Christian Meditation for A Bigger Life with Pastor Dave Cover

We learn from the order of The Lord’s Prayer that Jesus saw prayer as worship. And one significant key to learning to worship in Spirit and truth (https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John%204%3A23-24&version=NIV (John 4:23-24)) without imaginative meditation on biblical images and phrases. Jesus’s I AM phrases in the Gospel of John are such images and phrases. When we use our imagination...

What does it mean when Jesus says, I AM? Like in John 6:20, he stands on the waves in the middle of the Sea of Galilee and says, “I AM, don’t be afraid.” In the Bible, the seas represented the unknown, chaos, evil. And Jesus stands on top of all that and says to his followers, “I AM, don’t be afraid.” The apostle John records seven times where Jesus makes this absolute I AM statement (in five diff...

How long will you stick with following Jesus? What would it take for you to walk away from him? When we read of the miracles of Jesus, the idea of following Jesus is attractive. Jesus is being a healing and blessing God. But then there are other times where Jesus acts like an unrivaled Lord, and says things that challenge our own authority in our lives. Both are the same thing — his miracles show...

Often the reason we desire other things more than God is a lack of using our imagination in worship. With any desire we have that we pursue, we use our imagination. That’s what makes us want it. We imagine a possible experience that makes us desire it more. A desert. A purchase. A relationship. A vacation. A job. A house. A meal. Do I want to go out to dinner? Have someone over? Go to church? Go g...

It’s a conspiracy that increases my faith in the gospel. I’m amazed at how often we see the Bible’s one story threaded all throughout Scripture, but written centuries apart. This one story of the Bible, written over a period of 1,500 years by more than 40 different authors, most of whom never even knew each other, is a conspiracy indeed, but not of humans. It’s a conspiracy of the Holy Spirit. Tel...

Don’t let yourself get hijacked away from the incredible bigger and better story this world is in and you could be in. Your trust and faithfulness will be so worth it! But we must worship the I AM to keep our affections focused on the right story. Learning to worship is the most important action in your entire life. And Psalm 96 helps us worship the I AM in the context of his bigger and better sto...

Do you find it hard or even awkward to worship God? The truth is it’s easier than you think. You just have to choose to do it. Worship is a choice. In fact, it must always be a choice. God never coerces our worship. Jesus said in https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John%204%3A23-24&version=NIV (John 4:23-24) that God seeks true worshipers. In other words, God wants you to choose to worshi...

Worshiping God means worshiping him for who he really is. Our lives become more anchored horizontally when we anchor them vertically to the true God. Worshiping God in Spirit and truth, as Jesus puts it in https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John%204%3A23-24&version=NIV (John 4:23-24). But if you read through the Psalms, you’ll soon run into Psalms like Psalm 94 that talk about God being...

We all get into a funk. We’re disappointed. Frustrated. Experiencing the pains of life’s fragile realities. Some of us bend that direction more than others, but we all bend under that weight at times. And in those times it’s all too easy to start sinking in the quicksand of complaining, grumbling, blaming. We start living in the fog cloud of living for ourselves. And we become even more miserable....

Question: When you think of the word prayer, what image comes to your mind? When you think to yourself, “Should I pray right now?” or “I’m going to pray,” what do you imagine doing? What do you imagine when you imagine praying? Too often my image is negative, like somebody boring doing something boring. But then when I read descriptions in the Gospels of Jesus praying, I get intrigued. Because Jes...

How do you know when it’s OK to pray for something? What kind of prayers are out of bounds? Do you sometimes not pray for something because you figure you should err on the side of not offending God with your request? I think that’s a mistake. Here’s why. Luke 22:39–44 NIV Jesus went out as usual to the Mount of Olives, and his disciples followed him. On reaching the place, he…withdrew about a sto...

Psalm 89 shows us that the drama of our lives takes place in the bigger story of God’s redemption and restoration of this world through the perfect Son of David, Jesus the Christ. But that story is even bigger yet, because there’s an even bigger drama taking place in the spiritual realm that parallels the human drama. And Psalm 89 shows us that as well. Let’s talk about it in this episode. Psalm 8...

