How to Feed a Pastor: The Secret Life of a Happy Man

0:00 Well, in a room full of pastors like this, I'm guessing that many of you are aware of a podcast that debuted three years ago this summer called The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill. There were 12 episodes to this podcast, and then there were some bonus episodes that came out afterwards. I guess it was just doing too well for CT to let it go. I'm glad they did the bonus episodes because two years ago, this is July of 2022, there was a bonus episode with Tim Keller. And I think it's the most valuable content of all the series. Such good content with Tim Keller in that interview. Tim, as you may know, went to be with Jesus in May of 2023. So this interview debuted, launched less than a year before Tim died. and in the interview they asked him how do you account for your own longevity in ministry you've had a long run you've done well and I think a number of people look to you as somebody who's endured well and let me give you some Tim's response he says earlier on in ministry we got a room here of younger guys some older guys he says earlier on in ministry one of the things that helps you continue to grow in grace and frankly not get an inflated ego not get blind spots is Hebrews 13 3 fellowship exhort one another every day as long as it's called today that none may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin in other words Keller says you've got to have some people in your life who exhort you daily because sin will always blind you. The deceitfulness of sin always blinds you. So who is it in your life that actually is authorized to come talk to you, look at you, really rake you over the coals if necessary?

2:04 I see some heads nodding. Hopefully you guys have had people like this. Hopefully you have people like this in your life? Maybe you've given this counsel to others. I hope so. But this is not Keller's last word. Here's how he continues. He says, as time went on though, here's what has to happen. You can hide even from people like that. I realized that midway, he says. You can still do bad things. You can still have an affair. You can still do things, still get hooked on pornography. You can hide. And also, there's another problem, is that it's very difficult to make friends like that if you lose them. If somebody dies or moves away or that kind of thing, it's very difficult in your 50s and 60s, your 40s, 50s, and 60s, to go out and get another person like that. And then Tim kind of stumbles over his words. He says, therefore, and he pauses and he says, oh, the prayer life. I'm sorry. And not just praying about things. I'm just reading his quote. He says the prayer life and not just praying about things.

3:17 Then he just says the phrase, communion with God. and he says read john owens little book communion with god the father son holy spirit it talks about the purpose of prayer is actually to have the love of god shed abroad on your heart to actually have it to actually see his face to actually sense the grace of god there actually has to be a genuine experiential life that's what I want to talk about in this session here. The genuine experiential life. Not just say your prayers, not just read your Bible.

4:04 And then a few minutes later, hear this, brothers. Here's the main thing. That's where we're getting at. We're setting this up right here. He says, the only real accountability that just cannot be avoided is when you've experienced God's presence and his love, and it is so delicious that you say, I just don't want to lose that. I can't lose that. That's the only accountability I know. Even accountability with my wife. I could lie. There is no other accountability. And even just a prayer life in which you just pray. I read my Bible and I pray every day. The real question is, are you having fellowship with God or communion with God, or do you sometimes commune with God in his love in Christ and his grace and the Holy Spirit and his comfort? Do you, do you, and if you do, that's the thing you say, I cannot live without that. So that's our focus in this session. I want to linger over, how do I get that? How do you get it? How do you enjoy a genuine experiential communion with God that would make you say, I can't lose that.

5:34 I can't go without it. Where else should I go? it caught me off guard first time i heard it that tim said delicious kind of like oh tim keller man manhattan pastor you know just be so sophisticated tim i mean delicious that sounds like midwood barbecue right delicious we're talking about communion with god delicious come on, Tim. First, it struck me as strange. The more I thought about it, the more right it was, the more right it is. Because Tim is talking about tasting, about chewing, about being nourished. As awkward as it is to hear a sophisticated pastor from Manhattan say, delicious, that's just the risk Tim's willing to take because of how precious how sweet how good it is to have this kind of communion with God that would make you say in the face of temptations I don't want to lose that I can't lose it it's my life so brothers how do we get it maybe you've got it hope you have it how do we keep it How do I get spiritually rooted like a tree that's planted by streams of water in Psalm 1?

