Growing Closer to God with Guided Meditation
Welcome to the new season of the podcast, now titled "Growing Closer to God with Guided Meditation"!
Join your host, Pastor Robert Young, as we embark on a journey of spiritual exploration and renewal. This podcast is designed to help you deepen your faith and find inner peace through calming, reflective, and transformative meditative practices inspired by scripture.
Our Evolution
While the podcast, formerly known as Not Your Parent's Religion, focused in Seasons 1 and 2 on correcting misinformation and myths about religious beliefs and the teaching of Jesus Christ, the program has evolved. In Season 3, we began drawing closer to God with guided meditations, exploring all the details of why and how to meditate, and discussing the Biblical origins of Christian meditations.
With over 30 years of experience in Church planting and mentoring other Pastors, and 30+ years of training leaders in evangelism/discipleship, Pastor Young is here to guide you through these moments of stillness and connection with God.
What to Expect in Season 4
We are excited to return with Season 4 starting Sunday, October 5. We will continue to offer a structured weekly schedule:
- Sundays: Our weekly guided meditation episode.
- Monday through Friday: Daily devotions and reflections that expand on the topic of the Sunday meditations.
- Wednesdays: Audio episodes of our House Church series. This series reflects the Bible's teaching that believers should gather together for corporate worship, fellowship, encouragement, and even admonishment.
For those seeking an enhanced experience, we are adding video versions of the meditations and devotions to our Patreon page. These videos are designed to give you a more immersive experience as you meditate on the Father, His teachings, and His presence.
Tune in each week as we lead you on this path to connecting more deeply with God.
Episodes
370 episodes
Walking in the Grace God Provides: Spiritual Habits That Make Room for God's Grace | Thursday Devotion
Trying harder can feel spiritual, but it can also leave us tired and stuck. We slow down and name a different path: you don’t run to produce fruit, you remain. That shift takes spiritual growth out of the realm of self-powered effort and puts i...
Walking in The Grace God Provides: Renewing the Mind With God's Power | Wednesday Devotion
The thought loop is loud, familiar, and exhausting and we often assume the fix is more effort, better habits, or a tougher mindset. Pastor Robert Young offers a different path: transformation that does not come from self-help, but from spirit-l...
Walking in The Grace God Provides: Obedience Empowered by God, Not Forced by Us | Tuesday Devotion
Obedience can feel like pressure, performance, and constant self-correction but what if that’s never what Jesus wanted for you? We name the quiet lie that keeps so many people stuck: “If I love God, I’ll prove it by trying harder.” Then we repl...
Walking in The Grace God Provides: Responding in Willing Surrender | Monday Devotion
“Work out your salvation” can sound like a demand to strain harder, try more, and prove yourself. We slow that phrase down with Pastor Robert Young and place it back where Paul puts it in Philippians 2:12-13: right next to the assurance that Go...
Honoring Mothers Brings A Promise Of Goodness: Encore Episode
Mother’s Day is easy to celebrate with traditions and treats, but it’s harder and far more meaningful to name what a mother’s love has actually done in our lives. We take a few focused minutes to honor mothers, grandmothers, and mother figures,...
Guarding Your Heart & Mind Series: God's Power is Made Perfect in Our Weakness | Friday Devotional
The hardest moments are often the most honest ones: when you’re tired of trying to be “strong,” tired of pretending you’ve got it together, and tired of carrying a struggle that won’t move. We open with 2 Corinthians 12:9 and let God’s words la...
Guarding Your Heart & Mind Series: God Strengthens Us When Our Strength Fails | Thursday Devotional
When you’re exhausted, it’s easy to assume you’re failing spiritually. We slow down and let Isaiah 40:29 correct that lie: God gives power to the faint, and he increases strength for those who have no might. That promise is not aimed at the “st...
Guarding Your Heart & Mind Series: God Works in Us What We Cannot Produce | Wednesday Devotional
Willpower runs out. Motivation fades. And if spiritual growth depends on us generating perfect discipline, most of us end up stuck in the same cycle: try harder, fall short, feel guilty, repeat. We open Philippians 2:13 and let the Apostle Paul...
Guarding Your Heart & Mind Series: God Gives Us a New Heart, Not a New To Do List | Tuesday Devotional
A tired heart can start to feel normal, until you realise you’re living on emotional autopilot: guarded, worn down, and slowly turning numb. We sit with Ezekiel 36:26 and let God’s promise land with its full weight: “I will give you a new heart...
