A Christian Meditation with Psalm 63:1

In biblical meditation, you’re intentionally focusing your inner voice and thoughts on God’s presence and promises in your life. When you try to meditate, you’ll discover that this is hard to do. Your mind will wander into other imaginations. Other stories. This is normal. Don’t get frustrated with yourself when it happens. Just pick right back up with where we are in our meditation. By listening to this podcast episode, you’re carving out a quiet time to be alone with God. Using meditation to recalibrate your mind and heart and even your body with the vertical reality of God’s presence and God’s promises. Biblically guided meditation is using your imagination to experience God’s presence and promises to you in a way that replaces stress and anxiety and worry and even shame with God’s peace and joy and assurances. This is something God’s people have been doing for thousands of years. The apostle Paul writes in… 2 Corinthians 3:18 (NIV) And we all, who … contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit. A synonym for contemplate is to meditate. Biblical meditation is a focused imagination that “contemplates the LORD’s glory” (2 Cor 3:18), and brings transformation by recalibrating your whole self, including your body, with God’s Spirit. One way to experience this kind of transformation is by replacing built-up tension and stress and anxiety in your mind and body with a rejuvenating and relaxing experience of God’s presence and promises. Let’s take the time to do that now. (But first, if your podcast app is set to skip silent sections, disable that now.) A common image for God in the Bible is a clear, abundant stream of life-giving water. Like when God calls himself “the fountain of living waters” in Jeremiah 2:13. That’s a picture for you to set your imagination on in mediation so you see God and experience God in a deeper way. So David meditates on this image in… Psalms 63:1 (ESV) O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water. “My soul thirsts…my flesh faints for you” — in the OT your soul is your whole being, including your body. Even your body thirsts for God — “the fountain of living waters.” In David’s meditation, he is presenting his entire self — spirit, mind, and body – to God as HIS God and the only satisfaction for his thirst. Let’s meditate using this same biblical image…picture this! Let’s meditate on Jeremiah’s meditation in… Jeremiah 17:13-14 (ESV) …the LORD [is] the fountain of living water. Heal me, O LORD, and I shall be healed; save me, and I shall be saved… This is a meditation on an image with a promise. Picture this. A “fountain of living water” that brings life and complete healing. Washing and bathing in God as your healing waters. Drinking from him as a pure flowing fountain. This is the I AM. Jesus uses this image of the I AM as a picture of who he is… John 4:14 NIV …Whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life. Say quietly to yourself… “Because I have Jesus, the forever God is my God forever!” 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 https://twitter.com/davecover (@davecover) Follow A Bigger Life on Twitter https://twitter.com/abiggerlifepod (@ABiggerLifePod) This podcast is a ministry of https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/ (The Crossing), a church in Columbia, Missouri, a college town where the flagship campus of the University of Missouri is located.