Breathing and Prayer

The other day I was reading a book called Loving My Actual Life.  It talked about this thing called breath prayer.  You inhale and speak a name of God and then exhale and express a desire of your heart.

For example: “Immanuel” on the inhale and “Be near” on the exhale. Several years ago on my round the world trip I read about about how evangelism should be like breathing.  

This has me wondering if there is more to our prayer lives and our evangelism than strategies.  Perhaps it's more a part of us, similar to how our breathing is a part of our nature.  

I believe that we are made to worship God in Christ Jesus and so it makes sense that breathing is a part of that. Maybe that's God's way of showing us that prayer is so vital.  

There's also the imagery throughout the Bible of blood.  Christ shed his blood for us.  Blood is the life source of everything we know.  Blood brings oxygen  to every part of our bodies so that we might have life.  Without blood, we are dead.  Without the blood of Christ we are similarly dead, in a spiritual sense.  

Breathing and blood are things we never think about but are vital to our survival.  How much of our everyday life is prayer?  Is it our life source like breathing and blood?  Or do we forget about the very thing that gives us spiritual life like we do the things that give us physical life?

Breathing and prayer.  Two seemingly unrelated topics but upon closer inspection are indeed very intertwined.