Permission to Pause! Episode 1: BREATHE and Quiet Your Mind!
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Here you go 🙂
The Spirit of God has made me, the “breath of the Almighty gives [us] life” (Job 33:4)]
When I was little, we used to spend our family vacations camping—I remember one Summer—a bunch of us kids were swimming and playing in the lake. There was a on a cable that created a boundary for the swim area that we would all climb up on to bounce and dive from. I remember one time I slipped, and my hair got tangled in the cable and under water I went. The worst part was I got trapped in that tangle of hair and could not get air. My friends, unaware that I was drowning, kept right on bouncing. Finally I caught enough air to scream.
There are so many life lessons in that experience. Do you ever feel my friend, life your life is so tangled up that you are basically drowning and sometimes nobody even knows it? Nobody sees you struggling for breath?
As we begin this permission to pause journey together, I want to start where God started—with our BREATH!
We read in Genesis that God breathed life into the nostrils of the first man, Adam and have just read in The Book of Job affirms that we all have been created by God’s Spirit, and that the “breath of the Almighty gives [us] life” (Job 33:4, emphasis mine).
Indeed, there is power in the breath.
Its root meaning of the word breath is ruach (roo ack) and translate to be “moving air,”
The word occurs in the Old Testament nearly 400 times. and in Hebrew, ruach HoKodesh, means the Holy Spirit, “the breath of God” or “the holy breath.”
Before Jesus ascended into heaven after His resurrection, He appeared to His disciples, breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit” (John 20:22).
As you can see, breathing has had life-giving and rejuvenating effects on mankind since the beginning.
We are made in God’s image, made to speak and breathe life, just as He does.
The Lord designed our bodies to respond favorably to positive words and purposeful breaths.
When we PAUSE and pay attention to the breaths we take, we begin to feel better—freed of worry, filled with peace and restored with hope.
What taking a deep BREATH does for us—
- Relieves Stress
Our breathe response is controlled by a set of nerves—the main nerve being the Vagus nerve,”
One example I read about was of a car throttling down the highway at 120 miles an hour. That’s the stress response, and the Vagus nerve is the brake. When you are stressed, you have your foot on the gas, pedal to the floor. When you take slow, deep breaths, that is what is engaging the brake.”
- Reduces Pain
Doctors theorize that slow, deep breathing reduces pain by directly impacting the parts of the nervous system, helps control blood flow and skin temperature. Studies have proven that deep intentional breathing can block pain.
- Stabilizes Blood Pressure
Deep abdominal breathing promotes full oxygen exchange—that is, the beneficial trade of incoming oxygen for outgoing carbon dioxide. This type of breathing slows the heartbeat and can lower or stabilize blood pressure.
- BEST OF ALL–Pause makes room for God’s presence.
How sacred life is! How precious and fragile! Composed of 60 chemical elements that make up muscles, bones and fat, our temporary tents of dust can only endure a few weeks without food, a few days without water and only minutes without breath.
I think this fact offers significant spiritual application as we think on the power of God’s own ruach, the eternal force that propelled the first words of creation through the void of darkness, breathed life into the first Adam, and was given up unto death by the second Adam with the words, “It is finished.”
Without the Ruach HaKodesh, (roo ack ho kodesh) the Holy Spirit, continuously energizing, leading and strengthening us, we are without hope, without power, without the fruit that produces an abundant life; He is the heavenly oxygen our souls thirst for.
Lord Jesus—thank you for giving me PAUSE to BREATHE! Thank you that your very breath is in my lungs and that through my breath you give me LIFE. My very life. You are the air that I breathe. I draw you in Lord. Help me to breath you out to those you have placed in my life. Help me pause between the experiences of my life and the response I choose. Breath into me Jesus. I am yours and you are mine. AMEN!
Thank you for joining me for Episode #1 of Permission to Pause.
If it has blessed you—please subscribe and share with a friend! I am thrilled to meet with you each week for a nugget of truth; a real life story and a simple prayer.
Again, I want to remind you of the many resources I have created for you on my website. www.patlayton.net or www.permissiontopause.today
To get us stared you will visit my shop to find a FREE simple Pause and Pray Plan which will provide a tool for this very prayer style of BREATHING as well as a FREE PDF for this weeks deeper dive study.
Also–Books and Products mentioned in the devotional can be found here.
