What can we learn from the Puritans?

Joel Beeke explains in this video that we can learn much from observing the daily life of the Puritans. He explains how the Puritans would set aside a period each day to first read Scripture, memorize a passage, meditate on everything they knew about that passage, spend time in prayer, make holy resolutions regarding changing certain things in their life, record things in their diary, sing a psalm, finish meditating, and conclude by praying and giving thanks. It is essentially a prolonged and more focused personal devotion period.

They also meditated throughout the day. Notably, the four most common subjects that the Puritans would meditate on involve: Heaven, hell, death, and the judgment day. In short, they were eternally focused. Today, we have so much technology that constantly occupies us that it is rare for someone to even meditate for even five minutes about Heaven. Instead, we occupy much of day thinking about anything but eternity. Like the Puritans, we ought to meditate on our eternal destiny - its joys and potential sorrows if we do not live a life of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Joshua 1:8 (NKJV) – “This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate in it day and night, that you may observe to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success.”

The Puritans got it right, so they spent at least a period of time every day in what they call deliberate meditation, where they would deliberately get alone with God. They go through like an eight-step process, where they would first read scripture, they'd memorize something, they'd then meditate on everything they knew about it. They go to prayer. They then make holy resolutions, how to change in their life. They record things in their diary.

And then they sing a song before they finish their meditation and pray and give thanks. That type of thing is very foreign to us. In a way, it's like a prolonged, but more focused personal devotion period. But they also practice what they called occasional meditation. And what that was was during the day, I mean, if I'm sitting here and I might look over there at a door and I might start thinking about Christ as the door and everything I know about doorways and entrances, entrances into heaven and to hell.

And I just might, in the two minutes I have, I just might meditate on how a door is symbolic of a lot of spiritual truths, a gateway into heaven, a gateway into regeneration, and just feed my soul with good thoughts. That's very foreign to us as well. But the Puritans said when you're close to God, these spontaneous occasional meditations will naturally spring up in you. And you should feed your mind with them through your deliberate meditation. So you just kind of meditate your way through the day at appropriate times.

So they train their people to meditate. And today, we've got such a deluge of the digital era that we live in that I scarcely think most people can meditate three minutes. When's the last time that you sat down in a chair and meditated for five minutes on heaven, your future home? You probably meditated more on where you're going to go on your next vacation than you did where you're going to go for all eternity. It's crazy.

And so what I did was I went through all 21 of those books and I recorded each author, all the subjects they said we should meditate about, and I've made a chart of them. And I discovered that the four most common subjects that the Puritans said we should meditate on are really all in the area of eschatology. Heaven, hell, death, and the judgment day. Those are the four most common subjects. So they were really eternity oriented.

They were thinking this life is a preparation for the life to come and we need to meditate on our eternal destiny, its joys and its potential sorrows if we don't live a life of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.