Every Breath We Take: Living in the Presence, Love, and Generosity of God

By Terry Wardle

Christians are desperate for intimacy with the Lord. While grateful for all he has done, we long to encounter his presence in our daily lives. Amazingly, God desires the same relationship with us, and he has made it possible for us to live in his presence, love, and generosity with every breath we take.

This book is designed to help you experience intimacy with God in your daily life. It presents a simple, yet effective, spiritual practice that raises awareness of the abiding presence of the Lord in what has been called "the sacrament of the present moment."

Every Breath We Take will give you a deeper understanding of God's presence, love, and generosity, and provide you with a pathway to encounter him in deep and transforming moment-by-moment encounters.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Leafwood Publishers
• Release date: Jul 7, 2015
• ISBN: 9780891126904

Book preview

generosity?

1

AWAKENING

    AWARENESS

I wasn’t prepared for what the Lord spoke into my heart that morning. But it rang true and ultimately reshaped my understanding of meditation and prayer. I had arisen early, as I have countless times over the years, to spend time with the Lord. In the predawn light, I made my way to a comfortable chair near the fireplace. A bible, journal, and devotional reading were waiting for me. Normally, I would spend time meditating on a selected text, write prayers and reflections in a journal, rest in communing silence, and read from a devotional classic. Occasionally, I would integrate other spiritual practices I found helpful. This was my daily pattern for devotional time. Devotional time was important. It provided a vital connection with the Lord and had, over the years, been a regular channel of much-needed grace. The Spirit nurtured me in those quiet early morning hours. He was healing me.

Not every morning was a grand slam. Most days were more routine than revolutionary. Even then, these early hours fed something deep inside, even when I didn’t experience any dramatic movement. It was more than a discipline. It was a necessity, and I did it because it was a nonnegotiable commitment that sustained me.

On this particular morning, I was desperate. Life, stress, my own nagging weakness, and a deep inner weariness motivated me to be more direct with the Lord. More honest. I prayed, Lord, be present with me this morning. I wanted more than the normal routine. I needed to feel the Holy Spirit, to encounter his manifest presence, to know by experience—not just by faith—that he was there, listening and responding to my cry. I was present, or so I thought, and I wanted the Lord to be equally present.

I wasn’t prepared for the rapidity and the intensity of the Lord’s response. I received a word from the Lord. Two words actually. Two simple words as real and clear as any I had heard in the past. I had challenged the Lord to be present with me in some existential, even mystical, experience. Jesus spoke his own challenge. He said, No, you. That was it. No, you. With those two simple words, the Holy Spirit began to reveal the heart of my problem. There was a barrier to the type of encounter I was so desperate to experience. I was pointing my finger at the Lord, complaining that I showed up regularly for years, yet he often did not. With two words, the table was turned. The barrier was not the Lord’s absence, but my own. I may have been there every morning, sitting in my chair reading, reflecting, meditating, and waiting. But how there was I?

I was faithful to show up, but I was seldom fully present. My thoughts were usually consumed with past events weighing heavily on me, or I was anxiously ruminating on things that I believed were about to happen. Back and forth my mind would go, focused obsessively on what was or what might be. These were not simple thoughts. They were far more complex. As I rehearsed the past, my mind would play out the details like a motion picture in my mind. I would visualize the events, reengage the sensations and feelings that took place, repeatedly mull over what people did or did not do. I would form beliefs about what it all meant and how I should best respond.

I didn’t limit this mental time travel to the past. As I anxiously anticipated the future, similar processes took shape. I would imagine potential events, engaging my senses and feelings. I would play out all potentialities, creating an emotional whirlwind that invariably led to unhealthy conclusions. As I reflected on the Lord’s words, I was convinced. Every day, much of my time was consumed in a perpetual emotional stew composed of things that had happened and things that might happen. It was the way I spent my day, including my time with the Lord.

Even during devotional exercises, I battled consuming thoughts about the past and future. I would try to focus on a text, or prayer, or reading, but there was a war going on for my attention. Because I was engaged in a past/future focus, I was seldom available in the present moment. How could I genuinely encounter the Lord? Even if the Lord were speaking, I wasn’t always listening. Or, better said, the noise created from my past/future focus drowned out any and all present-moment encounters. The problem with my time with the Lord did not rest with the Lord withholding his presence. It was about me. I was not present in the moment.

I like Greg Boyd and most of what he writes. He has a helpful book entitled Present Perfect. Boyd states that there is no moment out in the future more full of the presence of the Lord than the moment we are in right now.¹ Our problem is not the absence of God’s presence, but the absence of our awareness of that transforming, intimate presence. With so much energy focused on past/future concerns, we are closed to present-moment realities. We have eyes that do not see and ears that do not hear. We are not awake to what is really happening; we are preoccupied with anxious concern, seduced away from the present moment.

Richard Rohr has written about present-moment awareness in his book, The Naked Now: Learning to See as the Mystics See. In it he writes, Immediate, unmediated contact with the moment is the clearest path to divine union; naked, undefended, and nondual presence has the best chance of encountering the Real Presence.² While God certainly exists outside of time, he is not seeking intimacy with us while we are preoccupied with past/future concerns. He is present in the now and will have communion with any person awake enough to meet him