Journey, Day 30, Breathing

1 Thessalonians 5:17  “Pray without ceasing.”

What?

Many of us have been taught that prayer is when we take our conscious mind into an exercise where we talk and God listens.  Perhaps we use prayers we have memorized.  Perhaps it’s when we confess and beg forgiveness.  Some of us come to God when something needs to be fixed, or we plead for someone who is suffering or someone who is lost.  It’s all prayer. It’s all good. But there is more. Planned, ritual or habitual prayer has its place, but there is a prayer that courses through our veins like blood and fills and empties us like breath, and you and I want it!

Repeating something we’ve talked about earlier on this journey: “Prayer, at its most complex and in its simplest form is no more than inviting God into the conversation.” 

When the Apostle Paul wrote to his friends in Thessalonica and told them to pray without ceasing, he wanted them to remember that God is real and that God is with us and that we are bound together by the Holy Spirit into an amazing and mysterious representation of Jesus on the earth … The Body of Christ. We don’t pray to a God far away.  God in the Spirit inhabits his people.  Prayer is something that actually can be continuous.  Our challenge is to remember that the listening and loving Intellect we long to engage in prayer IS ALWAYS WITH US … ALWAYS AVAILABLE … ALWAYS LISTENING. We are the ones that choose to shut down.  When we “get” the fact that God never leaves us … that his Spirit is in us, loving us toward health … well, we change.  We become new.  Life becomes full.

Today as you journey, pay attention to your breath. Both biblical languages (Greek and Hebrew) have the same word for breath and Spirit. How delightful of God to give us such a reminder. When you take a breath, you engage Spirit. In this context unceasing prayer, unceasing interaction with the Spirit, becomes our best hope for a good day!  

LORD, help me remember today that you inhabit every breath I take! It might take some getting used to, but help me learn the amazing joy of praying without ceasing!
-jan kempe