For just a moment, stop what you’re doing and close your eyes, breathe deeply and exhale slowly.
The breath you just took is not sustained by anything you did.
Every moment of every day you breathe in and out but seldom if ever spare a moment to realize what occurs during the process.
It has nothing to do with living and everything to do with being alive.
During this simple and natural act of living, you have no control whatsoever over the next breath.
Understand this, the process of being alive places you in the most vulnerable position possible, because you are entirely dependent upon the one who sustains life.
Your breath derives from your intimate, loving proximity to a God who ordains your life as something to be lived in His presence. He does this without asking for recognition or gratitude. So, whether or not you believe, He remains as close as the breath passing through your existence.
The wish to stop breathing merely challenges His ability to overcome a desperation, hopelessness, and fear of living. I would not recommend challenging His ability in any way, shape, or form, but should you find yourself tempted, close your eyes, breathe deeply and exhale slowly. As you do so, let the inhalation/exhalation speak the Name of Jesus. At that moment, He will reveal all that He has overcome of life and living.
You cannot end this by ending your breath.
Sometimes, it becomes difficult to choose life amid the desperation, hopelessness, and fear of this world, and although the choice is yours, He remains as close as the last breath you took.
You know what He expects.
You know what He desires.
It is simply this…
Breathe along with Him.
He has control of the many things the world throws your way with its attempt to halt your life. But the things of this world control neither you nor your breath. And although all life belongs to Him, He has dispensed with the freedom to make choices.
Again, you know what He expects and desires, and your hesitation to make the wrong choice proves exactly this.
Remember, you are greatly loved, or you would not be alive to make choices.
You would be nothing.
But you are everything to Him.
Breathe along with Him, permitting His presence to pass through you like a breath that never ends, because it never does.
If He sustains the breath of life, how much more can He do if you just make the choice to let Him become as natural and simple as the act of breathing?
