From pondering Scripture and God’s creation, I realized (1) that a cause of the widespread, toxic anxiety, bitterness, depression, resentment, and hatred in society is our hardness of heart toward God, (2) that this hardness is rooted in not knowing who God truly is, and (3) that this ignorance is compounded by babbling to God [Mt 6:7] rather than first trusting and listening attentively to God.  

These spiritual disciplines are designed to help you Get to Know God for Who God Truly Is by having God speak first. If you believe without wavering that God is who God says God is in the Scriptures, God will fill your mind with Christ-like thoughts and transform your toxic anxiety, bitterness, depression, resentment, and hatred into peacefulness, joy, enthusiasm, generosity, and love. 

As God’s word calms you down and the Holy Spirit restores the joy of your salvation, you will converse ever more often with God about God’s word and God’s creation. Accordingly, conviction of God’s pure goodness will grow in your mind and faithfulness, diligence, self-control, and holiness will flourish in your heart. Simultaneously, you will join Christ in God’s building-up actions on earth: servant congregations, just governments, harmonious workplaces, supportive schools, peace-filled neighborhoods, joy-filled families, and devoted marriages. 

Micro-contemplation and Micro-meditation: These two spiritual disciplines enable you, even if you are a highly active person, to have numerous, minute-to-minute conversations with God each day.  Micro-contemplation is a brief, focused, humble, faith-filled pondering on God’s word in God’s presence about God’s character.  Brief means from a few seconds to a few minutes.  Micro-meditation is the same, except the object of pondering on God’s words is God’s will for your thoughts, words, and actions.  When mastered, these disciplines become, by the Spirit, spiritual arts that assist in forming and sustaining the mind of Christ in you.  Ultimately, these spiritual disciplines will, by the Spirit, transform even your blink-like (millisecond) thoughts/choices into Christ-like choices and thoughts. 

Mind of Christ:  The goal is growth in mind-of-Christ likeness. Your attitude should be that of Christ Jesus. [Ph 2:5] This Christ-like mindfulness is created, by the Spirit, through serene, humble, faith-filled focus on God’s word and God’s creation.  This growth in the knowledge of God deepens trust in God’s pure goodness. It also creates an awareness of your undisciplined, blink-like, self-talk and aids you, in Christ, to master this pervasive, evasive, and often destructive mental chatter and to channel your emotional processes to their proper and beneficial purposes.  .