Guarding Your Heart & Mind Series: God's Grace Does What We Can't | Monday Devotion
The pressure to “be better” can feel holy, but it often turns into quiet exhaustion. We keep trying to fix ourselves, manage our habits, and force change through sheer willpower, then wonder why we feel stuck. Titus 2:11–12 offers a different p...
Guarding Your Heart and Mind Series: Deep Dive with Dan & Sheila
What if the most dangerous thing to your spiritual peace isn’t blatant evil or constant noise, but a worldview that looks like kindness? We follow Pastor Robert Young’s “Guarding Your Mind” argument that modern humanism can promote admirable go...
Protecting Your Peace Series: Choose Stillness | Thursday Devotion
The fastest way to lose your peace is to forget who’s in control, then keep sprinting anyway. We slow down and do the opposite: we rise into stillness on purpose, even if it’s only for a few minutes, and we let that quiet become a place where G...
Protecting Your Peace Series: Guarding Your Heart & Mind | Wednesday Devotion
Anxiety doesn’t always show up as panic. Sometimes it’s a tight chest, a racing mind at night, or the feeling that you can’t get ahead no matter how hard you try. We slow things down with a short pastoral prayer and a simple Christian meditatio...
Protecting Your Peace Series: Jesus Gives Peace the World Can't | Tuesday Devotion
Your life can be going “fine” and your soul can still feel on edge. We start with a simple check-in that cuts deeper than it sounds: is everything going right, and if it is not, what do you reach for to feel okay? That one question helps us spo...
Protecting Your Peace Series: God is Your Peace | Monday Devotion
Peace isn’t something I can muscle into existence when my mind is spinning. Pastor Robert Young takes us to Isaiah 26:3 and puts language to what many of us feel: real peace comes when God keeps us steady, and that peace is closely tied to trus...
Protecting Your Peace Series: Deep Dive with Dan & Sheila
Your mind was never designed to process a stadium’s worth of noise before breakfast, yet that’s exactly what many of us do when we reach for our phones and start scrolling. We break down how modern sensory overload triggers real fight or flight...
All Night Prayer? Daily Devotion | Friday
When the night gets quiet, the names we’ve carried get loud. We open Genesis 32:28 and sit with Jacob in the dark, tracing his fear, his wrestle with God, and the dawn that delivers a new name. This isn’t a tidy moral tale about trying harder; ...
All Night Prayer? Daily Devotion | Thursday
What if the guidance you need is already present, waiting in the quiet? We revisit Samuel’s night encounter and explore why stillness—especially in the evening—can sharpen our spiritual hearing. Instead of adding more noise to our days, we prac...
All Night Prayer? Daily Devotion | Wednesday
When the night stretches long and your strength runs thin, where does help begin? We turn to Gethsemane, not for spectacle but for clarity, listening closely as Luke tells us an angel appeared and strengthened Jesus. That single line reframes h...
All Night Prayer? Daily Devotion | Tuesday
When the world finally goes quiet, what rises in you that you’ve been too busy to feel? We open Psalm 77 and step into the night watch, where emotions are not enemies to suppress but invitations to be held. Instead of tidying our pain, we pract...
All Night Prayer? Daily Devotion | Monday
What if clarity isn’t hiding in more data, but in deeper prayer? We open Luke 6:12–13 and notice a detail that’s easy to rush past: before choosing the Twelve, Jesus spent the entire night in prayer. That simple choice becomes a blueprint for a...
All Night Prayer? Deep Dive with Dan & Sheila
When the world finally goes quiet, what conversations become possible? We explore the surprising power of night prayer—not as a badge of honor, but as extended presence—where interference drops, honesty rises, and real change begins. Drawing fr...
Discernment as a Lifestyle | Daily Devotion (Saturday)
Ever wish you could tell the difference between a shiny half-truth and the quiet ring of the real thing? We open Hebrews 5:14 and get practical about how ordinary people train their spiritual senses to discern good from evil—not by chance, but ...
Discernment is Impossible Without the Holy Spirit | Daily Devotion (Friday)
When confusion gets loud and choices blur, we return to a promise that doesn’t waver: He will guide you into all truth. Anchored in John 16:13, we walk through what it looks like to practice discernment with the Holy Spirit—not as a rare breakt...
Discernment is Anchored in Scripture | Daily Devotion (Thursday)
When the noise gets loud and the signals get mixed, how do we know what to trust? We turn to the one source that doesn’t sway with trends: God’s Word. Pastor Robert Young leads a focused, heartfelt time on making Scripture the believer’s primar...