7:12 The happy man, the blessed man. It helps to get some advice from old men. So I got some old men I want to get help from in these next few minutes. The first is a guy named George Mueller. is someone who talked about experiential communion with God. Mueller was born in 1805, lived to 1898. He's what he's the quintessential 19th century man, like from the beginning to the end of the century. Maybe you know about George Mueller. He cared for orphans more than 10,000 over the years under the oversight of his ministry. In his autobiography, he tells about a life changing discovery he made in the first half of 1841. The autobiography was apparently so helpful that they republished it several times. So as he's editing it for the fifth edition of his autobiography, he mentions that now he's been benefiting from this now for 14 years.

8:10 The entry is just, it's one long paragraph. I'm assuming some, if not many in the room have read these 1500 words, 1500 words, one long journal entry. And it's amazing. And it's, it's a typical journal entry. He goes here, he goes around, he comes back. He's more like the apostle John and the apostle Paul. He goes around in circles. So it helps me to kind of pull out some of those pieces. So what I want to do here for the first few minutes before I get help from some other old men is to start off by getting this help from George Mueller.

8:46 And I've got his journal entries. I've come back to it over the years again and again and again. I seem to get more from it every time I look at it. Let me organize it into six parts for you. I would encourage you, go read it for yourself. I'll resist just reading out loud those 1,500 words here, but I'll give you my ordering of six parts of it, and then we'll move on for other help. Let me give you the six. Number one, your task.

9:17 Get your soul happy in God. I mean, we all came at this very different. Dave didn't have some master plan of how the day was supposed to go. You, you led with the burdens of our hearts. And it's amazingly complimentary. As I sit there listening to Andy and to you, I'm like, thank you, God. What are you doing here? This was not masterminded. I don't think I did. God had appointed that we talk about these things. And we've already mentioned about that first task.

9:47 Mueller is very clear about this great discovery. he made, that the first and great, the first great and primary business to which I ought to attend every day is to have my soul happy in the Lord. And it's the only business, but first, primary.

10:08 Brothers, what a business. just about any other duty would land on my soul often, if not frequently, as burdensome. But this is a duty that is a delight. Get happy. Delight yourself.

10:33 Enjoy the most enjoyable. That's your duty. And he's writing to every Christian. And so let's go with that all the more principle we've been doing all day here today, we're not saying things that are fundamentally different than every believer, but we are as pastors being held more strictly to the standard of Christian. It's not a higher standard as much as we're more carefully held to the standard. So it's for every Christian and especially so for us. That's our job as Christians and as pastors. First task every day, get your soul happy in God. I hope it lands as a deeply refreshing task. He restates the point as, the first thing to be concerned about is how I might get my soul into a happy state. And he sets this discovery over and against things that are not our first calling. He's going to list things here that are part of our calling, more broadly conceived, but these are not the first calling. He says, not how much I might serve the Lord, not setting the truth before the unconverted, not benefiting believers, not relieving the distress, not behaving in the world as fits a child of God. These are real, they're vital aspects of our calling, and they are not first and primary.

11:59 Most important is not our pouring out, but our being filled. Especially for us pastors, he says this, not for the sake of public ministry of the word, not for the sake of preaching on what I had meditated on. This is so subtle, because like you, you probably process the world like I do through the lens of teaching. I hear something and it can be halfway in my ear and I'm like, oh, I can't wait to tell that to people. And we got to put that to death, brothers, to have our souls fed. We got to trust the Lord. He feeds us. There's going to be leftovers later on. You take the basket, you feed the people. I'm going to have 12 baskets later for all the servers, all 12 servers. You get your own basket. I'm going to take care of you. He'll take care of us.

12:53 But the first primary business is, you've got to get happy in him. Maybe you've seen the segment before on college game day where they have some egregious and humorous error. Like the punter drops the snap. And the line is, you had one job. Pastor, you have one job first in the morning. There's more than just this, more than this. But first thing, one job. Get your soul happy in Jesus. Number two, how? How are you going to do this? How do you get your soul happy? And he says, by feeding on God. We're emphasizing that feeding metaphor. already come up several times today. It is so helpful. It's worth lingering over and thinking about the feeding or the nourishing language, the inner man being fed. Mueller says, the first thing the child of God has to do morning by morning is to obtain food for his inner man. He says he comes to God for the sake of obtaining food for my own soul. And as he lingers in God's presence, he aims to, he says, continually keep before me that food for my own soul is the object of my meditation. So next we ask, well, where? Your first test, get your heart happy in God through feeding your soul? Where do you turn to find food for your soul? Number three, where?

