. Obeying his word may not be what you want to do but it is what he wants you to do. Just like Jonah he was told by God to do something and he ran because he didn't want to do that but he knew that he should have and eventually he did it. I feel like this weeks message overall was meditation, yes, but the fact that during meditation we figure out what God is telling us and applying that to our lives and doing what he asks.
Have an amazing weekend everyone,

Chandler