Breathe – It’s a lifestyle
March 30, 2009 by Rob Westwood-Payne
Filed under Random Jottings
Yesterday morning the Songsters sang Marie Barnett’s song Breathe in our morning service. It’s a popular worship song and it would be easy to just sing it and not think about what we’re singing.
For a long time I have thought the song is about our need of Jesus being as essential to us as breathing: without him, we die.
And so it is. But recently, God has drawn me to the line: This is the air I breathe / Your very Word, spoken through me, and I have thought about the song quite differently.
We were created to become like Christ. But we cannot reproduce the character of Jesus under our own strength. Believe me, no amount of New Year’s resolutions can make me more like Christ! I’ve tried it! Only the Holy Spirit has the power to change our lives. And as Rick Warren points out in The Purpose Driven Life:
The Spirit of God uses the Word of God to make us like the Son of God.
That’s my goal. The more of God’s Word I have in my life, the less other sources can influence me, including myself. And the more I become like Christ, the more I’ll feel His presence and the more I’ll please Him. Bringing pleasure to God is what we call worship, and it’s not a part of my life, it should be my life. Jesus hardly ever spoke about worship. His whole life was worship. In everything He did He dedicated it to God and performed it with an awareness of His presence.
That’s what I want to do. It’s best summed up for me in a song by Tim Hughes, Everything, which I’ve been listening to in the car over the past few days:
God in my living
There in my breathing
God in my waking
God in my sleeping
God in my resting
There in my working
God in my thinking
God in my speaking
Be my everything
Be my everything
Be my everything
Be my everything
God in my hoping
There in my dreaming
God in my watching
God in my waiting
God in my laughing
There in my weeping
God in my hurting
God in my healing
Christ in me
Christ in me
Christ in me the hope of glory
You are everything
Christ in me
Christ in me
Christ in me the hope of glory
Be my everything
You can hear the song and watch a video presentation here:
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Rob Westwood-Payne grew up in The Salvation Army at Norwich Citadel. He left Norwich to study at the University of Warwick and became fully involved in the music centre there culminating in his conducting Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue to a full house in Symphony Hall in Birmingham. He also transferred to The Salvation Army at Coventry City, where he became Songster Leader at the age of 21. He was made Songster Leader at Cradley Heath in April 1998 shortly before marrying Gail in the following October. He is a former leader of the West Midlands Divisional Youth Chorus and is currently Programme Director at the West Midlands Divisional Summer School for The Salvation Army. He is an Associate Solicitor in the Licensing Team of a national practice based in the south west.