14:43 And the room full of pastors says, God's word, right? God's word is where we turn to get food for our soul. The answer is simple. It's unsurprising. And yet it is profound and transformative. This is why God gave us the book. and muller doesn't take for granted that we're going to get this so he asks at one point he says now what is the food for the inner man and his answer is not prayer but the word of god all right so now we pick up an important lesson that's part of this big discovery okay there's an ordering to these things muller's not going to minimize prayer marginalized prayer or jettison prayer he wants to get the order right he says that his former practice he did this for years maybe this is your present practice his former practice was to awake and go straight into prayer man it's really noble like he didn't check any headlines no algorithms he didn't make coffee he says apparently he doesn't mention it he would wake up and go straight into prayer and he said it might take him 10 minutes or even half an hour to find enough focus to really pray.

15:59 He distinguishes between going to prayer and then really praying. He then might spend even an hour on my knees, he said, before receiving any comfort, encouragement, humbling of soul, etc. So he would say this. He had the goal right in those days before he made the change. Get my soul happy in God. And he had the direction right, come to feed on God. He's coming to God with a feeding posture, a hungry posture, but he had missed the order, he says. The lesson that he needed to learn was come first to hear, then to speak. So that is receive God's word first and then pray in response to his word. That's how it works. God's God.

16:53 He talks first. We pray in light of what he says. In God's word, he says, we find our Father speaking to us, to encourage us, to comfort us, to instruct us, to humble us, to reprove us. Don't miss that last one. Don't think that by being affected by God's word, that it's just the warm, comforting, encouraging, humbling, reproving, warning. It's part of it too from a good father.

17:27 God's word nourishes and strengthens the soul. His word leads, provides, warns, steadies. And then in prayer, we speak back to God in light of what he said to us. So it's not like read my passages, check the boxes, hard pivot, pray the lists. But how might it be personal? How might it be communion to hear from God speaking to me by his living spirit, in his living word, and to respond to him in what he has said to me this morning, right now, in prayer? so at this point we might assume that we know how to take in God's word what do you do with a written text? Read it but Mueller has a really important clarifying word for us and it might be his most important thing for us today what he talks about he says is not the simple reading of the word of God, but considering what we read, pondering over it, and applying it to our hearts. So in other words, this is what the psalmists and the old saints, especially the Puritans, called meditation. This is where we pivot. This is where we focus on meditation for essentially the rest of this session.

19:00 This meditation is a crucial aspect of the lesson. And for us, almost two centuries later, this is a lost art in our day. This is not how the normal modern person engages written words. The screens are teaching us to browse written words. They're not even teaching us to fully read them, much less linger over them, consider them, ponder them, apply them to the heart in meditation. I just wonder in a room full of guys, many who have been in seminary, do any remember receiving any sort of significant instruction about personal meditation while in seminary? Anybody? That's good. Okay. Five. Five more than I thought there would be. No, I'm just kidding. Maybe six. In a room like this, that's a small number. I don't think this has been mainly emphasized, emphasized much in recent years.

20:04 You go back to the Puritans, you start finding it. You find Mueller, even mid-19th century. Mueller's first mention of meditation clarifies what kind of reading he means. He says, the most important thing I had to do was to give myself to the reading of the word, comma, and to meditation on it. It doesn't mean he's not reading it. It means he begins with reading and meditates on what he's read. He ponders it, considers it. Mere reading may fill the head, but meditation designs to comfort, encourage, warn, reprove, instruct, make application to the heart. So he doubles back more. Say it again. Meditate on the word of God. He says that means searching as it were into every verse to get blessing out of it. That's not what we do when we read screens. Not what the normal Bible reader today does, I don't think, when reading the Bible.

21:02 Searching as it were into every verse to get blessing out of it. This is just shamelessly hungry, shamelessly hedonistic. God gave me this book that I might get blessing out of it, not just construct my theology, not just think of things to say next Sunday or in the future. He gave me this book to feed me, to make me happy, that his own happiness as the infinitely happy God might stream to me by his spirit through his word and make my soul happy. for the sake of obtaining food for my own soul, he says. So having chewed on one bite and savored it, I go on to the next words or verse, turning all as I go into prayer for myself or others as the word made lead to it, but still continuously keeping before me that food for my soul is the object of my meditation.

