Episode #80 Psalm 23:3 God Leads You – Breath Prayer

Hey friends, are you running so much that it's a little bit hard to catch your breath? I can relate to that sentiment, and as we're recording this, we're in the midst of a summer season, which always means more fun, more high energy, also more time at home with my kiddos, so it felt like such a great time to do a short series on breath prayer. Continuing to breathe and pray through Psalm 23, today we're actually in the second part of verse three. And we're praying through a paraphrase of the rest of that verse, which in the ESV version reads:

"He leads me in paths of righteousness for his name's sake." (Psalm 23:3b)

To break that down, righteousness is right standing with God, which is something that I totally didn't understand for a really long time. I saw righteousness as my right deeds. Me knowing and doing the right thing, the good thing that a good Christian should do, and I did a lot of heavy lifting, trying to figure out how to live my life in a righteous way. Instead of recognizing that right standing with God only comes from Christ. My right standing is nothing that I can merit or achieve on my own, but my righteousness is attributed to me as a gift from God. And then I get to align myself to live with growing awareness of who he is and what he has done for me. Not to achieve righteousness, but to receive righteousness. And I see that in this verse as well, that he leads me in paths of righteousness, that he leads me down right paths. God is the one who does the work. And yes, we align our works with our faith, because faith without deeds is dead. But it originates from, it begins with God and the right standing that He extends to us through the atonement of Jesus. It is for His namesake. Because of who He is. It is fully accomplished by God. It's His name. Not my name that allows me to have right standing with him.

There's a quote from Henry Nouwen that says, "The Lord's guidance is gentle and patient, leading us in the paths of righteousness." I can see that on display in so many areas of my life. When I am trying to guide myself to find the right path, the correct path, I'm usually not very kind or gentle or patient with myself, but the Lord as our good shepherd, he is all of those good things.

I don't know what that looks like for you in this season. If you have time and space to ask God questions about that, I encourage you to do so. Asking Him where this is difficult for you, or to show you how He has been leading you in right paths. Talking with him about ways that you see that kindness on display in your life and thanking him or asking him what right paths he is leading you down next as you continue throughout your day or your week. Maybe it's even in recognizing that this is not your current experience right now. But you're asking him to make it so.

We're going to end this episode with a breath prayer, where we take the verse and we've simply just broken it up into a few words that we can pray and align with a breath, with an inhale and an exhale. And I encourage you. Take a few minutes, 30 seconds, three minutes, whatever space you have in your day to sit with this verse and to affirm it as you pray it back to the Lord. And to talk with God about it. So as we pray,

We inhale: God leads me.

We exhale: In right paths.

Inhale: God leads me.

Exhale: In right paths.

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!

Connect with Jen on Instagram