A Meditation on Feeling God’s Goodness and Steadfast Love In Your Body from Psalm 118:1

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.

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This is a time for you to meditate. To be quiet — free from all the noise and digital distractions in your life. This is a time for you to be alone. This is a quiet time to re-integrate your body with the rest of your soul, and re-calibrate your body and soul with God’s presence. This is an ancient discipline. A time to be intentional with your mind’s focus so that you can find a moment of rest. Of quiet. Of calm. Renewal. 

Christian Meditation is an ancient practice God’s people have been doing for thousands of years.

A biblical synonym for contemplate is to meditate. Biblical meditation is a focused imagination that “contemplates the LORD’s glory,” and brings transformation by recalibrating your whole self, including your body, with God’s Spirit. It’s a daily discipline that’s part of what Romans 12:2 refers to as being transformed by the renewing of your mind.

2 Corinthians 3:18 (NIV)

When you think of God’s glory, what do you think of? The night sky? Photos of the universe? A mountain range of some kind? A sunset over the ocean? Or maybe you think of God being God forever.

Often when the biblical authors thought of God’s glory, they thought of his trustworthiness. That his glory and his trustworthiness went hand-in-hand.

Psalm 118:1 ESV

The Hebrew word translated as thanks could just as easily be translated with the word praise. That’s what the Hebrew word meant. To praise God’s glory is to recognize his complete goodness and his steadfast love that is forever.

Jesus quoted from this Psalm at least twice on two different occasions. He believed it was words given to us by God’s Spirit. No doubt Jesus meditated often on this first verse. It’s the basis for so much of his teaching about trusting in the love and goodness of God as your intimately present Father.

Jesus tied God’s glory and love directly together in his prayer to God the night before he was crucified.

John 17:24 NIV

So to contemplate the LORD’s glory is to contemplate his goodness and his unique, steadfast love for YOU.

Psalm 118:1 ESV

This is one of the most often repeated phrases in the OT.

2 Chronicles 5:13–14 NIV

This praise of YAHWEH — he is good; his love endures forever — is directly tied to the glory of the LORD filled the temple of God. 

It’s an image of how when we are trusting in God’s presence and his goodness and his steadfast love for us, feeling that trust in the moment, then there is no room in that same moment for anxiety and tension and insecurity and self-protective reflexes and anger at the same time. One will replace the other.

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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.