22:05 So he comes back one more time to clarify it. He says it over and over again. what he means is not the simple reading of the word of God so that it only passes through our minds just as water through a pipe but considering what we read pondering over it and applying it to our hearts and that series of three verbs might be as deep or as helpful as Mueller gets in the journal entry considering what we read pondering over it applying it to our hearts so he would not just have us read the Bible, but slow down, pause, reread, that we might consider what we've read. Ponder over it, apply it to our hearts. And that's not mainly to our practical lives. I know there's a school of thought out there, like every time you come away from the Bible, you should have some practicals to do. Like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Do you know how American that is?

23:06 Muller talks about applying it first and foremost to the heart you change this in here with God's word you're going to get the practicals right they're going to flow out, you make all sorts of mistakes that you repent for and you get back on the path, but you're going to get that right over time in Christian wisdom when the heart has been changed by God's word and then this kind of engagement with God's word in meditation leads naturally to prayer That's number six. The response, number five. Did I lose numbers here? four was meditation. Okay. Oh, I didn't give you the top. Number four, pace, colon, through meditation. Number five, response, prayer. So Mueller's not minimizing prayer, rather he's putting prayer in its proper place. That is in response to God's word, that prayer might flourish.

24:06 Our prayer lives can flourish when they've been fed, nourished by God's word, and we don't just come bring our own energy to jumpstart the thing from the get-go. So having heard from God in his word and considered it and pondered over it and applied it to our hearts, he says, I speak to my father and to my friend about the things that he has brought before me in his precious word. it leads to a response in us. He says it turned almost immediately more or less into prayer. The time when prayer can be most effectively performed is after the inner man has been nourished by meditation on the Word of God. So having heard God's voice in His Word, actually heard it, felt it, applied it to the heart, then we can really pray. and actually commune with God.

24:59 in that journal entry from may 7 1841 muller uses the phrase meditation and prayer as synonymous with communion with god this is how he when he thinks of communion with god he thinks of meditation and prayer this is very similar to what dave said in terms of in communion there's an interchange there's a give and take there's a speaking there's a listening there's a relating there's a mutual experience there in communion with God, that we hear from him in his word, we respond to him in prayer. Communion involves his speaking, God's, and ours. It's a living father-child relationship. He speaks first through his word. We receive his words with hunger, delight, and an unhurried pace that becomes the word of God. And we speak humbly yet boldly in response, adoring him, confessing our sin, thanking him for his grace and mercy, petitioning him for ourselves, our loved ones, even those who seem like enemies. In this hearing from God and responding to him, Mueller calls experimental, I think that's experiential in our modern language, experimental communion with the Lord. With my heart being nourished by the truth, he says, I am brought into experimental fellowship with God in meditation and prayer. And not only with God the Father, but our Lord, Jesus Christ, the risen, reigning Christ, seated on heaven's throne, who's dwelling in us by his spirit. Just a quick word before moving on the leftovers. Mueller's writing this as a guy leading orphanages, as a minister. It's especially relevant for us in pastoral ministry. Several times he emphasizes that such communion with God is never a means to ministry and feeding others.

26:55 It's not a means, it's an end. But God often provides leftovers. Such early morning meals deeply savored in the soul may soon after or at a later time prove to be food for other believers, but this is not the goal. it's not sermon prep first thing in the morning. It's, I'm just here to be fed. Whether I got any sermons to preach again, ever again or not, I'm just here to be fed.

27:27 Ministry is not the soul's first and primary business, but soul satisfying communion with the risen Christ through his word. I love it that at the very end, the last thing, the journal entry. So here we end Mueller now. You probably said, this is a lot of Mueller. It is. His last line is, how different when the soul is refreshed and made happy early in the morning. It is so true. I hope that most of you have tasted that many days. And hopefully over the years you have found it can be increasingly true. and we'll talk about that in a few minutes with some help from John Owen. All right, so I've got four questions now to finish up our time.

28:17 Given Mueller's lesson for us on our first and primary business, four questions for us. Number one, what about extroverted pastors? you might hear muller you might hear this whole emphasis so far and say some of us got into ministry because we loved people i hope a lot of pastors are like that i hope most are like that some of you pastors seem to want to study all the time but a lot of us love people. We're here to minister to people. We actually get energy from people too. And so let me answer that by saying, number one, you got the rest of the day. Mueller's talking about what happens before breakfast.

