WIRED FOR WORSHIP/The Air I Breathe

We are all worshipers...of something. But are we spending our lives and filling our days with what matters most?

Not everyone may frequent the church on the corner, but we each have a place of worship. For some, it’s at the office. For others, before the mirror. Still others, on the basketball court. You were created to worship! So you naturally find a place to do it. But to worship anything less than God robs both Him and us. It’s at the foot of the cross where we feel, trying to comprehend how a holy God could chase us down with kindness and redeem us from an eternity of futile gods.

Soon all of life becomes your delighted response to God!

Whatever you are wired for, an athlete or musician, quiet or "the life of the party" - you are unique. There is no one like you on the planet. But your life has a common thread that is true of all people: you are wired for worship. Not just any worship, but for that of your Creator!

"For in Him we live and move and have our being." Acts 17:28

Isn't it a wonder how the air we breath goes right inside of us, not simply into our lungs, but all the way into our blood stream. The wonderful, incredible way in which oxygen is carried by the blood stream and its tributaries and capillaries to nourish and cleanse every cell in our bodies is a wonder of creation.

When we worship the very breath of God is expelled.

Breathing is something we usually take for granted. But until our last breath, it’s the ongoing miracle that sustains us.

At the end of a busy day we can sometimes collapse in our beds so weary and spent we have no energy left for anything, even reading. Yet we go on breathing, replenishing our cells, sustaining our bodies with vital air.

Is it possible that in the same way our souls are to be nourished and sustained by God through spiritual breathing? Many great saints were simply ordinary people who knew this secret of ongoing prayer: spiritual breathing. Through prayer they drew God into their deepest selves, like air. They were nourished in ways we hardly comprehend. In some marvelous way, prayer is vital to our lives.

Lord, fill my soul with your Spirit in the same way my lungs fill with air when I breathe. Help me to remember your presence in my life and to not take you for granted. II Timothy 3:16a

Martin Luther once said, “it is no more possible to be a Christian without prayer than it is to be alive without breathing”. We are thankful for the fact that “respiration” continues constantly throughout the day, but tend to not give it much thought. The base word “re-spire” denotes the process of “inspire” and “expire”; otherwise known as breathing in and breathing out.

Our passage indicates that God has given us His Word by means of “inspiration”. Theologically speaking, we know that it was the Bible writers who experienced this “inspiration” though the Holy Spirit. These men were “inspired” because God had “expired”. Sounds funny saying that God had “expired” since we don’t typically think of “expiration” as describing “exhalation”. But is was the expiration of God’s Word through the Holy Spirit that led to the inspiration of God IN the hearts and souls of those who wrote Scripture down and passed it along to us.

God never inhales; at least not in the same sense that you and I do as a matter of necessity for life. He is Life itself and He breathes Life into those who have it. Without His Life there is no life at all. I find it interesting that the way to spiritual life is by breathing in the breath of God. Has it ever occurred to you that without “breathing” you cannot Live the Life that God has created for you? In this physical life it is the combination of inspiration (taking in of oxygen) and expiration (removal of carbon dioxide) that makes the blood tingle with life.

(Anonymous)

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