Christian Meditation is a quiet time for you to re-integrate and re-calibrate your mind with your body. And re-integrate and re-calibrate your mind and body with God‘s presence with you and in you. Remember the quote from the apostle Paul in Acts 17:28 – In him you live and move and have your being.
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This is a time set aside to experience God in a way that reintegrates your mind, heart, and body connection and replaces stress and anxiety and worry and insecurity with the peace and joy and assurance of God’s love and promises for you in Christ.
We’re carving out a quiet time to be alone with God. Using meditation to reintegrate and recalibrate your mind and heart AND your body with the vertical reality of God’s presence with YOU, and God’s promises for YOU. Our body is an important part of who we are. And it is a common place where we store our stress and anxiety and insecurity. In Psalm 38 David talks about how being out of sync with God affected his body.
Psalms 38:3-10 (NIV)
3 Because of your wrath there is no health in my body;
there is no soundness in my bones because of my sin.
4 My guilt has overwhelmed me
like a burden too heavy to bear.
5 My wounds fester and are loathsome
because of my sinful folly.
6 I am bowed down and brought very low;
all day long I go about mourning.
7 My back is filled with searing pain;
there is no health in my body.
8 I am feeble and utterly crushed;
I groan in anguish of heart. (Stress, anxiety)
…
10 My heart pounds, my strength fails me;
even the light has gone from my eyes.
Sin is when we live out of sync with the reality of who God is and the world that he has made and his purpose for our lives in it.
God‘s wrath is when he lets us experience the consequences of that that are real and painful. In this case the consequences show up in David’s body.
Guilt is the torment of our conscience that it feels the weight of our accountability and responsibility for that.
Our body is just as much a part of our soul as our spirit is. It is constantly integrated with our relationship with God. For better or for worse. In David’s case here it is for the worse and he is using meditation to become aware and re-submit himself to God.
Psalms 38:18 NIV
I confess my iniquity;
I am troubled by my sin.
Psalms 38:21-22 ESV
O my God, be not far from me!
Make haste to help me,
O Lord, my salvation!
Meditation is a powerful way to focus on feeling your whole self — including your body — offered before YHWH as your God. Using your biblically guided imagination to feel God’s presence in and with you right now. And you are offering your whole self to him in submission. You may notice thoughts trying to sneak in saying you don’t really mean it. Just ignore that. You mean it right now. And even if you have a conflicted heart like we all do, you mean it enough to say it.
So say it quietly now…
I offer my whole self to you, my God. My whole body is yours. Fill me with your Holy Spirit. Every cell in my body.
Nothing is ever 100% in this Genesis 3 world and in your Genesis 3 body. But God’s Spirit is in you. And each time you can come before him in meditation and offer your whole self — your whole body — to him, that will re-wire your brain just a little bit more to make this a greater, deeper reality in your life.
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This podcast is a ministry of The Crossing, a church in Columbia, Missouri, a college town where the flagship campus of the University of Missouri is located.