A Meditation on Four 1-Verse Prayers in Psalms

This is Christian Meditation for A Bigger Life – a time for you to relax your body, refocus your mind, and re-narrate your life. I’m Dave Cover. I want to help you with Christian meditation where you can break through all the distractions and experience God’s presence through biblically guided imagination. 

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Psalm 16:2 ESV

I say to the LORD, “You are my Lord; I have no good apart from you.”

Psalms 31:14-16 (NIV)

“But I trust in you, LORD; I say, ‘You are my God.’ My times are in your hands.”

Psalms 140:6 (NIV) 

I say to the LORD, “You are my God.”

Hear, LORD, my cry for mercy.

“Have mercy on me, a sinner” is what the tax collector says in Jesus’s parable in Luke 18:13. And Jesus says he’s the one who went away justified before God (Luke 18:14).

Psalm 142:5 NIV

I cry to you, LORD; I say, “You are my refuge, my portion in the land of the living.”

“LORD” in all uppercase letters in our English Bibles indicates that in Hebrew God’s name, Yahweh, is used (for example, Exodus 3:14-15; Isaiah 42:8). Yahweh is the ancient Hebrew verb form for “HE IS.” God’s name, Yahweh, is used more than any other term for God in the Hebrew scriptures. More than “God” is used. 

When we survey the various truths associated with God’s name, HE IS, in the Hebrew scriptures (what we call the Old Testament), four important aspects of God are emphasized. 

1. HE IS the Creator and Sustainer of ALL that exists, including this entire universe (Ps 33:6; Isa 40:26; Isa 42:5; Isa 44:24). 
2. HE IS the Giver and Sustainer of ALL life everywhere always (Num 27:16; Job 12:10; Acts 17:25).
3. HE IS eternal and forever God (Isa 40:28; Isa 57:15)
4. HE IS ALWAYS infinitely 100% present with you and in control of everything in your life at every moment (Ps 31:14-15; without being any less present or focused anywhere else in the universe, because HE IS infinite). See Jesus’s words in Matthew 10:29-31.

We often meditate on God‘s name in this podcast because it is the key to experiencing God as HE IS. God’s name is filled with wonder and mystery and transcendence for us to meditate on using our biblically guided imagination.

So imagine – envision – this reality. He is the Source of all being; he is the Giver of your life and sustains your life at every moment; he is the one who “inhabits eternity” (Isaiah 57:15), and so has the eternal perspective in all your life’s circumstances; and he is infinitely, intimately, 100% present with you at every moment and in control of every circumstance in your life.

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Our audio engineer is Matthew Matlack.

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.