When to Meditate
As you study the Bible, take time to visualize the beginning and the end. As you're reading, for instance, the story of Abraham, picture yourself and how you would do if God told you to get up and get out of your home and your land, and away from your family and all you've ever known, and go out into a distant place where you have heard there are wild men living. Meditate by living the story in your mind and your heart. Visualize and think about it, turn it over in your mind, and then apply it to your life today.
Another good time to meditate is in prayer, one of the main times I prefer the best. Ask God to help you to think things through as you are there on your knees, and talk over with Him in prayer and in meditation the details and the phases and facets of a particular situation.
Another time to meditate would be walking in the woods or out under the stars. Another is when you wake up and you can't get back to sleep. Notice in Psalm 63 King David's example: "O God, thou art my God; early will I seek thee: my soul thirsts for thee, my flesh longeth for thee in a dry and thirsty land, where no water is [a world cut off from knowledge of our Creator]; To see thy power and thy glory, so as I have seen thee in the sanctuary. Because thy loving‑kindness is better than life, my lips shall praise thee . . . when I remember thee upon my bed. and meditate on thee in the night watches" (verses 1-3, 6).
Use your time in that way to meditate, and meditate at different times through the day. Learn to do that. I would also suggest you set aside a particular time each weekend, preferably on God's Sabbath day, because this is part of its purpose, on Friday evening or Sabbath morning, or whenever, when you can meditate, so it becomes habit and you can think through the past week: How far have I come the past week? How have I grown? Have I prayed as I should? Studied? What mistakes have I made? Where did I fall short? How can I do better next week? The Sabbath is a wonderful day to have a weekly reexamination and reorientation.
Five Ways to Meditate
1) Think through all the applications of God's law and teachings as they can apply to your life and to today's society. Remember Deuteronomy 6, an instruction to "think on these things when you rise up, when you sit down, when you're in bed, when you walk by the way."
2) When things go wrong, ponder on what laws or principles of God were violated by you and/or others, but start with yourself. You know that whatever we ask of Him we receive of Him because we keep His commandments and do those things or follow those ways that are pleasing in His sight (I John 3:22; 5:14) not just the direct Ten Commandments, but the whole ways of God, involving the kind of food we eat, the way we dance, the kind of music we listen to, the kind of companionships we keep, etc., etc. In all those things we ought to meditate on and practice the ways of God.
3) As you read of the examples of Abraham, of Isaac, of Jacob, of Moses, of David, of Christ and so on; and as you read of Abraham being told to sacrifice his own son as a test from God, or to leave Ur of the Chaldeans; or of Israel being told to go out into a desert place, not knowing how they were going to eat, and how God was going to take care of them; or as you read of David's determination to remain loyal to Saul, even under difficult circumstances; think through, in your mind, how you yourself can learn and apply these lessons to your life. Think what you would do — and then what you ought to do through the mind of Christ, and then plan steps to improve your future performance. As you meditate, literally plan steps right then to improve your future performance.
4) When a big decision looms, or long-range planning is needed in your life, meditate. A lot of young people need this in planning ahead for the future, their career, their marriage, everything. Think through carefully the spiritual pros and cons in the light of the Bible. Don't act without sufficient reason, just on the basis of an untried thought or idea, or an impulse, without really thinking.
5) Weekly, perhaps on the weekly Sabbath best of all, take spiritual inventory of the growth that you've experienced. How you've used your time, the problems you've experienced, why you've had the problems, how to overcome them, how to do better next week.
Finally, II Corinthians 13:5. "Examine yourselves [that is, meditate] whether ye be in the faith; prove [test] your own selves. Know ye not your own selves, how that Jesus Christ is in you, except ye be reprobates?"
Make meditation a major and a vital part of your life.