Marc's Minute #3
The bi-weekly quick "K.I.T." equipping you with Knowledge for your Head, Inspiration for your Heart, and Tools for your Hands {8/19/23}
Feature Focus
My special guest, Hannah, joins me to continue our podcast series on Voice. How are young adults finding their voice, how has the school system and church affected that journey, and does God have a voice? We get another perspective on these questions in this episode.
Listen to the whole episode!
Keep It Simple Strategy
If you are meeting with friends, in small groups, or just working on your own faith journey, then check out this week’s simple and reproducible practice tip that you can try anytime. Remember, you can always find many more FREE materials at Grace In Motion.
Today’s strategy is BREATH PRAYER. It is very simple and based on the realization that our faith is an embodied faith. In other words, Christianity, correctly understood, is a physical spirituality in that our mind and body are fully integrated. All of who we are can respond to all of who God is, so we can benefit from finding ways to engage God’s Spirit through our physical senses as well as our thoughts, feelings, and spiritual awareness.
At the most basic level, we are simply going to breathe in and out slowly with a focus on our breathing. Note how you can control it and use your breath to your advantage to slow your heart rate and ease your anxiety. You can thank God for the breath, the life, that He has given you.
Next, you can visualize something going out from you with each exhale (fear, bitterness, jealousy, etc.) and the fruit of God’s Spirit coming into you with each inhale (love, joy, peace, kindness, etc.).
You can provide even more structure with a routine known as box breathing. Picture a box (square) in which you mentally trace the outline for 4 seconds on each side. So, you will breathe IN for four seconds across the top of the box, or square, HOLD your breath in for four seconds down the right side of the box, breathe OUT for four seconds across the bottom of the square, and HOLD again for four seconds while visually tracking up the left side of the box to end. A great method is to repeat this pattern for one minute.
There are many great tools and apps that can help you with breathing exercises and visualization, such as Neuroflow or the recommended resource I featured in the last issue of Marc’s Minute, the Christian Meditation Podcast with Chaplain Jared.
Breath prayers can be done anytime, anywhere with no planning or preparation. It really is one of the simplest things you can do.
Recommended Resource
The Rule of Life podcast from Practicing the Way is a FREE, powerful series of themed discussions hosted by John Mark Comer. Each episode is done in a way to offer both information (you will learn) and transformation.
My best recommendation is for you to simply visit https://www.practicingtheway.org/practices and explore the page. Personally, I have just listened to the podcast series as episodes have been released on various topics, including worship, Sabbath, which I wrote about in my Substack article entitled Rest for the Weary, and fasting, which I wrote about in my Substack article entitled Fasting.
You can engage the content at your comfort level, whether it is only listening to the podcast on your own or participating in the practices with a group of people. So, check out Rule of Life at Practicing the Way.
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