Christian Meditation for A Bigger Life with Pastor Dave Cover
Christian Meditation can help refocus your mind and recalibrate your body to get the stress, anxiety and anger out of your heart and out of your body. Spend about 23 minutes to "be still" with God as each episode uses a different biblical image to e...
Recent Episodes
A Christian Meditation that God Controls All the Chaos from Matthew 11:25
30:33:00 | 05-24-2022
A Christian Meditation that Your Father Is Lord of Heaven and Earth from Matthew 11:25. This kind of Christian meditation brings the transcendent experience of God into your mind and into your body so that you can replace anxiety, insecurity, stress and tension with the better and truer imagination of God’s infinite and intimate presence and love for YOU.Acts 17:28 says “In him we live and move and have our being.” 1 Corinthians 6:19 says, “…Your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you…” which means that Christ has made your body holy. The apostle Paul says in Galatians 2:20, “Christ lives in me and the life I now live in the body…” The way the resurrected Jesus inhabits our body is by the Holy Spirit.Matthew 11:25 (NIV)He is Lord of heaven and earth. Someone is in charge of the chaos. Your Father is in charge of all the chaos. He has an eternal plan and purpose. “He will cause all things to work together for good for his children” (Rom 8:28-30). “Not even a sparrow will fall to the ground apart from the will of your father in heaven.” “And you’re much more valuable to God than sparrows.“ “He has numbered the very hairs of your head” (Matt 10:29-31). He has “ordained the number of my days before one of them even came to be” (Ps 139:16).The God Jesus taught us and the Bible teaches us is a God who is in complete control of everything. This is why Jesus could confidently and calmly take a nap in a boat in the middle of a storm. And then when the disciples woke him up he simply spoke and calmed the storm and the waves.Remember that anxiety and fear and insecurity and anger block us from seeing God’s presence and his love for us in the moment. And they also block us from seeing God in control of every moment.Evil might be mighty in our world, but it’s not Almighty. Chaos might be mighty right now, but it’s not Almighty. Yahweh — HE IS — is the Almighty. And that’s true for every evil and every chaos in your life right now.Where there is anxiety, tension, insecurity, self protection, clenched muscles – replace it with trust and a calm confidence in this truth. Your father is Lord of heaven and earth. Use your imagination to see this reality right now. Whatever it is you don’t think is under his control, see it now as completely under his control. Use your imagination to become mindfully aware of this reality right now. God’s presence with you — Christ in you by the Holy Spirit. Whatever and wherever it is you you have let anxiety and insecurity and anger take control, see it now as completely under God’s control. And find rest in that truth. Feel your body become more calm and quiet and at rest as you become more and more mindfully aware of this reality using your imagination.Timestamps:Body Meditation 01:18 - 18:03Bible Meditation: Mathew 11:25 18:09 - 28:19Prayer 28:25 - 30:12Who 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 @davecoverFollow A Bigger Life on Twitter @ABiggerLifePodOur 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.
A Christian Meditation on Embracing Your “New Self” in Ephesians 4:22–24
30:28:00 | 05-19-2022
Like so much of the Bible, Ephesians 4:22-24 is highly imaginative language. And it’s primarily giving you an image to imagine regarding your very identity. It’s trying to help you understand some mysterious unseen reality by giving you understandable imagery to imagine as true for you. “Your old self” is some shadowy thing that is corrupt with deceitful desires that we are to actively and mindfully “put off.” It’s no longer the real you. It’s something else that’s always following you.Colossians 3:5 NIVColossians 3:8-10 (NIV)This “earthly nature” — in the context of the rest of the Bible’s larger story — is referring to the thorns and thistles and dust and death of the earth without Eden — without Heaven’s presence on Earth. It’s the same thing as our “old self” that we are called to put off or put to death. It’s always fixated on something “earthly” without God’s presence and love. Something that we think we need in the moment, but we actually don’t need. But when we do not get it, we become angry, anxious, insecure, stressed. This false self that always shadows us gets triggered when threatened, and it blocks our awareness of the security of God’s presence and love in that moment. This is one reason why so many people live in a kind of constant, low-grade anxiety — because they never recognize their “old self” when it triggers in them. Instead of recognizing it and putting it off as a false, shadowy self, they identify with it has the real them and put it on more and get more and more hijacked by its insecurity and fear and self protection and anxiety.Anxiety is a sign that the false