Dave Cover
01-26-2023
A Meditation on Surrendering Your Body to God in Worship
Summary:
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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The Bible often uses synonyms and associated words with overlapping meaning to describe the “parts” of personhood. Heart. Mind. Body. Spirit. Strength. Soul.
“Heart” and “Spirit” are often synonymous parallel in biblical poetry.
In other places various aspects are listed separately to give the idea of our entire self.
Quoting Deuteronomy 6:4-5, Jesus says…
But that doesn’t really mean these are completely separate “parts” of who you are. They eacj just emphasize a certain aspect of our personhood. But the clear idea is to “Love God with your whole being.”
But it is interesting that when the apostle Paul says to “offer your bodies,” he’s repeating the same thing as he said earlier in chapter 6…
— “offer yourselves to God…every part of yourself to him.”
This is another example of how the Bible uses the word YOU or YOURSELVES and YOUR BODY/BODIES interchangeably.
In other words YOU are your body. You are more than your body, but not less. Your body is YOU just as much as your heart and mind and spirit and soul is YOU. Your body will be “brought from death to life,” and so in some sense that’s already true of YOU now. “The redemption of your body is the hope for which you are saved” (Paul says in Rom. 8:23-24).
So he says the way you truly worship God NOW is by thinking of it, at least in part, as “offering your body” as your total sacrifice to him. Of course your body is already God’s. So you’re not actually giving your body to God. But “offering” your body in “worship” is a mindset of submission and surrender. And mentally imagining that — feeling that image — into your body.
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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.