Should Christians Meditate? Plus 3 Tips for Race Week Success

Read on: onedayout.com

Read time: 5 minutes

Welcome to One Day Out, a weekly newsletter to help deepen your faith, enhance your health, and guide you in pursuing a purpose-filled life.

Today’s Snapshot:

• Biblical vs. Eastern Meditation

• 3 Tips for Race Week Success

• Simplifying How to Be Healthy

Opening Prayer

Lord, I give thanks because you and you alone are sufficient in my life. Lift any thoughts or feelings of scarcity from my heart and mind and let your Spirit renew it. You are worthy and deserving of all of my praise.

Why I Stopped New-Age Meditation

While the world preaches meditation to quiet the mind, Scripture calls us to meditate in a way that transforms the heart.

So what’s the difference, and why does it matter for your faith?

Before I begin, let me first say that I am not an expert on this topic, but this is what I have learned through my study of Scripture and conversations with elders.

Biblical meditation, as seen throughout the Bible and from King David in the opening of the Psalms, focuses on meditating on Scripture and contemplating God’s Word.

It’s about filling the mind with truth and deepening your relationship with God through prayer and reflection.

Eastern meditation on the other hand generally involves emptying the mind, detaching from thoughts, and reaching a state of peace through inner stillness. It’s often rooted in concepts of self-enlightenment, detachment, and mindfulness.

These concepts are praised and normalized in society. People will make you think that by doing them you can go inward and discover all of the answers you are looking for.

I used to listen to all of the self-help podcasts and read all of the personal development books that suggest we “go inward” and learn “self-mastery.”

Spoiler alert: none of them worked because when we rely on our flesh, we will fail every single time.

I want to be more like Christ and let Him lead me.

God’s word is enough, and trying to go inward to find answers shows a distrust in Him.

As Christians, we should only engage in practices that focus on drawing us closer to Christ just like Colossians 2:8 warns us:

"See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the elemental spiritual forces of this world rather than on Christ." (NIV)

Here is a simple process for meditating on God’s word:

1. Open your Bible and read Scripture

2. Pray for understanding

3. Reflect on it throughout the day

Personally, reading slowly to understand each verse on a deeper level has been more beneficial than trying to consume as much as I can as quickly as I can each day.

Biblical meditation is the way to find the peace, joy, and guidance we seek.

3 Tips for Race Week Success

If you don’t want to ruin all of the work you put in over the past months in the week leading up to your race, keep reading.

As you taper down and get closer to race day, you will feel like you’re losing all of your fitness.

You are eating more, and training less, and it’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking you need to do more.

In this case, more is not better. It could cost you the PR you’ve been working so hard for.

Here are 3 tips to remember for race week success:

1. Replace your training with recovery

   • During race week your volume should be at about 50% of what you ran during your peak week— that means you will have about 50% of your time back. Use this time to do light cross-training, mobility, foam rolling, and other recovery tactics that make you feel good.

2. Focus on sleep

   • Chances are you may get nervous and not sleep great the night before the race— don’t let that mess with your head. Your body can rely on the rest from earlier in the week.

   • To get the best quality sleep, do your best not to eat or drink too much close to bedtime, eliminate blue light in the last hour of your day, and have a winddown routine that helps your brain shut off.

3. Dial in your nutrition

   • Carbs leading up to the race are your friend. My friend Jonah Rosner is a great resource for learning how to properly carb load for a race.

   • It is best to carb load 2 days out for a marathon or half marathon, and consuming 8-10g of carbs per kg of body weight will keep your glycogen stores topped off so you perform your best.

   • This weekend I will be running a half marathon and I will consume~700g of carbs the 2 days before the race. It will require planning, but it will help me run the best race possible.

As a bonus tip, trust your training. You have put in the work, now it’s time to let it rip!

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Closing Prayer

Lord, I am not worthy or deserving of the grace and love you give me, yet you give it to me anyway. Thank you for your provision and the opportunity to live this life for your glory.

Amen.

Know others who want to grow in their faith, optimize their health, and live a biblically sound life according to God’s word? Share this and let’s grow His Kingdom!

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