Dwell on God’s Word All Day: Replace Haunting Thoughts with Joy

Some thoughts haunt us; they refuse to go, however hard we try. Some could be good thoughts or sweet memories, and some could be hurtful. In Hebrew, the word for meditation here means "dwelling on one idea," something we engage our mind with. So, the Psalmist said, “Oh how I love your law! It is my meditation all the day” (Psa 119:97).

The word used here differs from that used in Psalm 1:2 for meditation: “But his delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night.” There, it means repetitive utterance of the words of the scripture.

We love to dwell on the memories of the scenes of a good film, the lines of great songs, or the sight of a beautiful landscape. We will not let them go, even after days or months of the year have passed.

The godly man who wrote the lines of this psalm loves to cherish the memory of the glory of the Lord. He might have seen the “glorious splendour of [God’s] majesty” in the Lord in healing him, delivering him from enemies, or the joy of reading or hearing the Word—in short, the divine experience.

Tragically, we are so busy that by lunchtime, we have forgotten the Bible verse we read in the morning. We struggle to recall the lines of the song that lavishly described the majesty of the Lord and ministered to us. Unlike this psalmist, divine experiences have only a short stay in our minds. When we vacate the thoughts about God from our minds, carnal joy, hurts, and fear of defeat come to roost in our consciousness, depriving us of joy in the Lord.

It is liberating to dwell on the Word of God and the Lord’s kind ways with us.

Let the celebration of the Lord’s splendour never stop. List three thoughts dominating your mind today. For each, pair it with a truth from God’s Word or his past kindness. Dwell on these replacements throughout the day, as the Psalmist did—turning your mind into a sanctuary of his splendour.

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