(submitted by Kelton Gunter)
Who among all these does not know that the hand
of the LORD has done this, in whose hand is the life of every living thing, and
the breath of all mankind? Job 12:9-10
(Recently, Cody Gunter experienced a
collapsed lung. The healing of that lung
took weeks and left Cody dependent on respirators and tubes for air. His father, Kelton Gunter shared some
insights he had while in the hospital with Cody with Lara Cook while on the bus
ride to Beach Camp. These are thoughts
worth considering.)
Have you ever been in the hospital and had to be on a
respirator or had surgery under anesthesia?
Surgery is a very scary.
Anesthesia is required to sedate the patient to the point where the
brain does not even instruct the lungs to breathe. The patient is totally dependent on the
anesthesiologist to move air into and out of the lungs. The anesthesiologist is the most important
person in the patient’s life; every breath taken is because of him. Turn off the oxygen and we would be gasping
for our next breath. That is the way we
can feel sometimes spiritually – gasping; struggling for each and every
breath.
It is easy to trust God when everything is going well. In fact, we may not even give Him a second
thought. We put Him in His neat little
space we have created for Him and bring Him out frantically when we get
strangled and need His life-giving oxygen.
As we walk around in our lives we give no thought to breathing. It just happens inside of us. If you have ever had a difficult time
breathing for any reason, like asthma or pneumonia, then you know how much
energy you can expend trying to breathe and how weary it can make you. It can wear you out real fast!
We don’t have to struggle like that with Jesus. We just have to be willing to let go and
trust Him with our every breath. He is
the great respirator and we are totally, 100% dependent on Him for each and
every breath we take. We can choose to
surrender in faith or gasp our way through the hard times until we get hooked
up to God’s oxygen mask and oxygen tank, only to shrug it off as soon as we
think we are good on our own.
Literally every breath we take is completely dependent on
God. He is our respirator, with us twenty-four
hours a day, seven days a week, in good times and bad. He is capable of meeting the needs of a whole
universe and so much more capable of meeting our needs than we are. He never
leaves us, turns off the oxygen or cuts the cord; but we do. Sometimes we don’t even realize it is there,
until it suddenly is not. Just like
physical breathing for our bodies, we don’t think about it, we just do it. But when we suddenly can’t breathe we are
very aware that something is not working right.
As followers of Jesus Christ we walk with the Holy Spirit
inside of us; with the forgiveness of sin; with the whole of creation around
us. These things we have through no
effort of our own. They were given to
us. We inherited them. Like the oxygen around us we do not focus on
them. We do not measure to see if there
is enough oxygen in each breath. We
assume it will be there. We do not
measure the Holy Spirit or the sin forgiven.
We do not perceive God forcing air into and out of our lungs with each
breath. Yet He does! Oh how we would pay attention to God if He
stopped. Yet He does not.
Remember with each breath we are dependent on God; not just for
the air we breathe, although that is truly important, but for the forgiveness
of sin when Jesus breathed his last.
Scripture to Claim:
And Jesus, crying out with
a loud voice, said, “Father, INTO YOUR HANDS I COMMIT MY SPIRIT.” Having said
this, He breathed His last. Luke 23:46
