DAY 1 – FULL OF LIFE

Breathing – it’s a key sign of life. When a baby is born, everyone in the room holds their breath until the baby lets out their very first cry. They’re waiting for a sign of life. Every breath we take gives us life, and if you’ve done a first aid course you would know that if you stop breathing, something is seriously wrong.

This natural experience helps us to understand our Spiritual life. Before we accept Jesus as our Lord and Saviour, we are spiritually dead because sin has separated us from the true source of life who is God. Salvation is known as being ‘born again’ because when we commit our lives to follow Christ, we receive the breath of the Spirit. Jesus describes the Holy Spirit as our spiritual breath and in him, we find abundant life.

If we are not connected to him, our spiritual life starts to falter. If we ignore this for too long, we are at risk of becoming spiritually dead. We can see what this is like when we think of our physical world. When we are short of breath physically, we become fatigued and have less ability to endure and limited capacity. We’re unable to live life to its fullest.

When we are struggling to breathe spiritually, we might feel like we are only just surviving, empty, with limited tolerance for trials that may come up. We might be keeping our heads above water but we’re definitely not thriving and full of life.

When I think of struggling to breathe spiritually, I think of swimming underwater and starting to run out of air. How good does it feel when you come up out of the water and can take a big deep breath?

When we’re breathing fully, we could look at the things Jesus says we can do and feel in our spirit a belief that we can do them, maybe even with ease. But when we’re struggling to breathe, we may look at these same things and feel that they’re at best, difficult or at worst, impossible.

As you read these descriptions of what it feels like to be breathing fully or struggling to breathe, which one did you resonate with? Are you thriving, breathing deeply, full of faith in what Jesus says or are you barely keeping your head above water, empty and focusing on getting from one breath to the next?

Journal:

• Reflect on where you’re at right now and write down what you observe.
• What it would feel like to be spiritually full of life? Write down the things that come to mind.