29:14 You have from breakfast to bedtime to love people and you cannot love them like you should if you don't get your soul into a happy state first. You are in such a better position to love them after breakfast and all day long. If first you have gotten your soul happy in God, you're not trying to get it from them. You're ready to give it to them. You're ready to pour out, overflow, like Andy was talking about. And to answer that question, let me draw in that famous extrovert, Jonathan Edwards.

29:48 Not really. who says this. This is in the Religious Affections. A true Christian doubtless delights in religious fellowship and Christian conversation and finds much to affect his heart in it. We talked last night here at Oakhurst about fellowship as a means of grace. Absolutely essential. And then Edward says, but he also delights at times to retire from all mankind, to converse with God in solitary places. And this also has its peculiar advantages. So do both here, right? Get means of grace from other lives and means of grace from time alone with God. It has peculiar advantages for fixing his heart and engaging his affections.

30:41 True religion, Christianity, disposes persons to be much alone in solitary places for holy meditation and prayer. And you can hear Edwards equivocating here a little bit because he says, first, delights at times. See, first he said at times. And then he says, be much alone. It's like, oh, there's a little slide there, Jonathan. from you started off with at times, which is understated, to much alone in solitary places. I don't know. I don't do 13 hours a day in the study like Edwards did sometimes. But somewhere in there, you've got a breadth there between at times and between much alone. You've got healthy Christianity that loves to not only get means of grace, be affected through relationships, through pastoral ministry, but also through solitary, one-on-one communion with God through His Word, meditation and prayer.

31:36 He says, may it not be among us brothers that we would be highly affected with others and little moved if we are only alone with God and Christ question number two can you say more about meditation I think there's more to say can we say more than Mueller does I'm glad you asked I'd like to say four more things about meditation than Mueller does and some of them may be implicit in what he says, but let me draw them out explicitly. Number one, meditation involves a process. It's not like a switch. You don't just say, ready, set, meditate. That's not how it works.

32:51 You can do that with reading. Ready, set, read. Not with meditation. You don't just up and meditate. Meditation is the goal and apex of Bible intake. And it's a middle habit. Somewhere between reading God's word and prayer, we have the considering of it, the pondering of it, the application of it to the heart, the feeling of its weight, the use of it. They don't just understand it, but I feel it. I feel the weight of it. Why did God inspire this to be written? Not just to go through here and out, but for it to be used on my heart.

33:30 Meditation then is something that you move into and you move out of it. You move into it through reading but at some point you pause, you slow down, you reread, you consider. So that the some time of your time alone with God isn't just reading and prayer time. There's something in there's considering, there's pondering in there other than just normal reading speed and you articulating and writing out prayers.

34:00 That's number one. Meditation involves a process. Number two. Let me say more about the pace. The Bible is a book made for meditation. the bible's an ancient book you know how hard it was to write and publish and make multiple copies and distribute books in the ancient world we it's just way too easy for us today to produce words like on these keyboards producing all these words you know how expensive that was in the ancient world to have the right materials, to get the ink, to get the papyrus, to have it done properly. Ancient books were not just done on screens in a matter of hours or days. These are expensive processes of being edited, making sure we have to say the right thing, copying them by hand.

35:02 Ancient books were meant to be read and reread and meditated upon. They didn't do ancient books for you just to read it one time quickly. None of it never exists. Read it one time, throw it away. That's just a conversation. Have a conversation. If you can do it one time, be done with it. If you're going to put it in a book, you read it, you reread it, you read it out loud, you discuss it, you meditate on it. It's meant to be transformative and the Bible's like that. So we need to read, first and foremost, at the pace of the biblical text for understanding and enjoyment. we are being trained by pixelated screens to read at a pace that is too quick for the perception of the heart to rightly understand what we're hearing i mean we have this option on audible or other devices i can do it on youtube do you can watch ahead of speed we don't need to be doing it faster. If anything, we need to be slowing it down. We're in the information age. There's plenty of information. We are not at a loss for information. We're at a loss for understanding.

36:12 We're at a loss for feeling. We're at a loss for wisdom. We're at a loss for life change by content that matters, not just the flood of information that's making us stupid. we need to be affected by it good content affected by it and that's how the bible means to change us you may for this reason want to just do go old school and do a paper bible just a reminder slow me down lord don't let me read at the pace of a screen slow me down give me some extra precious milliseconds to understand and feel the weight of what you're communicating in your word. That's number two. Number three, meditation forms and shapes the soul. Information that you quickly assess and goes out your ear, very small influence on you, which is fine.

