Imagine God’s Spirit flowing in and throughout your body like rivers of living water. That’s the very image Jesus gives in John 7:38. Christians Meditation is a quiet time for you to re-integrate and re-calibrate your mind with your body. And re-integrate and re-calibrate your mind and body with God‘s presence with you and in you. Remember the quote from the apostle Paul in Acts 17:28 – In him you live and move and have your being.

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John 7:38-39 (NIV)

“‘Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.’ By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive. Up to that time the Spirit had not been given, since Jesus had not yet been glorified.”

Jesus said something similar when he was speaking to the woman by the well…

John 4:14 (NIV)

“…The water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

Psalms 16:11 (ESV)

“In your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.”

Imagine the fullness of joy being in the presence of God‘s glory and God‘s beauty and God‘s perfect love for you. Seeing the one who created this entire universe with your own eyes. Resurrected eyes in a resurrected body. Imagine this reality and feel it now into your body. 

The Bible’s bigger story is that Joy is the ultimate experience when Heaven returns to earth when Jesus comes back — we will have resurrected bodies of glory and power and true spirituality and immortality and we will live in the amazing presence of God forever.

Jesus said all of his teaching has Joy as its ultimate goal…

John 15:11 (ESV)

“These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.”

That’s why in John 17, the night Jesus was arrested, when he is praying for his disciples and he is summing up the purpose of his entire life on earth he says…

John 17:13 (NIV)

“…So that they may have the full measure of my joy within them.”

In the final words of the epistle of Jude in the New Testament, Jude says that the ultimate ministry of Jesus in your life is…

Jude 1:24 (ESV)

“…To present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy.”

Joy is the ultimate reward in the kingdom of heaven. The joy that comes from being fully in the presence of God.

Infinite pleasures in the hand of the infinite God. So using your imagination, take his hand now as your greatest possession. Take his hand now as your security. Your calm confidence. Your peace. Your Joy. Feel this into your body.

Even now, consciously knowing that you are in God’s presence will begin to replace your worry and fear and anxiety and self-protective reflexes with his joy and the security of his presence. Use your biblically guided imagination to know and experience that he is at your right hand and you are at his right hand in Christ. Knowing right now in this moment that the forever God is your God forever and you are in his presence right now in this moment. He is the fullness of joy right now. In his hand is your greatest pleasure forever.

So take hold of his hand right now in your imagination. Enjoy his presence right now and feel it into your body.

What is it that you think you need right now that you don’t really need? Let it go. It’s just giving you anxiety and stress and anger. Let it go and take the better possession of God‘s hand. God‘s presence.

Remind yourself that you are in the presence of the forever God and his presence is fullness of joy and pleasure forevermore. Forevermore. The forever God is forever more! More than whatever else you think you need to have to have joy. 

Imagine this. Feel this – sense this reality – into your body right now. And find rest in his presence. Joy in his presence. The security of knowing that in his hand you possess the greatest possession that is forever more than anything else you think you need.

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Our 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.