self is demanding we cater to its “needs” instead of putting it off and dying to it like the Bible says. Most of our anxiety and tension and self protective relational dysfunctions are generated by this false self. The false self overshadows us from perceiving God’s presence and receiving God’s love in this moment. It keeps us stuck in repeated cycles of worry and insecurity and fear and feeling threatened. Our false self will never bring about true freedom and life.So use this meditation to imagine this reality into your body…Ephesians 4:22–24 ESVThe way we put off the old self and put on the new self is by the renewal of our mind — letting a better, truer imagination empower you with the life-giving desires of your new creation in the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.Our false self hates those words, “righteousness and holiness.” Our shadowy self redefines and reimagines them as rigid and confining and boring. But in reality they are the exact opposite. TRUE righteousness and holiness are God’s splendor and power and beauty and glory and goodness and love and trustworthiness. As Colossians 3:1 said, there’s a sense in which we’ve already died and been raised to this new glory and beauty and righteousness and holiness. We are newly created in Christ — with Christ — to be like God himself! This was always God‘s intention — imagination — for us.So right now, using your imagination, focus on breathing in your new self, and breathing out the old self.Feel this in your body right now. Letting the Holy Spirit breathe his new creation and new life into you. Breathing in the likeness of God. Breathing in true righteousness. Breathing in true holiness. Breathing out decay and corruption. The corrupted thorns and thistles and dust and death of your old self. Breathing out false, shadowy desires that lead to more thorns and thistles and dust and death.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 @davecoverFollow A Bigger Life on Twitter @ABiggerLifePodOur 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.
A Christian Meditation on Living Now As Someone Raised with Christ from Colossians 3:1-4
31:16:00 | 05-17-2022
The Bible’s contrast is never between Heaven and Hell. It’s between Heaven and Earth. That contrast began when Adam and Eve (Hebrew for Human and Life) were banned from Eden (Heaven on Earth meant the fill the Earth), and they were left outside in the thorns and thistles and dust and death of Heaven’s absence from the Earth.Later in the OT, the tabernacle and later the Temple became little embassies of Heaven on Earth. Physical places of God’s presence on Earth. In the NT, God is said to have become flesh and tabernacled among us (John 1:14). Jesus was the very physical embodiment of Heaven on Earth. Later in the NT, the Holy Spirit indwells Jesus’s followers as they/their bodies become Temples of the Holy Spirit — embodied, physical places of Heaven on Earth. This is what YOU are — your body is — as a follower of Jesus!1 Corinthians 6:19–20 ESVColossians 3:1-4 (NIV)Colossians 3:1-2 (NIV)Colossians 3:5 NIVThese are Earth without Heaven desires.Set your hearts… seeing with the eyes of your heart (Eph 1:18) – your imagination. Envision with your imagination so that you can experience this reality in your heart and mind and body. This is always how your life works. Your mind is always imagining certain realities or unrealities – and that imagination is what drives your desires and therefore your decisions in your life. This is how we were created — to be people with powerful imaginations that can actually see unseen realities and then create them or experience them. In Genesis 1, God first imagines and then makes it so. And he created us in his image to be the same way. But sin — Earth without Heaven desires of sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed — hijacks and captures our imagination. This is what creates your anxieties. Stress. Worries. Insecurities. Fears. These imaginations enter and affect your body in real ways.But Christian meditation allows us to recalibrate our lives with the powerful images and imaginations of God's word given to us by his Holy Spirit. By learning to use our biblically guided imagination we can experience unseen realities and actually feel these realities in our bodies and in our lives in a way that shapes our desires and our decisions in powerful ways. Life-changing ways.Galatians 2:20 (NIV)The Bible has these multilayered images for us to imagine so that we can experience transcendent realities now, in this moment. Using your biblically-guided imagination, feel these realities into your body right now: You have been crucified with Christ. You have died and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. You have been raised with Christ. Christ is your life. Christ lives in you — the life you now live in the body. You will appear with Christ in glory when he returns and brings Heaven back to Earth. 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 @davecoverFollow A Bigger Life on Twitter @ABiggerLifePodOur 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.
