I had no idea what lay ahead when I began seeking to understand and to live by the Breath of God.

At the time, I worked with women torn by demands that they choose between women’s ministries and women’s missions organizations. In essence, they were being told they had to choose between inhaling and exhaling.

Underlying that were other messages most of us had received, but few of us had faced:

• We were to obey the letter of Scripture, as our denomination taught it.
• We were to distrust and avoid the Spirit, whom the Father and the Son sent to teach us all things.
• We were consigned to “women’s work,” which was segregated and circumscribed. Whatever we did was counted peripheral, not pivotal, to the kingdom of God.

And so I began to teach, “A Matter of Life and Breath,” to women who were expected to live the Christian life without any breath at all.

Awakening

Together, we explored the parallels between Spirit and breath. We learned:

Christ-in-us is to us as breath to our bodies. As we interact moment by moment with him who is the Breath, we receive and release God’s life.

In the process, we know him and make him known. And that IS the work of his kingdom.

It is also the wonder of relationship. Our interaction with the Breath of God is key to communing with Christ. It is key to going with him. It is vital to building relationships with other people who are learning to live from their true identity in him.

Now, many years later, I also realize:

Receiving and releasing the Breath of God is key to passing through deep waters and not being pulled under. It is key to walking through the fire and not being consumed.

Receiving and releasing the Breath is, in fact, the primary act of faith that gets the toxins out and the life-giving stuff in, no matter what you’re going through.

Exploring

This Life and Breath series is a result of my ongoing attempts to put into words the very essence of living in Christ. I offer these posts with the prayer that you will find more than words here. By God’s grace working in both of us, may you find spirit and life.

This post is the most free-floating of the series. It can serve as an introduction, an overview or a summary. The other six posts fall into two groups of three.

Three posts explore how it looks when our lives breathe with God’s life.

Spirit to spirit: A matter of life and breath: In Scripture, God makes a direct connection between breath and spirit, and so, between the act of breathing and the act of relating to him. By his very choice of words, he identifies “spirit” with something we know intimately and require profoundly. He shows us: As breath is to the body, being filled with the Spirit and living in the power of the Spirit are vital to life in Christ.

Inhaling the life and breath of God: As you inhale the breath of God, you are being filled with the Spirit. You’re choosing to receive the different aspects of his life that he is breathing into you. You’re opening yourself to mystery and paradox, growth and change. As you inhale the breath of God, you embrace life.

Exhaling the life and breath of God: As you exhale the breath of God, you walk by the Spirit. Animated and motivated by the Spirit, you give what you have freely received from him. As you exhale the breath of God, you release life.

Three posts explore two stories from Scripture, to find how it can look and what God does when his people have cut off their breath.

Code blue! Breathing crises in the church: When God’s people push against, instead of moving with, his Spirit, he knows the situation is dire. He sounds the alarm: “My people aren’t breathing! Code blue!”

Code blue! God’s cry to the breathless: God always notices when someone he loves stops breathing. He notices, and he comes to revive and restore.

Code blue! God’s call to the breath-filled: If God wakes you up to lifelessness and powerlessness in people who identify themselves as his, time is of the essence. But what in the world do you do?

The stories featured in all three posts? Ezekiel and the dry bones. John and the Sardis church.

Praying

Breathe on me, breath of God:
fill me with life anew,
that I may love as you have loved
and do as you would do.
– Edwin Hatch, 1878

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This is a 2023 repost of a post originally titled, “Breath of God.” I first published this seven-post series in summer 2013, some 14 years after I began to teach on the subject, “A Matter of Life and Breath.” In 2019, I revised and republished all seven posts.

Image by Pezibear from Pixabay