A prayer as simple as breathing for a blessed life

Let me suggest a rhythm of life
that will work for one and all,
because by the reality of circumstance
this life is one of call.

This life, if you haven’t already discovered it, is about motive, purpose, a reason for being. If we don’t have that, we really don’t have anything. But the central motive, purpose or reason for being is not about doing, it’s about BEING.

Here is a new way of living that has helped me, and I’m sure it may help you.

I call it a life of praying by the metaphor of breathing...

... inhaling is our relationship with God, and
exhaling is our relationship with others.

You might ask, “Where does my relationship with myself fit in?” We, in our inhaling and exhaling, are present throughout the process—it is OUR life, to enjoy the fruit of good clean air from the living Lord as we inhale, so others can enjoy good fruit from us as we exhale what was purified air.

Let me explain this by example.

This is a rhythm of prayer as simple as breathing in and out.

INHALING PRAYER

I open my Bible and so often this happens. Almost immediately the words begin to speak into my spirit. Most people who have a relationship with God will resonate with what I’m saying. Somehow, even as I open the pages, with my relationship with God, the words as I read become a balm that God uses to restore my soul.

This is but one example of breathing in, because in opening the pages of the Bible, I find it is like inhaling the very air that I need to breathe, rather than opting for any number of toxic sources of literature, image, sound or vision, or stimuli, that I could otherwise imbibe.

Breathing in or inhaling is very much
the careful process of stewarding one’s heart.

I think many of us know just how tenuous this life is, especially in social media circles. It can feel so hard to guard our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, because at every turn it seems, there are attractive morsels we begin to munch on, that inevitably and later on we find were actually bad for us. If we didn’t realise this in time, this imbibing of fast spiritual food had a devastating impact on our soul. It clogged up our system, and we regretted having ingested it.

Inhaling the right things, the things of God, is essential for the spiritual life that has its purpose in being blessed by God to be a blessing.

We cannot be a blessing FOR God if we
haven’t already been blessed BY God.

EXHALING PRAYER

Having inhaled what we know for sure and certain in our spirits is from God, we therefore know with full confidence we will bear good fruit as we exhale in the prayer that pertains to our relationships.

Just as much as we all deserve the joy and the blessing of relating well with our fellow human beings, God gives us this capacity to make our contribution, relationally with others, simply by the way we have sown into our own relationship with God.

Having inhaled and having been fed on good food, we are now more than well situated, poised and satisfied, to sow well into our relationships, because God has sown well into us.

This process of sowing well into our relationships—living at peace with all as far as it depends on us—is what we can call exhalation by prayer.

~

As simple as life can be, and for so many of us life is just not simple, a prayer as simple as breathing, or by living the metaphor of breathing for prayer, we have a simple way forward.

A simple way forward has this blessing about it: every hope and every purpose is achievable.

Photo by Jace & Afsoon on Unsplash