Meditation is important when it comes to prayer and Word intake.
"This is one of the most compelling concepts on prayer I've ever learned. Meditation is the missing link between Bible intake and prayer. the two are often disjoined when they should be united. We read the bible,
close it, and then try to shift gears into prayer. But many times it
seems as if the gears between the two won't mesh. In fact, after some
forward progress in our time in the Word, shifting to prayer sometimes
is like suddenly moving back into neutral or even reverse. Instead
there should be a smooth, almost unnoticeable transition between
Scripture input and prayer output so that we move even closer to God in
those moments. This happens when there is the link of meditation in
between. The process works like this: After the input of a passage of
Scripture, meditation allows us to take what God has said to us and
think deeply on it, digest it, and then speak to God about it in
meaningful prayer. As a result, we pray about what we've encountered in
the Bible, now personalized through
meditation. And not only do we have something substantial to say in
prayer, we don't jerk and lurch along because we already have some
spiritual momentum. Meditation is a middle sort of duty between the word
and prayer. The word feeds meditation and meditation feeds prayer. These duties must always go hand in hand; meditation must follow hearing
and precede prayer. To hear and not to meditate is unfruitful. We may
hear and hear, but it is like putting a thing into a bag with holes...
It is rashness to pray and not to meditate. What we take in by the word
we digest by meditation and let out by prayer." ----Spiritual
Disciplines for the Christian Life
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