37:13 That's great. There's a lot of stuff in the information age I don't want to be affected by. I don't want to be changed by. I don't want to be shaped by. I'm driving on the highway and there's a billboard. I don't want to be affected by that probably. 99% of the time, let's let that go in one ear and out the other. I don't come to the Bible like that. I want to be formed and shaped, and meditation changes us.

37:36 Our minds will run somewhere, and the question is not if, but on what? Where does your mind run? Sports? Image? Physique? Job? Money? Children? Politics? Anxiety about society? News? news is a big one sometimes as pastors we feel like oh to do to do this job responsibly it is a it's a responsible thing for me as a pastor to be up on the news there was a time when our congregations were full of farmers who had no idea what was going on in new york or washington dc the news took seven days to travel from boston down to philadelphia and pastors could be helpful in keeping their congregations apprised with what was going on because the congregation didn't care. Like, I got a sick cow. I don't care what's going on up there. But not many of your people are worried about their sick cow. They got these boxes in front of them all the time, and they go way too much about Washington, D.C. Like, what's going on?

39:02 What about Charlotte? What about Minneapolis? What about your own church? how much abiding can you take and here's the thing if you're doing it yourself that that's one thing you know our people are flooded with this you're gonna get all of the news now you don't have to go searching for it anymore your people are little walking news agents they're gonna say pastor have you heard pastor have you heard and it might be good for them to hear, no, I haven't heard that. There's 50, 11 news outlets. Why should I have heard that? You know what? I'm super happy in Jesus too, without having heard all that news. We live in a day where the big stories are, you can't avoid the big stories anymore. Be careful how much you seek them out. Ask yourself, what continually captures my attention because that is shaping you.

40:07 It's changing you. Andy talked about the conduit and us being conduits of our people that we receive the flow and we're conduits to our people of the river. The amazing thing is, as you drink as a conduit, your conduit is changed. You're not this fixed conduit. You're a pliable, conditionable, changeable conduit I thought of bringing Silly Putty, and it didn't arrive in time from Amazon. You know what Silly Putty is. It's got a little bit of stubbornness to it. It doesn't just go out like gel or cream. It's got a little bit of stubbornness. But you can mold it. You shape it. It's pliable. And your brain's way more like that than fixed. In our industrial mechanistic age, we think of ourselves often as fixed. We're fixed.

41:02 and we got all this technology. So I'm the fixed person. I'm going to change the world around me rather than a lot of stuff in the world around me is pretty fixed. And when there's problems, it might be in here in the pliable stuff that needs to be reshaped by what's fixed and external. I need to be reshaped as a conduit. I become a better conduit as I'm reshaped by the water, by the river of life that's coming to me. So Christian meditation requires setting and resetting our minds, and in particular our hearts, on that greatest focus possible. Number four, meditation seeks joy in God today. Today means right now. So this is complementing the previous point about long-term formation.

41:55 Oftentimes we feel like, ah, I want to feel joy in God today. I can't feel it today. And that's right. You can't just turn your heart affections on and off like a switch. But you know what? You can change them over time. You really can. Maybe a lot quicker than you think. Put some effort into it. But today, the focus today means we're not just settling for formation over time as we meditate and linger over God's word. We're first and foremost coming for food for the soul today. We're coming to be satisfied today. We're looking for joy in God today. Mueller said, before breakfast. Let me draw in four voices here from the 17th century. That's the great century of meditation. These guys in the 1600s, they talk about this lost art of meditation. If we're going to reclaim the lost art, it helps to go back. These people who gave their life to learning it.

42:50 The first is Thomas Watson, 1620 to 1868. He says, study is the finding out of a truth. Study, cerebral. the mind, understanding, ask questions, studies the finding out of a truth. Meditation is the spiritual improvement of a truth. Improving, it means you're not making the truth better. It means you're applying it. You're using it. You're making the most of it on yourself. You apply it to you in spiritual improvement. Second, Samuel Ward. He's actually born in the 16th century, 1577 to 1640. He says, this is a really important one. He's one of the earliest voices here. Really important. Stir up thy soul in meditation to converse with Christ. That's one thing you're doing in meditation. You're trying to stir up your soul. You're not just taking your soul wherever you woke up. You're not just saying, oh, that's a given this morning. Woke up sluggish.

