Christian Meditation for A Bigger Life with Pastor Dave Cover

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...

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....

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 syst...

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...

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...

This kind of Christian meditation brings the transcendent experience of God into your mind and into your body so that you can literally walk with God throughout your day. And you can keep your body and thoughts from being hijacked by unconscious anxieties and insecurities and stress and tension that causes you to react in fear and self protection rather than to act in the confidence and assurance...

This kind of Christian meditation brings the transcendent experience of God into your mind and into your body so that you can literally walk with God throughout your day. And you can keep your body and thoughts from being hijacked by unconscious anxieties and insecurities and stress and tension that causes you to react in fear and self protection rather than to act in the confidence and assurance...

God created you as a being of imagination. Your imagination empowers your strongest desires and fears. And your imagination directly affects your body. For example try this: Imagine holding a lemon in your hand. Imagine cutting it in half, and squeezing the tart, yellow juice into a glass and raising it to your mouth. Smell the lemony citrus scent. Take a big mouthful of lemon juice. Feel the tang...

Matthew 6:6, 9 (NIV) (6) But when you [in the singular] pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. And then in verse nine Jesus gives what we call the Lord‘s prayer. Let’s just read the first part of it. (9) “This, then, is how you should pray: “‘Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name” That first line of the Lord‘s prayer, “our father in heaven,” immediate...

Christian meditation can help refocus your mind on God's presence using biblical imagery to get the stress, anxiety, and anger out of your heart and out of your body. Description: With your imagination on God‘s Spirit in your body, you’re feeling a kind of transcendent sense of quiet. You’re feeling a sense of quiet wonder at the God who created the universe present inside your body. Giving life t...

What we want to do in Christian meditation is let go of anxiety not only as a relaxation technique but as something where we are truly calm and at rest because we sense and feel the presence and love and care of God in our lives. Anxiety over shadows our awareness of God because it hijacks all our emotional attention. This means that anxiety can be an early detection system that we’re depending on...

When we come to the Bible and read it without envisioning its truth with our imagination, we miss a lot of its transcendent wonders that only imagination can experience. Biblical authors thought the ancient Jewish way; through images and story. We tend to read and learn in a way that focuses on propositional truths rather than images and story. We’re looking to understand certain truths and we foc...

This kind of meditation helps you re-integrate your mind and body with the reality of God as your creator and sustainer who is always with you and always focused on you with his infinite love. It relieves tension and anxiety and stress and insecurity and defensiveness stored up in your body. And it replaces all that with God‘s peace and joy and assurance and security. In today’s meditation we’re g...

In today’s meditation we’re going to remind ourselves that when we meditate on the presence of God — who is in us and with us by his Spirit — we are using our imagination to see and place our entire selves — including our whole body — in surrendered submission before our life-giving, light-giving Creator. Neuroplasticity. Neurons that fire together wire together. Neuroplasticity is an amazing thin...

It seems like there's always something to worry about in our lives. Even when things are going pretty well, we all know that is a precarious window that could shatter at any moment. It seems like one of the guaranteed rhythms of life is that there are good times and then there are going to be difficult times we have to go through. Exciting times. Painful times. Times when it seems everything is su...

We’re not always aware of our anxiety. Anxiety is not necessarily a sense of fear or worry. Sometimes it’s just a low-grade self-protection alarm going off that we don’t necessarily notice. But it always manifests itself in our body even if we’re not aware of it. Steve Cuss (author of Managing Leadership Anxiety) He says that the first step in noticing anxiety is to pay attention to how it manifes...

Biblically guided meditation imagines the unseen realities of God as your Source of Life and Love and Joy and Peace, and speaks these realities to your soul – body, mind, and spirit — your whole self. Jesus says in Matthew 6:6, “...When you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen.” Imagine you and God together in the present. The I AM is always infinitely pre...

Psalm 139 says God intimately and lovingly created every part of your body. Your body is a good creation of God. Yes, we are all in a kind of exile in a fallen creation in bondage to death and decay. And that’s true of our body. But it’s also true that God has an eternal purpose for the redemption of your body (https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Romans%208%3A23&version=NIV (Rom 8:23)). T...

We wake up from dreams we don’t remember but often they have put anxiety, insecurity and anger in our hearts and in our bodies. That’s one reason I personally do this meditation first thing in the morning. I also do it at the end of my work day. That’s about 45 minutes. But I’d rather spend 45 minutes recalibrating my mind and my body on God’s presence through meditation than watching another 45 m...

In biblical meditation, you’re intentionally focusing your thoughts and using the power of your imagination to experience the reality of God's presence and promises in your life. In addition to that, what we want to do in this meditation is mentally reintegrate our body with our soul. In modern society we live these bifurcated lives where our soul is mentally disconnected from our awareness of our...

Meditation is an essential practice God’s people have been doing for thousands of years, just as King David wrote over 3,000 years ago in Psalms 19:14, “May these words of my mouth and this meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, LORD, my Rock and my Redeemer.” What meditation? Well, what he just meditated on in this psalm. So “this meditation of my heart,” as David puts it, is like what...

Too often our minds get trapped living merely in the horizontal realities of life where we’re focused on our circumstances, jobs, people’s approval, chronic pain, and life’s uncertainties. And we forget the vertical realities of God’s presence and loving care and control over our circumstances and our future. In this meditation you’ll be using your biblically guided imagination to see your life an...

Christian meditation can help refocus your mind on God's presence using biblical imagery to get the stress, anxiety, and anger out of your heart and out of your body. Take about 20 minutes to meditate with this episode. By listening to this podcast episode, you’re carving out a quiet time to be alone with God. Using meditation to recalibrate your mind and heart and even your body with the vertical...

In biblical meditation, you’re intentionally focusing your inner voice and thoughts on God’s presence and promises in your life. When you try to meditate, you’ll discover that this is hard to do. Your mind will wander into other imaginations. Other stories. This is normal. Don’t get frustrated with yourself when it happens. Just pick right back up with where we are in our meditation. By listening...

People today are discovering all kinds of benefits of meditation. That’s a good thing. And the Bible’s been here all along. But biblical meditation is more than simply a form of mindfulness. It’s not less than that, because it is a form of learning to focus and discipline our minds in a way that blocks out the typical chatter in our brains. This voice in our head that is constantly wandering into...