Meditative Prayer, Communion with God, and Caring for Our Souls
By Eric L. Johnson
A Meditative Exercise (10-20 minutes)
So, what shall be the focus of your Christian meditative exercise? The most natural option is to see what emerges from the Bible reading that day. But the possibilities are virtually endless.
We could just take a theme of Christian revelation worthy of our attention: God’s love or perfect justice; a story from Christ’s life, one of his parables, or what he accomplished for us; focusing on the Holy Spirit inside me; one of his wonderful gifts to us: his created goodness in me, our union with Christ, forgiveness for something I did, being adopted into God’s family, or our belovedness; or we could just spend time in communion with God.
Or we could focus on something that’s been bothering us. For example, we could try to address something from our past in light of the Christian faith: an episode that left us with shame, a memory about when our mom or dad mistreated us, a time we committed a terrible sin, or something traumatic that happened to us.
Or perhaps there is something that we experienced relatively recently that is on our heart, like a bad argument we had last night with our spouse, some resentment we have towards a friend, hurt feelings from a recent conversation with our child, or an unresolved conflict at work.
Or we may be aware of something within us that needs healing or resolution: overwhelming feelings of sadness (often called depression), an exiled “part” that we’re just getting to know, a realization that I’ve been showing favoritism to one of my children, a sense of bitterness towards a co-worker, or a fresh awareness of the core belief (and feeling) that I’m unlovable.
There are so many possibilities for the use of meditative prayer, we’ll never run out. Let’s talk through a few concrete examples.
The simplest approach is to stick closely to the passage we read that day. After some relaxation and deep breathing, and we’re in a meditative state (or close to it), let’s glance over the passage again and note a few highlights and take them into our meditation time, using our imagination and some reflection. For example, if we had read John 15, we might try to feel what it’s like to abide in Christ by “entering into” the metaphor of the vine and the branches, perhaps imagining our self as a branch drawing its life and fruit from his eternal life. Then, we might shift the focus to Christ abiding in us, so that we can “open up” to his life dwelling in us – and feel that life surging through our bodies – believing/imagining that, from our innermost being, his life flows outward, bringing about fruit that we picture growing on us and out of us.
On the other hand, some passages are so rich and cover such foundational, expansive, biblical territory that they lead to many, different kinds of meditative exercises, and Romans 6:1-11 is such a passage. Paul wrote there that the basis of the new life of believers was their union with Christ in his death, burial, and resurrection, through baptism, such that they, too, mysteriously died and were raised from the dead with Christ and are now thoroughly identified in God’s mind and heart with Jesus Christ in his humanity. From God’s omniscient, omnipathic viewpoint, we were there 2000 years ago, when Christ joined himself experientially to our suffering in this fallen world (Ro 8:17; 2 Co 1:5; Col 1:24; Stump, 2016), including the divine judgment that we deserved because of our sin and resistance to God (Ro 3:25; 2Co 5:21), and God raised him – and us – from the dead and made us alive together with him (Eph 2:6). As a result, the evil of our past was resolved and effectively erased (Ro 8:1: Eph 4:32) and our old self was crucified (Eph 5:22; Col 3:9), and we were adopted into his family (Ro 8:15-17), we were made a new self (Eph 5:23-24; Col 3:10), and we became as loved by God as Christ (Jn 14:20-23; 17:23; Col 3:12). Because of its breadth, Romans 6 sanctions many, different ways to realize what it’s describing, in the context of what we’re dealing with on a given day.
Let’s say I’m feeling guilty because I yelled at my spouse last night, in response to a mostly unfair, cutting remark she made. Without excusing her remark, when I’m in a meditative state the next day, I could own and experientially receive the divine resolution of my wrong by taking the time to picture my old self – defensive, dirty, and angry – superimposed on Christ on the cross.
You see, I’m simply using my imagination to confess that I sinned against my spouse, and also that that old self was crucified in Christ (Ro 6:6), who was punished on my behalf. The key, therapeutically, is to feel the true guilt and shame of that episode last night, and then allowing my old self to be buried with Christ and taken to hell, while feeling the guilt and shame begin to dissipate in the process, until ideally, it’s all taken away. The key is feeling in your body God pulling it out of you and letting Christ receive it. (This same experiential process can be done with any fallen emotion – anxiety, anger, sadness, and disgust, in addition to guilt and shame).
Then, we can imagine Christ walking out of the tomb, shining and dressed in a glorious white robe, followed by my new self, looking just as beautiful and radiant as Christ. The key, therapeutically, is for me to take the time to feel the forgiveness and to feel Christ’s pleasure in me completely replace the former guilt and shame. If I have the time, I could take a few more minutes to imagine what I’ll like to say to her the next time I see her. I am raised with Christ to walk in newness of life (Ro 6:5).
Wrapping It Up (1-5 minutes)
It’s fitting to conclude this time in a brief prayer (though we may have been praying throughout), especially thanking God for the time together. It may take a few minutes for one’s brain/soul-state to return to normal, depending on how deeply meditative the experience was. And we might take a few minutes to write down what we experienced in a journal.
Wrapping It Up
As stated before, getting into a Christian meditative state is a learned skill, that nonetheless requires the Holy Spirit’s involvement. As we learn how to meditate through repeated practice and exercise over months (and years), we are learning how to become better able – with increasing regularity and reliability – to “let the peace of Christ rule in our hearts” (Col 3:15), and that in two ways. His peace should become more and more consistently accessible within the meditation session, so that we can predictably experience an emotion shift in an upward direction. And there should also be a much more gradual internalization of his peace, over the course of our adulthood, so that more and more the tectonic plates of our soul are being shifted, fundamentally altering the overall emotional “set point” of our soul, as the deadly emotions we have experienced growing up in a fallen world that got woven into us are, again and again, being replaced with the resurrection emotions of the world to come. Christ want to grant us access to both kinds of peace through time with him in meditative prayer.
