What Are You Thinking? A Biblical Guide to Christian Meditation

God has given mankind an amazing gift in the human mind. It stores memories, learns habits, processes information, and allows us to perform countless daily tasks with little conscious effort. All of this reminds us that the mind is a remarkable gift from the Lord—and therefore something we should learn to use for the Lord.

The Need for Christian Meditation

Christians must seek to be good stewards of the mind that God has provided to us in creation and renewed for us through salvation. To put it another way, mature Christianity requires careful, biblical, and deep thinking (Ps 119:97-99; Rom 8:5; 12:2; Col 3:2). In order to faithfully make use of the mind that God has given to us, it is important for us to recover the lost discipline of biblical meditation. To be clear, meditation is not referring to a mystical and mind-emptying behavior; biblical meditation is the exact opposite. Instead, it involves thinking deeply and concentrating our thoughts on the implications of God’s truth in our lives. Christian meditation is the disciplined practice of filling the mind with God's truth and deliberately considering its implications for our lives. Biblical meditation does not empty the mind, it fills and directs the mind with God's truth.

Biblical meditation requires self-control of your mind in order to thoroughly consider a specific thought. Consider, for instance, the words of the psalmist in Psalm 119:97-99:



“Oh how I love your law! It is my meditation all the day. Your commandment makes me wiser than my enemies, for it is ever with me. I have more understanding than all my teachers, for your testimonies are my meditation.” (Psalm 119:97–99)

What the psalmist is talking about in these verses requires more than just studying scripture; it requires prolonged, concentrated, and intentional thinking about God's word. The result of this kind of meditation, in the words of the psalmist, is understanding. What does this understanding include?

• Meditation leads to an understanding of what the Bible means;

• meditation leads to an understanding of how the truth of the Bible impacts your life specifically;

• meditation leads to an understanding of how to clearly communicate the truth of the Bible to others.

More could certainly be said about all the benefits that come from biblical meditation, and yet, our generation is not very good at thinking deeply about important subjects. Our emotionally charged culture conditions us to be authentic about how we feel, not to reason through issues. Our digital world makes it possible for us to move on to new things or distract ourselves without thinking deeply. Our own sin nature tempts us to avoid hard truths and allow ourselves to become captivated by worthless things.

When was the last time you just sat down with your own thoughts and thought deeply about an issue before God? When was the last time you did not have a device pumping audio into your ears and you could just think?

We need to make sure that we are doing a thorough job of controlling and cultivating a thought life that is honoring to God because believers who cultivate the discipline of Christian meditation will grow in their understanding of God, His Word, and His world.

The Content of Christian Meditation

In Philippians 4:8, Paul not only commands his readers to practice Christian meditation ("think about these things"), he also provides an exemplary list of the kinds of things that we should meditate on:

“Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things." (Philippians 4:8, ESV)

This list is a contrast with the earthly things that enemies of the gospel constantly are thinking about (cf., Phil 3:18-19). It is a summary of the kinds of things that should occupy our thoughts, it’s not necessarily comprehensive. The virtues that Paul lists in this verse are not the only things that we should ever be thinking about, but they do represents categories that are worthy of meditation by the Christian. Specifically, Paul provides us with 8 categories that should guide our thinking.

First, we must meditate on what is true… We are a people who have been saved by the truth, and our minds should be occupied with what we know to be true. This certainly means that we must be careful with unprofitable, unfalsifiable, unactionable theories that may or may not be true (Tit 3:9). We also need to be careful of the “what ifs” (what if something bad happens, what if this does not go well, what if I don't get what I want) because even if they could be true, they are not presently true. Rather than thinking about what is not true or may not be true, we should be meditating on the objective truth of Scripture and its implications for life (Ps 1:1-2). Truth will not penetrate the depths of your heart until you meditate on the depth of the truth.

