breathe

I have a small sticky on my desk at work. It reminds me of a simple process. One that you really don’t have to think about happening, but it is essential to life.

“You have to breathe in to breathe out.”

You first have to breathe in – oxygen is moved down through your windpipe, bronchi, lungs, bronchioles to millions of tiny capsules called alveoli.

It is here where the vital exchange takes place. Inside the alveoli, oxygen is exchanged for carbon dioxide. The oxygen you have breathed in is transported throughout your blood stream and your body use this new oxygen for energy. The organs and cells in our body give off carbon dioxide into our blood as exhaust. It is this exhaustion that is carried away in the process of breathing out.

In studying this process our bodies take so naturally, without thinking, I believe this is what God wants us to do with Him. Take the time to first breathe in. Breathe in his life giving power and grace that is carried throughout our day to give us energy. Making a vital exchange for the poisonous gas of exhaustion – pushing it out of our body. Allow it to become so much a part of how you are, you don’t have to think about it. It becomes a natural expression of your life.

Breathing in, allows us to breathe out!

It pushes out the things of life that easily exhaust us – selfishness, pride, guilt, shame, deceit, self-righteousness. It allows there to be a vital exchange of that which gives us life – Jesus! Breathing out without breathing in operates from a place of exhaustion. Eventually it becomes impossible.

My prayer this week is that you will take the time each day, several times throughout the day and breathe in. Take a deep breathes of Jesus as He replaces your exhaustion with energy, as he replaces death with life. Allowing you to breathe out.

Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being. – Genesis 2:7