A Christian Meditation on Christ’s Presence in Me and Love for Me from Galatians 2:20
29:52:00 | 05-12-2022
Today we’re going to meditate on what I think is one of the most important and inspiring and life-giving sentences in the entire Bible.Galatians 2:20 (NIV)This is always how your life works. Your mind is always imagining certain realities or unrealities – and that imagination is what drives your desires and your decisions and your life. This is why the advertising industry appeals to your imagination more than gives you information. This is how we were created — to be people with powerful imaginations that can actually see unseen realities and then create them or experience them. In Genesis 1, God first imagines and then makes it so. And he created us in his image to be the same way. But sin hijacks and captures our imagination. Your anxieties. Stress. Worries. Insecurities. Fears. Christian meditation allows us to recalibrate our lives with the powerful images and imaginations of God's word given to us by his Holy Spirit. By learning to use our biblically guided imagination we can experience unseen realities and actually feel these realities in our bodies and in our lives in a way that shapes our desires and our decisions in powerful ways. Life-changing ways.In Paul, this “I” that has been crucified with Christ is the person of bondage to sin and death. The Genesis 3 person with no future or hope. To be crucified with Christ is to be joined with Christ and taken into his death — the death of Genesis 3 — and brought through the other side of death with him into his resurrection. This is all imagination. But it’s real.I no longer live — The “I” that was separated from God, alone, like Cain a destined wanderer. But now I am no longer alone. No longer on my own. No longer have to justify my existence. That part of my life is over now. Crucified with Christ.Christ lives in me — the one through whom all things were made (John 1: 3), the one who right now is present 100% on the surface of a moon orbiting a planet orbiting a star in a galaxy 13 billion light years away across the universe is now living in me! I am in Christ and Christ is in me.This does not replace “me.” It resurrects me. The source of all existence and the giver of all life — the one from whom “I” come, with all my personality and what makes me “me”, has now forever joined with me again and brought true life to my life. I am now one with my creator! My creator is one with me! I am no longer abandoned, wandering alone in a desert of dust and death and thorns and thistles.Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body – Christ indwells my body! My body is an eternal part of me. Crucified with Christ but now Christ lives in me and I live in Christ and Christ is always within me and with me! The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God – dependence – togetherness – reliance—calm confidence — trust — rest.Why?Who loved me and gave himself for me — for ME! The historical reality of Jesus’s death on the cross is proof of God’s infinite and intimate forever love for ME. Christ is always IN me and WITH me. I can trust in his constant presence and his love for ME.The things that have captured your imagination…are the things you serve.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 @davecoverFollow A Bigger Life on Twitter @ABiggerLifePodOur 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.
A Christian Meditation on Being a New Creation from 2 Corinthians 5:17, 21
32:31:00 | 05-10-2022
One way God‘s people have been experiencing God‘s presence and love for thousands of years is through meditation. Meditation is learning to experience unseen realities using our biblically guided imagination. When we don’t live lives empowered by our biblically guided imagination, our Christian experience gets reduced to merely theological doctrines and moral rules. Of course, true biblical doctrines and moral boundaries are essential for living spiritually healthy lives. But if that’s all our “Christianity” is it will not produce spiritually healthy lives because something very very big is missing. And that kind of Christianity always gives way to more powerful imaginations. But because those other imaginations go against the grain of reality, our lives become fragmented from reality in God’s universe. And the fruits of fragmented, unreal lives appear in our mind/spirit as worry and fear and insecurity and self protection and frustration and anger and resentment. And in our body as stress and tension and anxiety. This is a “Christianity” and life that’s missing the infinite awe and intimate presence and connection with Christ. The I Am. It then becomes little more than an ideology with a set of ethics. Our faith gets reduced to beliefs and commands.Biblically guided meditation gives us a better imagination. The reality of the bigger story of all that God is for you in Jesus is a far better imagination. Explosive with wonder and beauty and glory and joy and life promise. Infinite awe and intimate presence!2 Corinthians 5:17 (ESV)2 Corinthians 5:21 (NIV)This is imagery of life replacing death. New creation replacing death and decay. Where I live there’s a woods behind my house. I’m recording this in May. In the spring each day it’s kind of like a time lapse photography of new life replacing the old death and decay. It starts on the ground of the woods. Green starts to appear and you see more and more of the ground slowly becoming more and more green each day. Then smaller plants begin to bud and slowly a bit of green starts to fill the smaller branches of the smaller plants lower to the ground. After a couple weeks they start to become lush with green. Then some trees begin to bud and there are some trees where you can see small sprouts of green leaves in the tall branches. But there are other trees that still look like it’s February. Completely bare branches. The dead look of winter. In one sense it seems to happen fairly fast over the course of a month or more. In another sense it’s a slow process. Some trees that are coming alive still look dead. Other places look more and more alive but not near what they will be a month from now. It depends on your perspective of time. Not much happens in an hour. But lots seems to happen in a week. Especially a warmer week with lots of sunshine. Colder weeks seem less so. Day by day.This is what it’s like to be in Christ. A new creation has begun but the process takes time. You are in the already/not yet. But you have God‘s promise and you have his Holy Spirit to give you confident expectation that breathes/speaks life into you right now. Feel this into your body. Behold.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 @davecoverFollow A Bigger Life on Twitter @ABiggerLifePodOur 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.
