Interval training or exercise is working (in my case, walking) at a slower pace, then a faster pace—in intervals. It is supposed to strengthen heart and lungs. I started this week and noticed already that my normal shallow breathing has become deeper.
This morning I’m reading about the major attributes of God: all-powerful (omnipotent), all-knowing (omniscient), everywhere at once (omnipresent), and eternal, without beginning and without end. My book says, “He alone lives forever—in fact, he is alive in a sense that we cannot begin to understand, for he is the giver of life, the sustainer of life, and the restorer of life—he is life!”
When I read that, a phrase from Acts 17 popped to mind, “In Him we live and move and have our being.” Suddenly I became acutely aware of my breathing, and my eyesight, and that I can hear, and feel, and swallow. This life that I experience is from God. He breathed into Adam and made him a living being (Genesis 2:7). Without the life of God, would there be any life at all? The Bible says no.
When the apostle Paul traveled to Athens, he noted that the people were religious, but the entire city was involved in idol worship. After finding an altar dedicated “TO THE UNKNOWN GOD,” he went to the Areopagus, their center for philosophical debate, and started talking to them about the God that they sensed was out there, but they didn’t know who He was.
Paul said, “The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands. And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else. From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’”
With a few sentences, Paul says a mouthful about God. He declares that He is Creator of all things, Lord of all, and self-sustaining. He is life and He gives life to all. He made one man and from that one man He produced nations of human beings to fill the earth and live where (and when) He determined. And should anyone wonder why He bothered, Paul says He did it so we would seek Him. However, unlike the Athenian view that He is “unknown” and “out there” suggesting He is unreachable, Paul says God is as close to us as our own life.
I know God is not the air that surrounds me, the air that I breathe, but I sometimes think of His presence like that. He is around me, close to me all the time. I sense His Spirit who is as real as that air. He does give me life and sustains my life (as the air is vital to life), but He is also personal, a God who loves me, a God who makes Himself known to me. As I think about all these things, my heart is filled with awe and worship.
The book I’m reading, Recalling the Hope of Glory, is filled with Scripture and wonderful thoughts like these about the Lord. In three days, I’ve read only four pages and the Bible verses that go with them and am overjoyed. I hope that the next 467 pages will be as rich with truth for I’m eager to see what more God will show me about Himself and His glory.
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