Centuries before Jesus was born, the Psalm of the Old Testament told of him. Jesus told his disciples that everything would be fulfilled that was written about him in the Psalms (https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke%2024%3A44&version=NIV (Luke 24:44)). So whenever we read the Psalms we should look for Jesus. And we clearly find him in Psalm 89. When you praise the Jesus seen in Psalm...

The word “forever” has always intrigued me. Most of the time it’s used in songs or poetry it’s a lie. The Beatles’ Strawberry Fields Forever? Or “Love you forever and forever”? But when the Psalms in the Bible use that word it’s actually a promise that can be kept. God’s covenant promise. And suddenly we’re invited into a much bigger story. “Forever” is repeated a lot in Psalm 89. It’s summoning y...

What comes to your mind when you think of Jesus? What image? What imagination? How do you feel toward that Jesus? How much do you want that Jesus to be Lord/King of your life? See, I don’t think the problem for most of us is that our sin is too big for us to resist it. I just think our Little Jesus is too small to not resist. So today I want to have a conversation with God through a passage in the...

Do you sometimes think that your desire for greatness and glory is pride? Do you sometimes feel guilty for that as if somehow that's an inordinate desire that you need to confess as pride? The desire for greatness and glory is actually not the same as pride. Pride is in fact a virus that hijacks that desire. But the desire for greatness and glory is God given. It's what God intended for you as par...

Let’s say you want to have a conversation with God using a Psalm. You open to Psalm 80. You start reading and quickly realize it doesn’t really resonate with you. Honestly, you don’t think you understand much of what you’re reading. So what can you do? One option is to just close your Bible and do something else because that didn’t work. Another option is to use https://www.amazon.com/Biblical-The...

Maybe you’re in one of those times. Your life has taken a turn for the worst. Perhaps just temporarily. Perhaps permanently. Maybe you’re grieving the loss of something or someone. Or you’re doubting your future. Is there anything left to look forward to? Maybe isolation has taken its toll. Perhaps you’re not sure where you stand with God, or worse, where God stands with you. But you’re coming to...

I’ve become a believer in spells. Supernatural illusions or delusions put upon a person’s mind so that they can’t see reality, or they see non-reality as reality. And that’s what the New Testament is talking about in 2 Corinthians 4:3-6. Like the Psalms, it uses highly illustrative and picturesque language to help us imagine an unseen reality. As a pastor for many years, I’ve seen this reality ove...

Written a thousand years before Jesus was born, Psalm 69 is one of those psalms of David that seems to be a favorite of the New Testament authors. It also seems to have been a favorite of Jesus because he quotes from it in John 15:25. It's quoted by the apostles Paul and Peter. And it's quoted by the gospel writers. All of them quoting different parts of this psalm. So why did this psalm so heavil...

What we are learning to do in this podcast is to live more vertically and not just horizontally. To lift up our eyes throughout our day, in the moments of anxiety, worry, fear, tension, conflict, temptation, unforgiveness. And in the good moments as well because those are perhaps the most dangerous times for our heart and soul. For me, highly imaginative passages in the Bible motivate me in this....

The Psalms come back to repeated themes for emphasis. We forget what matters most because we get hijacked by the smaller horizontal stories that bombard us everyday. But when we lift up our eyes vertically through praise to God and his bigger story for us, we bring God’s power and strength deeper into our lives today.. But just for today. It has to be repeated, like daily manna in the desert. Whic...

Do you ever want to pray but you’re not sure what to pray? Whether for yourself when you want to pray for yourself. Or when you want to pray for someone else. “I’ll pray for you,” you say to a friend, but what will you pray? What should you pray for? Psalm 67 gives us some great phrases to use when praying for others and for ourselves. You just have to remember five words: gracious, bless, face, p...

Are there times in your life when you don’t want to pray? You can just barely muster up the focus on God enough to barely pray. You want to pray in the sense that you know you need to pray and you don't want to drift away from God. But your heart is not in it. We all have times like that. Sometimes it's because our heart has become hardened, or discouraged, or anxious, or we're just in a place whe...

Do you struggle with FOMO sometimes? Welcome to being a Christian. Our Fear Of Missing Out (FOMO) is NOT new to the human condition. And it’s certainly not something new to the life of faith. I’m amazed how often 3,000-year-old psalms, inspired by the Holy Spirit, talk honestly about it. It’s a real fear for God’s people, and it always has been. For good reason: lots of people who don’t concern th...