43:45 Oh, well, I'm going to have a sluggish day. Take your soul, stir it up to converse with Christ. Look what promises and privileges thou dost habitually believe. Now actually think of them. Roll them under your tongue. Chew on them till you feel some sweetness in the palate of your soul.

44:08 Come on, soul. These things are glorious. Feel them as glorious. You can teach your soul to respond to that. Here's Edmund Calamee, 1600 to 1666. In meditation, I love this image. You want to take a concrete image with you for meditation? Take this one. In meditation, be like the honeybee that dwells and abides upon the flower to suck out all the sweetness. Just be like a honeybee coming to God's word. I'm coming for honey. I'm coming for sweetness. I want to taste it. Last one, William Bates, 1625 to 1699. since meditation often requires persistence, especially when you're first learning the lost art, he says, meditate till thou dost find some sensible benefit conveyed to thy soul.

45:11 This is shameless, y'all. He's looking for effect. I think it's right. Mueller talked about a sensible benefit. He used that same kind of language. Ward talked about feeling some sweetness in the soul. Calumny, like the bee, you're looking for sweetness.

45:33 Frankly, many of us give up far too quickly and easily. Think of Jacob. Don't let him go until he blesses you. Keep at it, Bates says, till the flame doth ascend. Keep working on it. You're going to freeze to death if you don't get that fire going. Keep working on it until the flame doth ascend.

45:58 All right, so there's the four extra lessons there under question number two. Question number three and four. We finished with those. Question three. Does it work? Mueller says that the result for him has been that my inner man almost invariably is even sensibly, sensible. We just talked about it. Sensibly nourished and strengthened. Such that, Mueller says, he's in a peaceful, if not happy state of heart. And he says, this is after 14 years of doing this, he says, I scarcely ever suffer now in the way of going away without some sensible benefit. So what if that's not your experience? Man, I've got so many dry days. Keller if I could send you somewhere to look at this more in Keller it's in his 10th chapter of the prayer book and he's learning from John Owen 1616 to 1683 and john owen is especially out of step with our modern assumptions owen would not be quick to grant any of us the excuse of hey john i'm just not feeling it today like owen's not gonna suffer that folly he's gonna respond forcefully he would at least challenge whether our initial feelings determined anything significant at all.

47:29 He surely would not say to skip God's word or prayer or church fellowship to cater to whatever unspiritual inclination you woke up feeling. Rather, here's Keller's summary of how Owen might respond. He would say, meditate to the point of delight. That's what you're doing. You're not feeling right is not a disqualification for meditating. That's the point of it. You're trying to get your soul jumped, trying to get it going. Don't give in to your first inclinations. Rather, take hold of them. Direct them. It's like Martin Lloyd-Jones talking about learning to preach to yourselves. Have you heard that great passage from spiritual depression? Learn to preach to yourself. You wake up, you're talking to yourself. You need to stop. Yourself is talking to you. You need to talk to yourself. Preach to yourself. But what Owen is adding, he's saying, open the Bible, turn your attention to the one who's supremely worthy, and keep your nose in the book and your mind on Jesus until your sluggish heart begins to respond like it should.

48:35 Don't give up so quickly. I know we often, this is a very modern excuse, I'm not wired a certain way. Not wired this way, not wired that way. Now there are certain ways God has wired us. There are givens to our humanity. But how often do we resign ourselves to being hardwired in ways that we're actually far more pliable, like the silly putty? And our world's not helping us with this, because everywhere you're hearing the message, our society has come to feign plasticity in precisely the places we're hardwired, like biological sex, and to pretend hardwiring in the places where actually plastic, like desires and delights.

49:24 Long before anybody's talking about neuroplasticity, we got John Owen here, and he's talking about, what do you call it? Affectional plasticity. Change your heart. Mold your heart. Shape your heart. Your desires and delights are not hardwired. They're pliable. You can reshape them. and recondition them. You can retrain them. You may be unable to simply turn them with full effect in the moment to make yourself feel something, but you can reshape them over time. Oh, can you? Your desires, good and bad, are not simple givens. Stretched out over time, as the composite of countless decisions, they are wonderfully and hauntingly chosen, not givens. I realize there will be all sorts of responses in this room to Owen's pre-modern teaching.

