Jennifer Tucker - Breath as Prayer: Calm Your Anxiety, Focus Your Mind, and Renew Your Soul

You can breathe relief.

You can know: The moment you fold your hands in prayer, a greater revolution begins than if you took up armsand it begins in your heart.

The revolution begins right there, with your next heartbeat:

Your cries directly usher you immediately into the very presence of God. I called to God, to my God I cried out... he heard me call; my cry brought me right into his presencea private audience! (2 Samuel 22:7 THE MESSAGE ). Your prayers are more than a desperate thing; they are a transporting thing, the most important thing. Your prayers immediately relocate you to face the tender face of God. Your every breathinhale, exhalemakes the sound of His name, is calling for HimYHWH, YHWH.

And He who makes us

will make it

so we make it.

Make it to the next breath, to the next moment, to the next sunrise, to the next season, to the next step that will take us closer to home and Him.

When life leaves us gasping for air, prayer is how you grasp the steadying, sure hand of God.

You are going to make ityou are going to breathe through a story you desperately wanted to be different. To learn to breathe prayers through all the labor pains of living is to be delivered into peace.

Because the real purpose of prayer is not about convincing God to do what we want but about awakening to what God already is doing and doing that redemptive work with Him. Prayer is the subversive work that defies the lie that all that is happening is just what we see but trusts that underneath, and through everything, Gods revolutionary and redeeming work is still victoriously happening.

Anything is a blessing which makes us pray, writes Charles Spurgeon.

And as two friends who can testify to this truth, two mothers, two daughters of the King of kings, Jenn Tucker and I have long walked together through some achingly dark nights of the soul, standing with each other, kneeling with each other, grieving with each other, breathing prayers with each other, for each other, and the hard things become holy things as we bring them to Him.

Jenn is a genuine woman of the Word, a woman who trusts that God is trustworthy, that He communicates, and a life of intimately communicating with Him, and daily listening to Him, leads to a life of deeply fulfilling communion, even, especially, in crisis. This profoundly personal prayer journey Jenn invites all the weary on is one bore out of her own deep valleys, and she is an uncommonly kind guide and wise companion, breathing prayers with you every step of the long way through.

In the midst of your wounding trials and winding trails, she will gently take your hand, show you how to take the next deep breath, look up in the dark, and pray like Columba of Iona:

Be a bright flame before me, O God

a guiding star above me.

Be a smooth path below me,

a kindly shepherd behind me

today, tonight, and forever.

Alone with none but you, my God,

I journey on my way;

what need I fear when you are near,

O Lord of night and day?

More secure am I within your hand

than if a multitude did round me stand.

Amen.

Whatever surrounds, God surrounds, closer than your next breath, your next heartbeat.

Short prayers, breath prayers, long soften your heart to surrender into the shape of Gods hands. And when your heart is softly surrendered to Gods, the revolution of all things wins freedom, wins real release from all fear. Love Himself is here.

Breathe.

Pray.

Breathe.

Pray.

When you live in prayer, you live in peace.

Your next breath can be your getaway to God, where you retreat into Him and the deepest peace youve even known.