MUSINGS ON MEDITATION MONDAY!

"To read without reflecting is like eating without digesting." (Edmund Burke)
According to Psalm 1:1-2, the man who meditates on God's Word is blessed.

Donald Whitney in Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life writes, "The tree of your spiritual life thrives best with meditation...(p. 49) 

This has certainly proved true for me as, "Thy words were found and I ate them and they became for me the joy and delight of my life...." (Jeremiah 15:16a)

Spiritual Sepsis

Negative thoughts come from a negative mind. Impurity can reign in a mind empty of God's truths.

Inlet Port & Discharge Port  In this picture it is all septic.

The adage that "what goes in is what comes out" is certainly important of the words that enter ones' mental pallet and then permeates one's heart. 
In the illustration above, the actual contents waiting to b discharged are septic. It says so right on the truck. 
A spiritual sepsis can permeate the body once it gets in. It can affect the heart. Even the brain can be affected as oxygen and nutrients are blocked from ones system. 
What is the remedy for spiritual sepsis? A thorough cleansing is required.

Sepsis can also invade one's spiritual life. I call it stinkin' thinkin', and if not held in check, it can block understanding of God's word thus destroying vital truths leading to godly living.
 Stinkin' thinkin' needs to  be treated by a washing of the word, God's Word so that the grace of God can come in? (Ephesians 5:26)
The cure to stinkin' thinkin' is a grateful heart?   

Create in me a clean heart O Lord and renew a right spirit within me. (Psalm 51:10)

Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.

A Good man brings good things our of the good stored up in his heart, and an evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. (Stinkin' stuff!) For the mouth speaks what theheart is full of. Luke 6:45)

So....don't fill your heart and mind with stinkin' thinkin'---the result could be septic.

"Wil-TEA"

As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, my God. (Psalm 42:1. NIV)

Not only does a deer long for water, so does my forsythia!

Desiring a big POP of yellow sunshine at the end of the driveway, I planted a forsythia. Nothing "pops" YELLOW in a landscape quite like this bush.
According to Mother, a forsythia requires sunshine and lots of room to spread as  it grows---"don't contain or shape it, Dotsy. Let it shape itself." Words from long ago that still ring in my head.

Before God sent the rain, I, and hubby, watered it faithfully, or so we thought. It still looked wil-TEA to us----like it needed a big cuppa fresh water. Even my "master gardener neighbor," Lynda used my same term. "Your forsythia really is looking mighty wilty."

Then, the rains came.

Washed by water from the heavens, my forsythia perked up.

I feel the same way when I've been "washed with water (from God) through the word." (Ephesians 5:26)
Cleansed. Refreshed. Perked up.

That's why one's wilting soul "pants" after the Living Water. The One who offers the drink of living water assures us that when we drink deeply, we will never thirst again. (John 4:14)

No more wilting for those who drink from His cuppa.