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 @davecover
Follow 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.