The prophet Ezekiel and the apostle John had this in common: They saw things people around them could not.

Each followed God wholeheartedly. Each saw dramatic visions of God. Then – having seen the Lord as never before – each one saw God’s people as he had not before.

And each saw a crisis situation in which people who belonged to God lacked life and breath.

Dire situations

Notice what Ezekiel saw when he went where God led and looked where God pointed:

The hand of the Lord was on me, and he brought me out by the Spirit of the Lord and set me in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. He led me back and forth among them, and I saw a great many bones on the floor of the valley, bones that were very dry. (Ezek. 37:1-2)

If Ezekiel wondered what the bones signified, he didn’t have to wonder long. As soon as the vision ended, the Lord told him:

These bones are the whole house of Israel. They indeed say, “Our bones are dry, our hope is lost, and we ourselves are cut off!” (Ezek. 37:11 NKJV)

Centuries later, John was “in the Spirit” when he saw a very different scene. One “like a Son of Man” stood in the middle of seven lampstands, holding seven stars in his right hand. Eyes blazing, feet glowing, voice thundering, Jesus told John:

Write on a scroll what you see and send it to the seven churches.

Do not be afraid. I am the First and the Last. I am the Living One; I was dead, and now look, I am alive for ever and ever! And I hold the keys of death and Hades. (Rev. 1:11, 17-18)

Notice what John heard when the Living One addressed the church in Sardis:

You have a reputation of being alive, but you are dead. (Rev. 3:1)

Death where life should be

How stunning! How sobering! Both Ezekiel and John saw people God identified as his own – yet who lacked breath, hope, life. In each case, the breathlessness was rampant; the situation, dire.

Ezekiel walked with God the Spirit through a valley “full of bones,” “a great many bones,” “bones that were very dry.” God himself identified the bones as “the whole house of Israel.”

John saw the risen Lord – and promptly fell at Jesus’ feet as if dead. Then, encouraged and pulled upright by his Lord, John wrote what Jesus spoke to each church.

When you think “Sardis church,” don’t imagine a single congregation that meets, say, on the corner of First and Main. In Revelation 3:1-6, Jesus addressed the whole Christian community in the ancient city of Sardis. And he pronounced the church “dead.”

In Ezekiel’s day, when God’s people realized their life-breath had long been cut off, they gave up hope. Even Ezekiel wondered if their situation was hopeless.

When God asked him, “Can these bones live?” Ezekiel answered, “Sovereign Lord, you alone know” (Ezek. 37:3).

In the Sardis church, when God’s people ran out of air, they didn’t even notice. They thought they were doing just fine. Other people thought the same thing. Talk was, that church was “alive.”

Responding-to-the-Spirit crises

Now, as then, people identified with the living God may feel dry and lifeless – and think there’s no help for it. Or they may believe they’re perking along spiritually as well as anybody – when in fact they’re critically short of breath.

Our Lord does not sit idly by when his people have breathing problems. He who created us and who gave himself for us knows how crucial it is to act when breathing stops.

Today, as in Ezekiel’s day and in John’s, the Lord rises up to speak out. He pinpoints dire situations we have not seen or, seeing, have not changed, and may have felt powerless to change.

Our breathing crises are, in fact,
responding-to-the-Spirit crises,
for God the Spirit is our breath.

Quenching the Spirit

We suppress and stifle the breath of God when we try to do the work of God apart from the Spirit of God. It’s like trying to exhale without inhaling.

Paul warned against this when he urged:

Do not quench the Spirit.
(1 Thess. 5:19)

Jesus warned against it when he cried out to the Sardis church:

I know your deeds; you have a reputation of being alive, but you are dead. Wake up! Strengthen what remains and is about to die, for I have found your deeds unfinished in the sight of my God. (Rev. 3:1-2)

Church without Spirit

Some in the Sardis church may not have known Christ personally. (For that breathing problem, see the post, Spirit to spirit: A matter of life and breath.) But I’d suggest that the Sardis church was the church, in God’s eyes, because in large part its people did know him.

Not only were they Christians; they were active Christians. Yet, tragically, their activity did not release God’s life. In the Amplified rendering of verse 2, Jesus said:

I have not found a thing that you have done – any work of yours – meeting the requirements of My God or perfect in His sight.

What strong words! What searing words – like a slap to the lifeless, with the desperate cry, “Breathe!”

Trying to exhale only

To feel how quickly this breathing problem becomes a crisis in your body, literally, physically, try to exhale only. That is, start breathing out, and keep breathing out as long as you can, without stopping, without breathing in.

How long could you do it? Seconds? A minute or so? Then what happened?

What’s true physically is also true spiritually:

When we quit receiving God’s life,
we also cut off our capacity to release it.

