My goal in this podcast — Christian Meditation for A Bigger Life — is to help 21st-century Christians in the always distracted digital age — to connect with God with your whole being — including your body — and to wire into your brain the reality of that embodied connection in each moment. And I think most of us as Christians are often living unconsciously anxious and tense lives with a kind of disconnection between our body and mind, and disconnection between our body and God’s Spirit. Where our “Christian faith” has become almost exclusively about certain beliefs rather than an embodied experience with God’s Spirit who is always 100% present with us and in us in the NOW.
If your podcast app is set to skip the silent sections, disable that in your podcast app for this podcast.
Psalm 16:8-9 NIV
Meditation — a very broad word, but basically it’s focused, intentional thought. And it involves using your imagination to better see/envision reality. Sometimes it’s zooming out. Sometimes zooming in. Almost always in some way it’s talking to yourself.
Christian Meditation uses your biblically guided imagination to experience God in your whole being — your entire soul — which biblically includes your body — in a way that replaces built-up tension and stress and anxiety with a rejuvenating and renewing experience of God’s Spirit with you and in you.
This kind of Christian Meditation is an ancient practice God’s people have been doing for thousands of years. Often a biblical synonym for meditate is to contemplate.
2 Corinthians 3:18 (NIV)
Biblical meditation is a focused imagination that in some way “contemplates the LORD’s glory,” and brings transformation by recalibrating your whole self, including your body, with God’s Spirit. It’s a repeated discipline that’s part of what Romans 12:2 refers to as being transformed by the renewing of your mind.
Biblical meditation is a discipline that rewires your brain circuitry more and more in line with the spiritual realities you can’t see, but that the Bible describes through imagery. Christian Meditation uses your biblically guided imagination to bring the calm confidence and sense of peace and well-being reflective of a body and mind that is integrated with and calibrated with a trust in God‘s presence, love and care.
When you contemplate/meditate/imagine/envision the reality of God’s glory — his power — his beauty — his love — his mercy and grace — the wisdom of his will for us — that discipline/practice brings transformation into your soul — into your mind and body and spirit — with ever increasing glory. Transformation at work in you by God’s Spirit in you.
We become people whose body and mind and spirit — our disposition — is integrated and calibrated with the character of God and his Spirit in us. We become transformed more and more into a calm confidence in trusting God in every moment. And we become less driven by the common hidden motivators of insecurity and anxiety and self protection and anger, but people who are more and more able to trust in the presence and love and care of God in every moment.
And this affects our bodies more than we realize.
Psalm 38:8-10
Who can you share this podcast with? If you found this episode helpful, consider sharing it on social media or texting it to a friend you think might benefit from it.
Follow Dave Cover on Twitter @davecover
Follow A Bigger Life on Twitter @ABiggerLifePod
Our audio engineer is Diego Huaman.
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.