Episode #76 Jesus, Mercy. – Breath Prayer

Hi friends. Welcome to Good God Talks. I'm Jen, and I'm so excited to get to spend these few minutes with you today as we have uncommon conversations with God in the everyday moments of our daily lives.

Today we're starting a new series, exploring the expression and the activity of breath prayer. Now, for some of us that might be a common thing that we're used to using in our times of talking with God and meditating on scripture or contemplative prayer. But it is definitely not something that I grew up with and I'm far from an expert. I'm just going to be sharing with you a little bit from my own practice and how I have found breath prayer to be helpful in the ways that I connect with God.

The way that I've known and come to understand and practice breath prayer is really short prayers that can be repeated, that can be meditated on, that can be contemplated as we breathe. So you set aside a few minutes, or even sometimes as you're going through a difficult activity, you use the practice of breath prayer to kind of slow down your breathing to make space to sit with the prayer that you're praying and use just a few words to connect and communicate with God.

What many believe is the most common breath prayer comes from an experience that someone had with Christ: the healing of blind Bartimaeus recorded for us in Mark 10.

1. I love the healing of Bartimaeus and what that meant for this man.

2. I love this depiction of what has sometimes been called the "Jesus Prayer" or "the prayer of the heart." And it's pulling from verse 47, "Jesus, have mercy on me."

Or even simply " Jesus. Mercy."

When we don't have words to pray or when we don't have breath for many words, we can still pray.

One of the reasons that I like breath prayer is because it gives a really tangible way to connect what we're doing physically in our physical body with our spirit. With how we're connecting with God, with what we're filling our minds with, or lending our thoughts toward. There are times going throughout my day where I will get frustrated and I'll pray a breath prayer or, I'll be going through something really difficult, and I also start praying as I inhale and as I exhale.

In 1 Thessalonians 5:17 we're instructed to "pray without ceasing." We can use that continual breathing as a way of staying in a place of continual connection and communication with God.

As I'm introducing this new series, the rest of the episodes for these next few weeks are going to be focusing on Psalm 23, and there's really great succinct verses there that we can practice as breath prayer.

I don't know what you're going through. Maybe the idea of a breath prayer is beautiful in its simplicity to have a few minutes and slow down because this season is fast paced and full of energy and vibrancy and expenditures. And it will be nice to just take a minute and breathe as you pray.

Or maybe for you this season is difficult. You want to connect with God in prayer, but you don't have a lot of air to fuel your conversation or a lot of words that you could clearly communicate. Let breath prayer be a simple time of slowing down to connect with God.

For our questions in this series, I'm going to share a breath prayer contemplation. For you, this prayer might be complete as you sit and breathe and pray. Or maybe as you sit with this prayer and you think of these words and you speak them to the Lord, they'll spark questions for you. They'll spark new inquiries and new things to talk with him about.

God delights when we engage with him. Whatever that looks like for you, use these few minutes to have a shared experience with him.

And so today, with our inhale speak the name of Jesus, and with our exhale ask for mercy.

Inhale: Jesus.

Exhale: Mercy.

Jesus. Mercy.

Have a good talk.

And if you've been encouraged by this content, please share it with a friend and help them grow in their conversational relationship with God too!

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