Breathe Without Ceasing

Designed for Pneuma

9/21/2024

an analogy

When you are born again, you belong to the world of air. You live and move and have your being in AIR.

But, like it or not, you must get in the water. You have to be in the water, but you DEPEND on oxygen.

You are in the world (of water), not of it.

The Greek word for spirit and breath is the same, pneuma. I’m sure you can see the connection with all of this.

Do you want to know what it means to “pray without ceasing”?

As in the video, it means you live on oxygen, so you never stop breathing!

If you “forget,” you are a fool, and you die.

1) The lazy or empty or pretenders or easily distracted by mixed motives may attempt to “swim” or pretend to “swim” for a few strokes here and there, but sooner or later they will choke on the habitat, the world, the “water.”

At best, they’ll make very little progress toward the goal because they have to always stop and start to try to “catch their breath.” They swim “unevenly” because they have not developed any fluidity to their breathing and strokes. They are made to enjoy a steady supply of air fluidly synchronized with their strokes. But they make it harder on themselves by not reaching and rotating and breathing—as if they BELONG to the air and the resistance of the water is made to be SLICED THROUGH while enjoying constant air.

Then there are those who try to enjoy this constant air by refusing to put their face in the water. They opt to keep their head out of the water when they “swim.” After all, this seems to work well enough when they are swimming all alone in still water. But once they find themselves in a sea with waves and other people splashing all around, this “technique” will not get them where they want to go. They drift off course. They gain little ground, and they get disoriented when the splashes in the face inevitably come.

If someone is lazy or unfocused or distracted by those kicking and pounding water all around them, they can barely hold a line towards the goal. They find their “journey” rather useless and painful in this habitat called water, or “this present Age.”

Breathing and reaching and “pulling, then pushing” the water with “even” natural Breathing is what we are Designed for.

2) Meanwhile, the religious world is bound up in HATING the natural Design described above. They want Jesus to have a schedule and x-y axis program, beads or stomping and shouting—or repeating mindless fine/sounding clichés.

The religious: “Jesus, you can’t be that free—we have RULES for this! You should be killed! We won’t be respected if you take away respect for our titles and brilliance and spirituality. We can’t trust dumb sheep to do it right. They need us clergy—and you’re ruining it. You are leading everyone astray. You need to be slandered, and then killed, in that order—so people will doubt you.”

•  P. Forsyth (1896)