A Christian Meditation on Imagining Clinging to God in Psalm 63:8
24:01:00 | 05-05-2022
So much of the Bible gives us imagination more than information. So much of who you want to be and what you want in life is empowered by your imagination. This is why sin always appeals to your imagination. Why the vast majority of commercials appeal to your imagination. But then when we read the Bible we think only in propositional truths. We just think in terms of beliefs we’re supposed to have and commands we’re supposed to do.But that’s not what the Bible is doing most of the time. Most of the time the Bible is giving us imagination more than information.And if you really want to live a life experiencing connection with God, God intends for you to use the power of your imagination. Imagining something that’s very real but that you cannot see.Psalm 63:8 ESVMy soul clings to you;your right hand upholds me.This is imaginative language. God wants you to imagine this. Picture this. Your soul — all of who you are — body and spirit — utterly clinging to God right now. Remember the last time you clung to something. You felt desperate. Fearful to let go. You needed with all your strength to hold on. That’s the image God wants you to have right now with him. Feel this in your body – in your whole self. Imagine your whole being – your soul – clinging to the one who calls himself I AM. The one whose name is Yahweh — he is — the source of all existence. The giver of all life. The one who inhabits eternity. And the one who always connects with you infinitely and intimately in the present moment. Right now. Feel this imagination in your entire body. Feel it from within your body. Your body clinging to the I AM for your very life. He is the source of your existence. The giver of every moment of your life. The one who inhabits eternity and has an eternal glory for you that every moment now somehow fits within. And he is the one who is infinitely and intimately connected with you right now. Your body is a temple of his Holy Spirit. Imagine yourself clinging to God. Feel this image into your body. Your body connected to the I AM right now. You are one — your soul is one — body and spirit — with the God who created and sustains everything in this entire universe. One with the one who is the author of life.Tim KellerPrayer is awe before an infinite force, and yet it's intimacy with a personal friend — at the same time. 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 @davecoverFollow A Bigger Life on Twitter @ABiggerLifePodOur 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.
A Christian Meditation on God Made and Loves Your Body from Psalm 119:73
24:54:00 | 05-03-2022
Your hands made me and formed me (Ps 119:73. You exist because God formed you and made you. God wants you to exist in his world. God made YOU and formed YOU. But the imaginative language of making and forming is the language of the love and care and detail of an artist for their creation. God specifically created you by his own hand with love and care for every detail. That’s how he sees you now.If your podcast is a set to skip silent sections, disable that now.Psalms 119:73 (NIV)Your hands made me and formed me.This is imagination. Notice that the “me” the psalmist is referring to includes the body.You are your body. You are more than your body. But not other than your body. The biblical view of your body is that it is part of your soul. An eternal part of who you are. That’s why you will have a bodily resurrection in your eternal salvation. Your body – your brain, your spine, your entire central nervous system, all your nerves, your organs, your muscles, all of your cells — your body is part of your soul. Your body needs spiritual life and peace and the rejuvenating sense of God’s presence and love. This sense of God‘s presence and love starts with less static and noise. This is a time to spiritually nourish your mind and your body. This is a time to focus your entire soul — including your mind and your body — on God‘s light and God‘s life and God‘s love for you. And to use your biblically guided imagination to feel this reality into your body. Quietly say to God…Psalms 119:73 (NIV)Your hands made me and formed me.Your imagination is always felt into your body. It’s how God made you. When you wake up from a stressful dream you feel the stress of your imagination into your body. Sweat. Heart racing. Fear. Worry. Unease. But all that was just your imagination. Your imagination is constantly being felt into your body. Your body’s biochemistry. And that’s also true when it comes to your ability to imagine the reality of God‘s presence and light and life and love. And that imagination affects your body’s biochemistry too.David meditates on this in…Psalms 139:13-14 (ESV)…You formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother's womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well.God created your body and loves your body. It is part of who you are eternally. Ultimately in the resurrection of your body. So you need to embrace your body. But even now it’s amazing how God has given the body the ability to heal itself. Imagine God’s Spirit right now enabling your body to heal itself. Creating new healthy cells throughout your entire body. Imagine this reality happening everywhere throughout your entire body right now. Imagine it happening right now particularly in those areas where you know it needs to happen.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 @davecoverFollow A Bigger Life on Twitter @ABiggerLifePodOur 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.
