SmellingCoffee

If we are honest, we’d admit that we all deal with bad breath from time to time, don’t we? But the Fresh Breath I’m talking about isn’t entirely in our mouths… although it will greatly affect our mouths and the aromas we carry with us and spill onto others. The kind I’m talking about won’t come as a surprise to the regular readers of Smelling Coffee, but it sure will be a shock to those who have googled or binged “fresh breath” or “bad breath” and were offered a link to a prayer to cure it! 🙂 (If that is you, dear Google or Bing reader, please read on… this might be the answer to a question you didn’t even know you were asking.)

During the Advent season, I read a prayer by the 6th century monk, Columbanus. This request made such an impact on me that I ask the same thing of The Lord every day for myself and my family.

“Therefore, we ask that we may know what we love, since we ask nothing other than that You give us Yourself. For You are our all; our life, our light, our salvation, our food and our drink, our God. Inspire our hearts, I ask you, Jesus, with that breath of Your Spirit.” Columbanus

I shortened this request to “O Lord, give us Yourself! Inspire our hearts with the breath of Your Spirit.”

And I have watched The Lord do just that! When I ask Him for Himself, and for the breath of His Spirit to inspire and motivate me, He pours over and into me a new love for Jesus and an energy to serve Him in even the “little” things in life. Holy Breath!

But recently, I realized that I not only want Holy Breath, I want Fresh Holy Breath.

Did you know that often bad breath is caused by something internal? Much of it is caused by what’s stuck on our tongues. We remedy unpleasant breath by changing what we consume, and by making use of the tools we have to scrape our tongues, brush our teeth, and wash out our mouths. If we will do these things, the aroma flowing from us will be much more pleasant and fresh.

Often those of us who are Christians {Believers in Jesus Christ, Christ Followers} can have great smelling breath in the physical sense, while being unaware of a lurking, debilitating case of Spiritual Halitosis. How do I know this? Because I’ve had it. I wake up with it every day (not the great smelling physical breath – I wish, but the stinky, stale, gross Spiritual Halitosis).

Just like the remedy for unpleasant physical breath, Fresh Breath can be ours by changing what we consume, and by making use of the tools we have to cleanse our hearts and mouths. In other words, by putting God’s Word in and by serious devotion to confession, repentance, and cleansing.

Remaining perpetually cleansed through immediate confession is like brushing our tongues and teeth right after eating garlic bread. If we will repent (agree with God about the horrible seriousness of the sin and what it cost Jesus, ask for forgiveness and help to never do it again, and turn ourselves 180 degrees from it) we can stay Fresh in The Lord. And what will spill from us onto others {many who are not Christ Followers} will be a pleasing aroma – not offputting bad breath!

Oswald Chambers talked about Freshness in his Jan 20, My Utmost For His Highest devotion.

“Being born again from above is a perennial, perpetual and eternal beginning; a freshness all the time in thinking and in talking and in living, the continual surprise of the life of God… Freshness does not come from obedience but from the Holy Spirit; obedience keeps us in the light as God is in the light…”

So, my Smelling Coffee friends, and my new friends who googled about bad breath (wink), this is what I now pray – my prayer for Fresh Breath – so that I can live a life with an aroma pleasing to The Lord that rises from within and without:

“O Lord, please give me Yourself! For You are my All; my Life, my Light, my Salvation, my Food and my Drink, my God. Inspire my heart today with the Fresh Breath of Your Spirit in thinking, talking, and living (actions and reactions). For Your glory, O Lord.” A men… So be it!

This is the kind of Fresh Breath whose impact will be everlasting.