Meditation - How HWLW and DICE Changed My Life

Photo by Riho Kroll on Unsplash

I was living in Vienna, with OM, and smuggling Bibles into Communist Europe at the time. 22 years old and learning lots about God and the Bible, (like PTMTO).

I heard about HWLW, and immediately thought I would give it a shot that night. In prayer, having cleared aside the thoughts that would distract me, I focussed on a Bible verse that I had read that morning. I read it out loud a couple of times and had it memorised. I switched off the light and began to roll the D.I.C.E.

OK. Now you’re confused. You thought this was about bedtime habits of meditation and I’m now rolling dice?!

Well, it was either Jim Downing (Navigators) or Campbell McAlpine - both of whom, especially the latter author, have written brilliant books on biblical meditation, which you can buy cheaply on Amazon. Not sure whom it was, but I believe it was Jim who talked about how to use the acronym D.I.C.E. for meditating on a Bible verse.

So if you want to do that tonight. Grab a short verse you know well. Maybe Psalm xxiii 1. Then you roll the DICE.

Define every word in the verse. (e.g. What does LORD mean, what does Shepherd mean, etc?)
Inquiry words. Make up questions for the verse, using Who, Why, What, Where, When, Which, How? (e.g. How is the LORD my Shepherd?, etc.)
Content (or Context). Sometimes when we are looking so closely or deeply at a verse we cannot see the forest for the trees, so you need to pull back a bit and ask, “What does this verse actually say or teach me?”
Emphasis. This is my favourite. Go through the verse and emphasise each word one at a time, each time you repeat the verse, and dwell on it and think about what is coming out of the verse as you do this. (e.g. The LORD is my Shepherd …, The LORD is my Shepherd …, The LORD is my Shepherd …, etc.). See how fun that is and how the meaning pops each time?!?

When I did this on that night in Vienna for the first time, I fell asleep very quickly - more about that later, but maybe the devil prefers you asleep when you start meditating on God’s Word than have you lie awake worrying about stuff (now you have figured out how to defeat worry - see this post, if you missed it!)!!

The very next morning after my very first meditation on a Bible verse, I woke up fresh, after a deep, peaceful sleep and immediately had a thought buzzing round my head from the verse from the night before. The cool part? I had not thought of this the night before! It literally came to me in the night!

This night revelation has happened to me many, many times over the years, and it is nothing short of brilliant and exciting when it happens.

Now you have ONE way of several I will be sharing about how to meditate (practically speaking), so why don’t you memorise what D.I.C.E. means and practise it tonight and future nights for a while on your favourite verses. Just one verse each night. Start with a fairly short one like the first verse of Psalm 23. I have rolled the D.I.C.E. many times over the past thirty years and have been super blessed using it. Hope it will bless you too.

If you do roll the DICE, please do share your stories or testimonies in the Comments section below.

Next time, as well as sharing another method for meditation, we’ll look at a Bible verse about what’s going on and why it happens that you sometimes get those night thoughts about verses that you didn’t actually think (!), but you had fresh in your mind in the morning (like my Vienna experience above). More soon.