Second, we must meditate on what is honorable... We can easily spend so much time on trite, momentary, and reactionary thoughts that we don’t think thoroughly about anything. Just as Jesus warned that Pharisees ignored weighty matters of law in order to focus on their own regulations, many today are ignoring the weightier matters of life for their own vain pursuits. We live in a world that glorifies silly, sensational, and sarcastic things, when what we need is serious, sober-minded, sensible thinkers. For instance, over the last couple of decades, our country has started looking to comedians as the most influential cultural and political commentators. At least part of the reason for this is a wholesale loss of dignified thinking. As Christians, we should occupy our minds with things that are weighty, things that have gravity, things that will matter now and will impact eternity.

Third, we must meditate on what is just... Our mind should be most commonly preoccupied with those subjects that accord with God’s righteousness and treat others in a fair and honest way. This includes when we are in the midst of conflict and are most likely to lose objectivity and think unfairly about others. In the moments of our own meditation, we need to make sure the thoughts that we have, especially about other people, are righteous before God and just and fair towards others.

Fourth, we must meditate on what is pure... We should think about things that are morally pure, holy, and devoted to God. To use the old English word, we should be chaste in our thoughts (1 Tim 5:22). Remember, you're responsible to God for your thoughts just as much as you are for your external actions (Mk 7:20). This is a good time to stop and be reminded that we need to be cleansed from our sinful impurity before God. We have all sinned and fallen short of God’s glory, especially with impure thoughts and sinful actions. Jesus says that to look with a lustful eye is just as much a sin as committing adultery. Left to ourselves, we are all guilty before God, which is why we need a Savior (Heb 9:14).

Fifth, we must meditate on what is lovely... there is so much that God has created that is intended to be engaging for our minds! We need to identify these mind-stimulating blessings and allow them to occupy our thoughts. In this case, beauty is not in the eye of the beholder! True beauty is tied to an innate recognition of what conforms to God’s order. The unregenerate mind (and sometimes the defiled conscience of a believer) thinks it finds beauty in disorderly things, but in reality, they are reveling in rebellion, not thinking about what is lovely. To be clear, I think that there is a lot of freedom and variety in what an individual considers to be lovely. We certainly should not be trying to impose our preferences on one another as if they are a biblical mandate. I think we should be looking for more beauty and order in what God has created and given to us. That being said, there are things that are reprehensible to God that we should NOT be thinking about.

Sixth, we must meditate on what is commendable... This is actually the only place where the word translated “commendable” appears in the NT. It is most likely referring to something that is commendable before God and something good to hear for man. 

This means that you should not allow your mind to be consumed with the bad news of a fallen world. You have to deal with reality, you have to face facts, but you don’t have to mull over the troubles of this world all the time. In fact, you should be mediating on good reports and good news. Of course, the best news that you can think about is the good news of the gospel.

Seventh, we must meditate on what is excellent... In some ways, Paul is summarizing the list up to this point with this description. We should use our minds to focus on things that are excellent and exceptional in character, which should not be hard. There are so many exceptional things in this world, and God has made us to be drawn to them. This is why so many people enjoy consuming information about top-tier athletics, world-class music, and the biographies of truly exceptional historical figures. It is certainly a sign of the degradation of our society that modern-day "influencers" are notable for being relatably unexceptional! Thankfully, there are so many excellent things that are true about who God is and what He has done for us to think about (1 Pt 2:9; 2 Pt 1:3). All this to say, we should be thinking about things that are virtuous and excellent in the sense that they represent the best things about God’s creation and the glories of God’s character. In an age of doomscrolling and cat videos, we can do so much better than the brain rot that has become popular today!

Finally, we must meditate on what is praiseworthy. The "I am not a pessimist, I am a realist" crowd needs to be careful on this one! It’s easy for our minds to fixate on what we can criticize and complain about in the world around us, which is why we need to train our minds to consider those things that we can praise God for. For some, this might feel like an impossible task, but if you have the Holy Spirit, it is not. You may have created some thought habits that are hard to overcome, but the Lord will give you the grace that you need to replace worldly thinking with sanctified thinking.

Your mind is always meditating on something, the question is what are you thinking? Every day, your mind is being shaped by what you read, watch, hear, and consider. Christian meditation is the discipline of deliberately bringing this at activity under the authority of God's Word. The goal isn't simply to think more. It is to think God's thoughts after Him, to understand His truth more deeply, and to allow that truth to shape the way we live.