A Meditation on the Apostle John’s Poetic Picture of the Love of God in 1 John 4:7-16

The purpose of 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. So this is not a podcast where you can multitask while you listen. I’m not trying to give you new information or things to consider like other podcasts. I love those kinds of podcasts. But in this podcast I’m wanting to give you an experience. I want you to learn to reintegrate your body with your mind’s awareness so that you can notice the “red flag” when you feel tension or anxiety in your body. It’s a red flag that you’re experiencing a vertical disconnect with God. And I want you to experience what a vertical connection feels like through envisioning the unseen reality of God’s presence in this moment and his presence in your body by his Holy Spirit.

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Psalm 138:8

“Your steadfast love, O LORD, endures forever.“

1 John 4:7-16 (NIV)

7 Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. 10 This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. [see Rom 5:8 and 2 Cor 5:21] 11 Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us. 13 This is how we know that we live in him and he in us: He has given us of his Spirit. 14 And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. 15 If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in them and they in God. 16 And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them. 

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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.