A Christian Meditation on Being a New Creation from 2 Corinthians 5:17, 21

<p>Talking about facing the reality of his pancreatic cancer, Tim Keller recently said, “I came to realize that the experiential side of my faith really needed to strengthen or I wasn’t going to be able to handle this. It’s one thing to believe God loves you, another thing to actually feel his love. It’s one thing to believe he’s present with you. It’s another to actually experience his presence.”</p><p><br></p><p>One way God‘s people have been experiencing God‘s presence and love for thousands of years is through meditation. Meditation is learning to experience unseen realities using our biblically guided imagination.&nbsp;</p><p><br></p><p>When we don’t live lives <em>empowered</em> by our biblically guided imagination, our Christian experience gets <em>reduced</em> to merely theological doctrines and moral rules. Of course, true biblical doctrines and moral boundaries are essential for living spiritually healthy lives. But if that’s all our “Christianity” is it will not produce spiritually healthy lives because something very very big is missing.&nbsp;</p><p><br></p><p>And that kind of Christianity always gives way to more powerful imaginations. But because those other imaginations go <em>against</em> the grain of reality, our lives become fragmented from reality in God’s universe. And the fruits of fragmented, unreal lives appear in our mind/spirit as worry and fear and insecurity and self protection and frustration and anger and resentment. And in our body as stress and tension and anxiety.&nbsp;</p><p><br></p><p>This is a “Christianity” and life that’s missing the <em>infinite awe</em> and <em>intimate presence</em> and connection with Christ. The I Am. It then becomes little more than an ideology with a set of ethics. Our faith gets reduced to <em>beliefs</em> and <em>commands</em>.</p><p><br></p><p>Biblically guided meditation gives us a better imagination. The reality of the bigger story of all that God is for you in Jesus is a far better imagination. Explosive with wonder and beauty and glory and joy an