15 I will meditate on Your precepts,
And contemplate Your ways.
“Go, sell the oil”
With those four simple words from 2 Kings 4:7, Jesus spoke to me and revealed to me my calling as a psalmist, impregnated me with Divine purpose, and sent me on the adventure of a lifetime. It is one of the most memorable moments of my entire life: Monday, November 3, 2008.
Prior to that, I had set several psalms to music, including this great Psalm 119 - but I considered it a hobby, and didn’t have any real drive beside memorizing Scripture for myself. And so after this Encounter with the Lord, I ventured out - playing anywhere anyone would listen: churches, coffee shops, parks…
After about 4 years, I felt stuck. I had just moved to a new city, I didn’t have any connections there, and I had no idea how to go about “selling the oil.” This thought kept plaguing me: “How can I sell the oil, if I haven’t recorded a CD?” I had no resources to record an album, so I felt like I was in a catch-22 situation.
This is where meditation came in. It was through meditation that I received an answer that got me unstuck. Some religions teach that meditation is the practice of emptying the mind - but this is not what the Bible teaches. The psalmist here gives us the direction we are to set our minds, our focus, our meditation: the Word of God.
I had been reading the account of David and Goliath, in 1 Samuel 17, and two phrases captivated my imagination:
David shouted at Goliath:
You know the story, David kills him with the slingshot...
So David prevailed over the Philistine with a sling and a stone, and struck the Philistine and killed him. But there was no sword in the hand of David. Therefore David ran and stood over the Philistine, took his sword and drew it out of its sheath and killed him, and cut off his head with it. 1 Sam 17:50-51
The scene kept playing over and over in my mind: David standing there with nothing but a staff, a slingshot, and some rocks… and yet somehow he says, “I will cut off your head!” It is so vivid in my mind, it’s as if I’ve seen a movie.
Actually, it’s as if I was there.
I meditated on this scene over and over and over… when suddenly I started to see myself standing there in front of that giant with no sword, but able to declare that I would cut off his head. In that moment, faith rose up in me, and I literally stood up and shouted, “I will sell the oil - even though there is no CD in my hand!”
And just like David, I did.
The Word of God is powerful. It will take a life like mine was - aimless and hopeless - and birth passion and destiny in it, simply by reading it, studying it, and meditating on it. There is no problem in life that the Word of God does not have an answer for!
Thank you Lord, for your marvelous Word!
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
No comments:
Post a Comment