john on Breathing

Breathing is one of the few body processes that can be regulated both consciously and unconsciously. We cannot intentionally lower our heart rate or willfully regulate our blood pressure, but we can c...

Breathing is the bridge between the brain and the body.

To get a sense of how breathing is regarded by modern medical professionals, think back to your last check-up. Chances are your doctor took your blood pressure, pulse, and temperature, then placed a s...

[A] vivid scene from the Gospel of John [John 20:19-23]. It’s intimate from the start-a stunningly private scene that occurs behind locked doors among dear friends. The scene begins with a friendly gr...

Breath has a rhythm to it, a cadence of inhales and exhales. Prayer has a rhythm too, a cadence of inhaling God’s grace and exhaling our fears.

Jesus, help me breathe My flimsy barricades of control are failing Again Worries pressing in Closer Closer Closer Stifling Searing I’m suffocating in ashen dreams Help me breathe Help me believe Al...

Of Him nothing appears in visible form; He never steps out from the intangible void. Hovering, undefined, incomprehensible, He remains a mystery. He is as the wind! We hear its sound, but can not tell...

When J. K. Rowling created the Harry Potter universe, she naturally drew on her own experiences to flesh it out. This is true even for such alarming creatures as ‘dementors’. These are soulless beings...

The Text Encounters with the Living Jesus This text from the Gospel of John is so rich and full that it could be divided up into several sermons. The entire chapter is a record of how different disc...

Preaching Commentary The Text Encounters with the Living Jesus This text from the Gospel of John is so rich and full that it could be divided up into several sermons. The entire chapter is a recor...

This scripture guide is adapted from the Summer Settings sermon guide Road Trips II . For more Summer Settings sermon guides, click below. Saul's Confident Error Last week, we considered A...

Saul's Confident Error Last week, we considered Abram and the way that God may send us out on a journey, waiting to see his will without knowing the destination.  Today we move forward to Saul on...

In her book The Broken Way, Ann Voskamp shares a beautiful exchange between her and her husband (The farmer). His encouragement is for all of us: that God uses the broken things in this world for good...

Breathe in us, O Holy Spirit, That our thoughts may all be holy. Act in us, O Holy Spirit, That our work, too, may be holy. Draw our hearts, O Holy Spirit, That we love but what is holy. Strengthen us...

God just doesn’t throw a life preserver to a drowning person. He goes to the bottom of the sea, and pulls a corpse from the bottom of the sea, takes him up on the bank, breathes into him the breath of...

For ‘the Spirit breathes where He wills, and thou hearest His voice, but canst not tell whence He cometh or whither He goeth.’ He blesses the body that is baptized, and the water that baptizes. Despis...

Follow the Spirit. Walk in the rhythm of the Spirit. Sing in the Spirit. Pray with the Spirit. Be filled with the Spirit. Sow to the Spirit. Reap from the Spirit. Preserve the unity of the Spirit. Be ...

To enter into the realm of contemplation one must in a certain sense die: but this death is in fact the entrance into a higher life. It is a death for the sake of life, which leaves behind all that we...

Follow the Spirit. Walk in the rhythm of the Spirit. Sing in the Spirit. Pray with the Spirit. Be filled with the Spirit. Sow to the Spirit. Reap from the Spirit. Preserve the unity of the Spirit. Be ...

Father: You shape and form us so each is unique yet all are in Your image, when You breathe into us the breath of life. We praise You! Jesus, God the Son–Resurrection and Life: You chose to die and ri...

Leader: Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. People: That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Sp...

In the Christian story God descends to reascend. He comes down; down from the heights of absolute being into time and space, down into humanity; down further still, if embryologists are right, to reca...

Still our minds, God, and calm our hearts, so that we may hear the Word that comes from you that leads us in life, that protects us in struggle, that guides us in doing your will, that strengthens us ...

This is the end - for me the beginning of life.

When I graduated from college I was given one of the greatest opportunities of my young life. A group of my friends were told that if we were able to purchase a flight to the Cayman Islands, we would ...

Life-Giving God, we have spent our lives on that which does not feed our souls, and labored for that which is not life. We have starved ourselves and others of your love. We open ourselves to yo...

Every man must do two things alone; he must do his own believing and his own dying.

It is interesting that in Scripture, in both the original Hebrew and Greek languages, the word used in speaking of the Spirit is the word that can also mean “wind.” In like manner, the Holy Spirit wor...

Faith is the gift of God. So is the air, but you have to breathe it; so is bread, but you have to eat it; so is water, but you have to drink it.

This total self-giving, to which the Son and the Spirit respond by an equal self-giving, is a kind of “death,” a first, radical “kenosis,” as one might say. It is a kind of “super-death” that is a com...