Activity without life

If we’re trying to exhale without inhaling, we may accept many duties in the church. We may teach classes, lead congregations, launch ministries. We may work hard to champion good causes, to help other people, to do good deeds.

In the process, we may become rather proud of ourselves, obsessed with doing more, very resentful and/or extremely tired.

The more we struggle to do the works of God in our own ways and our own strength, the more our efforts accomplish only dead works.

Grieving the Spirit

We distress and grieve the Spirit when we try to soak up all that our Lord offers us, without responding in faith. It’s like trying to inhale without exhaling.

Paul warned against this when he urged:

Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God.
(Eph. 4:30)

Trying to inhale only

To feel how quickly this breathing problem becomes a crisis in your body, literally, physically, try to inhale only. That is, start breathing in, and keep breathing in as long as you can, without stopping, without breathing out.

How long could you do it? Then what happened?

What’s true physically is also true spiritually:

When we quit releasing God’s life,
we also cut off our capacity to receive it.

Consuming instead of conducting

If we’re trying to inhale without exhaling, we may listen to lots of teachings and sermons. We may travel to conferences, read books, enroll in classes, earn degrees. We may study Scripture. We may pray often.

But in one area of life or many, when the Spirit nudges, convicts or prompts, we stop him cold.

We may do what he has told us not to do. We may ignore or put off what he has said to do. We may refuse to take responsibility for what we have done, and are doing.

We may fail to heed the Spirit of God when people and systems we’ve identified with God contradict God – yet assure us they are speaking for him.

And even when something deep within us knows how our Lord is leading us, we may tell ourselves, “That’s too hard. I still need to grow before I can even think about doing that.”

Yet remember: When we quit living by the Spirit, by refusing to obey God in the power of the Spirit, we also quit being able to take in anything of true spiritual value. At that point, we’ve stopped growing, and begun to wither. For growth requires continually receiving, and releasing, the life God is pouring out.

The more we set our minds to learn a Christianity that benefits us, without requiring anything from us, the more our getting only puffs us up – with emptiness.

Anguish of spirit

We may also find ourselves short of breath when overwhelmed – by life’s responsibilities and nonstop pace, by family chaos, major changes, illness, trauma or abuse.

Whatever triggers anxiety or angst
can cut off our breath,
spiritually as well as physically.

In the chaos, we may hyperventilate, lapse into shallow or erratic breathing or forget to breathe.

A smothering weight

God’s people down through time have had such breathing crises too.

When Moses approached Pharaoh for the first time, and told him, “God says, Let my people go,” Pharaoh thundered, “Never!” And immediately, he made the people’s hard labor much harder.

Moses complained to God, listened to God, and then tried to reassure the people, “The Lord says, I will set you free.”  

But they did not heed Moses,
because of anguish of spirit and cruel bondage.
(Ex. 6:9 NKJV)

Even people who love God much and know him well may sometimes feel the smothering weight of anguish.

[Job:] If only my anguish could be weighed and all my misery be placed on the scales! It would surely outweigh the sand of the seas. (Job 6:2-3)

[David:] My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, so far from my cries of anguish? (Ps. 22:1)

[Paul:] I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. (Rom. 9:2)

The God who has been there

Jesus also experienced what it’s like to try to breathe and to speak when under this type of smothering weight. As he ate with some of his closest friends on the night before his crucifixion:

In deep anguish of spirit, [he] declared, “Yes, indeed! I tell you that one of you will betray me.” (John 13:21 CJB)

Then, alone in Gethsemane:

He was in anguish and prayed even more earnestly. His sweat became like drops of blood falling on the ground. (Luke 22:44 CEB)

Walking the earth in his humanity, our Lord felt profound distress. He experienced deep anguish. He knows how very hard it is, when in that place, to breathe, much less believe.

When we are in a similar place, he comes to us, as he did to his people of old. He comes to breathe his breath into us yet again. He comes to speak earnestly into the deepest part of our being:

I am the Lord, your life.
From this oppression too,
I will set you free.

The Lord our life

In Christ:

We inhale as we receive the living, indwelling Spirit and the life he breathes into us.

We exhale as we release his life to others for the building of his kingdom and the honor of his Name.

When either or both stop happening, the Lord sees the problem, knows what has caused it and understands what is needed for you and for me to inhale and exhale, deeply and rhythmically, again.

He knows. And the Lord our God rises up to revive.

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The original version of this post was published August 7, 2013, under the title, “Breathing problems.” This 2023 repost has been revised and renamed.

Image by FreeImages.com/Simon Jackson

Life and Breath series

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 renovated and republished all seven posts.

Breath of God – key to life introduces the series and tells how I began teaching it.

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

• Spirit to spirit: A matter of life and breath
• Inhaling the life and breath of God
• Exhaling the life and breath of God

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
• Code blue! God’s cry to the breathless
• Code blue! God’s call to the breath-filled