A Christian Meditation on a Heart Cleansed and a Body Washed by Jesus in Hebrews 10:19-22
25:06:00 | 04-28-2022
When you sprain your ankle in some way and spend the day walking around, by the end of the day it’s very sore. So you put on an ankle boot — a kind of temporary cast — for a while to help your ankle relax in the structure of the cast. It provides relief and helps with healing. That’s what Christian meditation does for your central nervous system. It’s like a boot cast for your central nervous system to relax in the structure of meditation to provide relief and help with healing. You might be tempted to think that a variety of different meditation styles is better because it helps your mind stay interested. But we’re intentionally doing the opposite in this kind of mediation. We’re trying to learn to discipline our mind to be able to focus on getting really good at one thing — a specific kind of meditation with a rhythm of deep breathing and progressive relaxation and biblically guided imagination, so we can reintegrate and recalibrate our body with the spiritual reality of God’s presence and love always IN us and AROUND us. This kind of meditation takes a lot of practice. A lot of new brain wiring through repetition over time. Neuroplasticity — neurons and fire together wire together. When you’re a beginner, your mind is always distracted and wandering and you’re not even quite sure what you’re trying to focus on. Our modern brains have been hardwired with all the quick distractions on our phones and all the fast moving media we are exposed to constantly throughout the day. As a result, our brain is less and less physically wired to be able to focus and concentrate on one thing – especially if it requires developing and using your imagination rather than just passively watching video. With more and more time and practice your mind will learn how to focus better and you will experience a deeper, more healing level of meditation. A more experiential relaxation and recalibrating your body with your mind and soul. And a deeper experience of feeling God‘s presence and love within your body and soul in the present moment. You always connect with God in the present moment rather than always having your mind wander into ruminating about the past or into the uncertainties about the future. This takes time and practice. It means to inhabit your body fully. To feel your entire body from within. Your body is meant to be filled with spiritual reality. Your body needs that or it unconsciously starts to malfunction with tension and stress and anxiety and self protection and clenched muscles and even some forms of chronic pain. This kind of Christian meditation helps your soul embrace your body — recalibrate your soul with your body — and fill your body with the spiritual reality of God’s life-giving presence and love. Hebrews 10:10 (NIV) …We have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. Hebrews 10:19-22 (NIV) Therefore, brothers and sisters, since we have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way opened for us through …his body, …Let us draw near to God with a sincere heart and with the full assurance that faith brings, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water. This is all imagination language. So imagine yourself entering God‘s most holy presence. But without fear and shame because of the blood of Jesus completely “washing away” your guilt and shame. The body of Jesus taking ALL your sin and guilt and fear and shame upon himself and nailing it to the cross. Use your imagination to see yourself joyfully drawing near to God with full assurance and confidence because your heart has been cleansed from a guilty conscience and your body has been washed with the pure water of Jesus — the fountain of living waters. Imagine your body completely washed. Completely cleansed. All because of Jesus sacrificing his...
