Meditation through the Devotional Method of Scripture Reading

When I applied the devotional method (described in my last post) to Galatians 2:20, I began with prayer, thanking God for His revelation of the truth to me through the power of the Holy Spirit. Then I read the verse and meditated upon it. Here is the passage:

“I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me.”

As I meditated on this verse, allowing the Spirit to guide me, I was taken to a state where I could actually see what God is showing me. I wrote: “I am at the cross, amid the mourners and the scoffers. Here my Lord is on the cross, suffering an unimaginable burden for the sins of myself and all the world. No one but perhaps His dear, blessed mother has any understanding that what He had come to earth to do was made manifest at this very moment. Suddenly I am on the cross with Him, looking through His ravished eyes. I see the onlookers, the thieves hung on either side of me, the gathering clouds, the beautiful city of Jerusalem in the distance, and the temple. Now I feel His incredible, indescribable love for our Father and for all and my heart is broken into a billion pieces. I cannot feel the burden of the sins that He carries, because that burden is for Him alone. I feel the crushing pain of His abused and bruised body, the feeling of His splayed back against the rough wood, how His lungs strain to take air in. I feel the nails in His hands and feet like an incessant torment driving through pulverized bones. I am being crucified with Christ, and I weep for the sins He has to bear for my sake, the pain He has to endure so that when I, over two thousand years later, come to the foot of this cross with my own brokeness and confess Him as my Lord and Savior, believing that He indeed has died for my sins – past, present and future – and that three days later He was risen from the dead, resurrected by the very same Holy Ghost that has brought me to this pivotal moment. I realize that Jesus IS the great I AM, and in His infinite love for me, gave His very life on my behalf. I now feel Him proclaim that “It is finished,” and then take His last breath. He is now IN ME and I IN HIM – I am indeed a NEW creation! (2 Corinthians 5:17) , and when they take His body off the cross, my old, fleshy nature, what is called the ‘old man’, remains on it. I am brought back to my kneeling body, tears streaming down my eyes, and understand more than ever before that the life that I now live is by faith in Him, who gave His life for me because of His LOVE, because He IS LOVE.

Ask God to give you a revelation of His love for you as you mediate on a scripture. Surrender your entire being to Him; throw yourself at His feet. Perhaps your experience will be different from mine. Meditation is deep thinking, and when utilized through the Holy Spirit, will always give you greater insight into whatever scripture you read. You will find the Bible verses coming alive as the word of God reveals itself to you, as it is meant to.

My next blog post will go into greater depth concerning how to paraphrase and personalize the scripture you are studying using the devotional method.