Joel Slater

Think about your breathing for a second. It’s not something you usually think about except for the few times in primary school when you had a breath holding contest with your equally stupid friend or when you’re snorkeling off the coast of Australia. Other than that it takes care of itself, so much so we keep breathing even when we’re asleep, it’s on autopilot.

We breath from the moment we are born until we draw our last breath and we die. If someone collapses in front of you the first thing you’d check is their pulse which is directly tied in with their ability to breathe. That being said I state my case that breathing is important, we breathe continually and without ceasing.

The bible tells us to do things continually and praying is one of them, (1 Thessalonians 5:17) when I think of praying and how it should be a part of every moment of our day, I think of how we breathe, it comes naturally to us in the same way that prayer should flow from our hearts.

This past Sunday as I was leading worship thoughts of someone who I had just talked to (and shared a frustrating situation that they were in the middle of) jumped into my head. I thought they may be having a hard time entering into worship because of the crappy week they were having. In a moment I prayed for them and asked God to help them to engage with Him during the morning worship. I didn’t fall on my knees, I didn’t stop the singing so I could pray and if I wasn’t telling you now, you’d never know that I prayed as I was playing and singing.

It was simple, straight to the point, it didn’t consist of babble as we’re told not to do in Matthew 6:7 and didn’t take my attention away from what I was doing on stage at the same time, it was as simple as breathing.

Have you prayed today? Have you drawn breath?