A Very Basic Christian Meditation
24:53:00 | 04-26-2022
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 our whole being and sense that embodied connection in each present moment throughout our day. And I think most of us as Christians are often living these unconsciously anxious and tense lives with a kind of bifurcated connection with our own soul and a fragmented connection with God. Where our “Christian faith” has become primarily about certain beliefs about our future rather than an embodied experience right now with the real God who created this entire universe. My story 6 years ago… I read a book by a psychologist that worked at Stanford Medical Center that led to my attending a 6-day clinic in Northern California with the author and his team, along with 10 other attendees, where, among other things, we learned and practiced his protocol for meditation and relaxation. His method of meditation was not tied to any kind of spirituality. Mainly just focusing on relaxing your entire body at once and focusing your mind on feeling your entire body relax as you continue a slow rhythm of breathing. Pretty basic, but effective in rebooting the central nervous system from a sympathetic (limbic system fight or flight) to a parasympathetic (calm and free of tension and stress). But since then, I’ve also read lots of books by various neurologists on the brain and body connection and other books by Buddhist authors on meditation, and I’ve used lots of various audio meditations by all kinds of meditation instructors — lots of Progressive Relaxation or body scan techniques. Almost all of them are tied to a Buddhist spirituality. Buddhists have discovered something real and beneficial, but they’ve misinterpreted the meaning of it. It’s not dissolving the illusion of the self and becoming one with the collective consciousness or Being of the universe, but rather helping our mind re-integrating our soul with our body. There is a transcendence to that that is felt as a mystical experience because we are spiritual beings. But all of these techniques for meditation, while still helpful, were missing the kind of true spiritual experience in meditation and contemplation that the Bible talks about when it talks about meditation. So I decided to try to integrate the two. Which I’ve been doing now for about two years. Taking the best of the non-spiritual kind of meditation protocol I learned in California, along with the best of various mindfulness or Buddhist meditation techniques — and integrating those with previous ways I’ve meditated on Biblical images of my connection with God. And it has made a huge difference in my life. And it’s what I want to help you do in these podcast episodes. I want to give you the basic structure I use for this kind of Christian meditation. Eventually — once you learn the basic structure — you can even do it for a three to five-minute meditation to do easily and quickly at home, at work, before an important meeting, when you’re stuck in traffic, or anytime you have a pain or anxiety flare. You can do it lying flat on your back, or sitting in a chair or sometimes I do it even while walking. It works. Although not in the same way as if I’m lying down. But something is always better than nothing. And it’s a great practice to learn to do whenever you can, wherever you are. I’m going to do it longer in this episode by explaining and giving you more time to learn what to focus on. So I’m going to record this episode and then the next episode will be a shorter Christian meditation without much explanation that you can use whenever. But with practice you can do it as quickly as you need to in any moment. But setting aside a longer time to do it each day (20-30 min) will make a much bigger difference not only in your central nervous system but in your sense of walking with God...
Christian Meditation 101
29:47:00 | 04-21-2022
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 our whole being and sense that embodied connection in each present moment throughout our day. And I think most of us as Christians are often living these unconsciously anxious and tense lives with a kind of bifurcated connection with our own soul and a fragmented connection with God. Where our “Christian faith” has become primarily about certain beliefs about our future rather than an embodied experience right now with the real God who created this entire universe. My story 6 years ago… I read a book by a psychologist that worked at Stanford Medical Center that led to my attending a 6-day clinic in Northern California with the author and his team, along with 10 other attendees, where, among other things, we learned and practiced his protocol for meditation and relaxation. His method of meditation was not tied to any kind of spirituality. Mainly just focusing on relaxing your entire body at once and focusing your mind on feeling your entire body relax as you continue a slow rhythm of breathing. Pretty basic, but effective in rebooting the central nervous system from a sympathetic (limbic system fight or flight) to a parasympathetic (calm and free of tension and stress). But since then, I’ve also read lots of books by various neurologists on the brain and body connection and other books by Buddhist authors on meditation, and I’ve used lots of various audio meditations by all kinds of meditation instructors — lots of Progressive Relaxation or body scan techniques. Almost all of them are tied to a Buddhist spirituality. Buddhists have discovered something real and beneficial, but they’ve misinterpreted the meaning of it. It’s not dissolving the illusion of the self and becoming one with the collective consciousness or Being of the universe, but rather helping our mind re-integrating our soul with our body. There is a transcendence to that that is felt as a mystical experience because we are spiritual beings. But all of these techniques for meditation, while still helpful, were missing the kind of true spiritual experience in meditation and contemplation that the Bible talks about when it talks about meditation. So I decided to try to integrate the two. Which I’ve been doing now for about two years. Taking the best of the non-spiritual kind of meditation protocol I learned in California, along with the best of various mindfulness or Buddhist meditation techniques — and integrating those with previous ways I’ve meditated on Biblical images of my connection with God. And it has made a huge difference in my life. And it’s what I want to help you do in these podcast episodes. So I want to give you the basic structure I use for this kind of Christian meditation. Eventually — once you learn the basic structure — you can even do it for a three to five-minute meditation to do easily and quickly at home, at work, before an important meeting, when you’re stuck in traffic, or anytime you have a pain or anxiety flare. You can do it lying flat on your back, or sitting in a chair or sometimes I do it even while walking. It works. Although not in the same way as if I’m lying down. But something is always better than nothing. And it’s a great practice to learn to do whenever you can, wherever you are. I’m going to do it longer in this episode by explaining and giving you more time to learn what to focus on. So I’m going to record this episode and then the next episode will be a shorter Christian meditation without much explanation that you can use whenever. But with practice you can do it as quickly as you need to in any moment. But setting aside a longer time to do it each day (20-30 min) will make a much bigger difference not only in your central nervous system but in your sense of walking with God