Harry Kraus - Breathing Grace: What You Need More than Your Next Breath

My friend Harry Kraus is an accomplished surgeon and novelist. Now in Breathing Grace, he proves himself an insightful spiritual guide, using medical analogies to illustrate great truths. Harrys heart for God and for people spills over on each page.

Randy Alcorn,
author of Heaven, Safely Home, and Deception

There is no shortage of books on divine grace, but this one is different. Kraus has resorted to a medical metaphor, which he uses especially well in an era when the public is obsessed with health and medicine. But the real lack is spiritual maintenance, which in this presentation is laid out in an interesting and exciting fashion. Thrilling case histories, both medical and spiritual, abound. The human body can go three weeks without food, three days without water, three minutes without oxygen, but spiritual need requires minute by minute dosing, and grace is the remedy. This is not merely a how to book but conveys a simple and satisfying way of life.

C. Everett Koop, M.D.;
former Surgeon General of the United States

With a physicians skill, my favorite Christian fiction writer dissects the truths of grace with compelling medical analogies. Breathing Grace is soul surgery that will transform your life as it probes the core of your relationship with God.

David Stevens, M.D., M.A. (Ethics),
executive director, Christian Medical Society

Breathing Grace by Dr. Harry Kraus, Jr. engages the reader in doing just that, to breathe grace. Dr. Kraus combines creative imagination, professional and clinical perspectives, and cross-cultural insights from his work in Africa with the Scriptures as the word of grace and does so out of his own genuine commitment to Christ. The uniting thread that runs through the book is the emphasis that knowing Jesus in grace makes a radical difference in the way we live and relate to others. Through this work by Kraus the reader will be enriched in spirit and in faith. Our witness as well will be made more effective, for we do not share our faith by an attitude of triumphalism but by an expression of the transforming grace of God as we walk in the Spirit.

Myron S. Augsburger,
former pastor;
former president of Eastern Mennonite University

Breathing Grace

Copyright 2007 by Harry Kraus

Published by Crossway Books
a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers
1300 Crescent Street
Wheaton, Illinois 60187

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, except as provided by USA copyright law.

Cover photo: iStockphotos.
Cover design: Josh Dennis

First printing, 2007

Printed in the United States of America

Scripture quotations are taken from The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. Copyright 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Bible quotations identified as from KJV are taken from The Holy Bible: King James Version.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Kraus, Harry Lee, 1960
Breathing Grace : what you need more than your next breath / Harry Kraus.
p. cm.
ISBN-13: 978-1-58134-858-3 (hc : alk. paper)
ISBN 10: 1-58134-858-4
1. MedicineReligious aspectsChristianity. 2. Grace (Theology) I. Title.
BT732.K73 2007
248.4dc22

2006029775

For those who have been shepherds in my life, the men who have whispered and shouted grace.

Tom Jones, Dick Dreyer, Bill Oden, Bob Moberg, Dick Blackwell, Billy Powell, Jerry Qualls, Al Lutz, Gerald Martin, Sam Scaggs, Kenton Slabaugh, Vernon Zook, Phil Smuland, and Phil Morrison have all faithfully taught the truths shared in this book, and I am honored to have learned from them.

Table of Contents

It is impossible to write about grace and not acknowledge that I have been the recipient of grace from so many human sources. Thus I cannot imagine claiming originality of content when I am breathing out what Ive breathed in from others. Through their writings, John Piper, Brennan Manning, Henri Nouwen, C. S. Lewis, Chuck Swindoll, and many others have their fingerprints on my life and therefore on these pages.

Ivisited Namanga last weekend. Its a border town straddling Kenya and Tanzania, a place of sweat and heat, a land so thirsty for rain that wild animals die and others misbehave.

A nurse traveling with me pointed to the side of the road. Theres another zebra. The carcass was fresh enough to be identified by the stripes. Soon the vultures would be there, and the evidence would fade. Dust to dust.

A few miles later we saw an ostrich roaming a village within a few meters of the road, pecking at the ground around the small shops in search of food. It doesnt take long to realize that famine changes everything.

Stark contrasts were everywhere. The Muslim Imam sounded the call to prayer, a haunting repetition of Arabic that interrupted my sleep at 4 in the morning. I was restless anyway, lying out on the dusty earth beneath an expansive sky and the thorns of an acacia tree. My sleeping bag was designed for a cooler climate, but it was better to stay protected from mosquitoes carrying malaria, so I opted for sweat and stayed covered up. Several sleepless hours later, with the Muslim call still hanging unabsorbed over the dry earth, another noise interrupted the African night. I crawled from my protected cocoon and stumbled toward the primary school. African Christians were praying. Loudly. Everyone at once. The jumble of voices rose as one vibrant hum, pulsing with perspiration and sincerity.

I visited Namanga as part of a hospital outreach, an effort by which free food and medicine provided the spearhead to carry the gospel into thirsty hearts. During the one-day clinic we saw nearly two thousand people. Maasai tribesmen in traditional dress. Muslim Somali women peering out through small slits in their required head coverings. And all standing out in the searing heat for hours waiting for their chance to see a doctor.

A colleague of mine sat at a worn, wooden desk in a classroom-turned-clinic and looked at the Muslim patient in front of him. Why do you think we have come?

The answer came without hesitation. You want to earn Gods favor.

Oh, how wrong the answer, but understandable coming from a graceless religion where the scales weighing good and bad are held in constant focus. I cant imagine sacrificing my job back in America, putting up with mobs of patients, heat, and no running water or electricity in a makeshift clinic to bring the news that you have to earn your way to heaven! Only the fabulous news of free grace could motivate me.

Spiritual famine is unseen by an uninitiated eye, but it is no less prevalent and devastating than the dearth thats been ravaging East Africa. Its not lack of rain but lack of grace that dries the soul and makes us dull to the water-whispers of Gods Spirit.

But Gods grace is amazing, abundant, free, and available. So why isspiritual famine an epidemic both inside and outside the church?

Because although weve come to Christ by recognizing grace, few of us have carried it along as essential equipment on the Christian path. We give mental assent to the truth of the gospel message, but we live our lives in famine, as if we could earn Gods favor. We are Gods children, but our souls are dry.

My life would be complete if only I could have peace of mind.

If only my boss would recognize my contributions.