Monday, August 4, 2014

Oxygen

(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

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