50:28 Some of us may be thinking, well, duh. Love the Puritans. I'm shaped by the Bible. How else would I survive in ministry without communing with God like this through meditation and prayer. Others, I grant, might be totally blown away by this. You read quickly. You pray your lists. You move on with a busy ministry day. So if you're among the number that this lands on heavily, and you feel like this is impossible. I know my sluggish soul. I can't direct my heart. I can't just get my soul happy in God. then Owen offers you this hope. It's from Owen. He says constancy in this duty will give ability for it. Those who conscientiously abide in its performance shall increase in light, in wisdom, and experience until they are able to manage it with great success.

51:33 Isn't that crazy to use the word manage? you can grow in your ability to manage your heart turn it get it going not just jump start it in an instant but get it going in the right direction as keller comments this in the prayer book we listen study think reflect and ponder the scriptures until there is an answering response in our souls which leads us into prayer keller says meditation before prayer consists of thinking then inclining and finally either enjoying the presence or admitting the absence and asking for his mercy and help. Meditation is thinking a truth out and then thinking a truth in until its ideas become big and sweet, moving and affecting, and until the reality of God is sensed upon the heart.

52:34 We get back there to sense. We're going after sense. We're going after food. We're going after a meal. We want to be nourished. Final question there to finish with then. What about Jesus? How does this relate to him? Many ways to relate to him. For Christians, the final focus of our meditation is personal.

52:59 It is both perfectly human and fully divine in the person of Jesus. And not only is he the final focus of our meditation, but he's also our supreme example. of meditation. Have you ever considered how Jesus knew scripture so well? Andy quoted earlier, Jesus being tempted in the wilderness, it is written, it is written, it is written. And in Jesus' life and ministry, it is written didn't stop in the wilderness. Like check it all the way through the gospels. It is striking how often you think it is written, it is written, it is written. Jesus knew scripture deeply and applied it deeply in his teaching as God himself among us. He didn't have his own copy in the first century of the Bible. If Jesus isn't simply drawing upon his divinity to quote texts and put the use to concepts that his human mind had never learned, how is it that Jesus knew scripture so well?

54:04 Let me close with these words from one other living person. This is Sinclair Ferguson. He gets in here with Tim Keller with those old guys. This is from his Spirit of Christ chapter in his Holy Spirit book. He addresses our question. How is it that Jesus knew scripture so well? He says, Jesus' intimate acquaintance with scripture did not come magically from heaven during the period of his public ministry, it was grounded, no doubt, on his early education, but nourished. There's our word. We've said that word a lot today. Nourished by long years of personal meditation. Later in his public ministry, it becomes evident that when he was intimately familiar with its contents, and also possessed in his human nature a knowledge of God by the Spirit, which lent freshness, authority, and a sense of reality to his teaching. So I'll end on the teaching note. That's what I want, brothers, and what I want for you and your ministries, freshness, authority, and a sense of reality in your teaching that would come not just from coming to the Bible to read and study, but it would come from coming to obtain food for your soul.

55:34 Not just a day of it, a couple days of it, a week of it, over the long haul. Long years of meditation through unhurried, hedonistic approach to God's word and communion with him in prayer. Let me pray for us. Father in heaven, Amen. it is far easier to talk about it in a moment than to persist on a morning of tiredness, on a morning where the heart needs a lot of jump-starting to feel the way it should feel in hearing from you and your word, in pondering what you're saying by your spirit through your word, in considering it, in applying it to our hearts. So Father, we need help. we want to follow Jesus' example we do so rejoicing as we talked about earlier on that fixed unchangeable foundation of union with him by your spirit and father we don't want to give up easy on the threatened reality of our communion with you in the risen Christ through your word and so would you give us holy persistence would you give us a holy pliability to reshape our hearts to respond aright to the things they should respond to, to delight in what is delightful, to enjoy what's supremely enjoyable.

56:57 Father, we want to be reshaped. We want to be fed. We want to be conditioned, not by the world, and it's droning on and on. We want to be conditioned by your word. And we thank you that you've given us your spirit, who loves to do this kind of reshaping in our souls. So would you do it, Father? And in the process, secondarily, would you make us good feeders, hopeful men, those who would serve well because we have sat, we have seen, we have listened, we have enjoyed. In Jesus' name we pray.