When my younger daughter was small, she contracted whooping cough. She had such difficulty breathing that I rushed her to the emergency room.

People often wait hours in emergency rooms before seeing a doctor. That day, we were whisked to a room, where my daughter received oxygen and immediate medical treatment.

When someone can’t breathe, it’s time to act. Often, however, the person with the problem cannot initiate action. Strength gone, alertness gone, panic or unconsciousness may have set in. Someone nearby who sees the need must act if the breathless is to breathe again.

Someone nearby who sees

Both the prophet Ezekiel and the apostle John saw a number of people utterly without breath.

Three of my posts explore those two Bible stories. The first post, Breathing crises in the church, describes how that spiritual lifelessness looked to Ezekiel, how it looked to John and how it may look today.

In short, both men saw death where life should be, because God alerted them. He awakened each to a critical situation:

• Ezekiel saw all around him people of God scattered as dry bones across a great valley.
• John saw God’s people all across a certain city. Though they looked alive, the God who knows the heart pronounced them dead.

And yet, the Lord did not count either situation hopeless.

Rising up to act, he called upon two emergency responders who themselves had spiritual life. Each one saw what God showed him. Neither looked away. Each did what God told him, regardless how foolish or futile it might seem.

Someone awakened who speaks

If God wakes you up to lifelessness, powerlessness, hopelessness in people who identify themselves as his, time is of the essence. But what in the world do you do? In a sentence:

You listen for God’s instructions and do what he says.

In two different eras, when God alerted Ezekiel, and then John, to the dire needs of breathless people, he urged both responders: Cry out!

God the Son told John to write. Indeed, when the risen Christ appeared to John on the isle of Patmos, John heard these words trumpeted first: “Write on a scroll what you see and send it to the seven churches” (Rev. 1:11). After identifying himself as “the Living One,” Jesus reiterated, “Write, therefore, what you have seen” (Rev. 1:19).

God the Spirit told Ezekiel to speak. After leading Ezekiel through a valley filled with bones and while Ezekiel still stood in the midst, God said, “Prophesy to these bones” (Ezek. 37:4). As soon as Ezekiel did so, the Lord told him, “Prophesy to the breath” (Ezek. 37:9).

In both cases, God could have delivered his own messages. Yet he counted it vital that his cry to the breathless be echoed and declared by a living, breathing person.

He still counts it vital today.

Write to the church!

As John stood, in the Spirit, before the magnificent, risen Christ, Jesus said:

To the angel of the church in Sardis write: These are the words of him who holds the seven spirits of God and the seven stars. I know your deeds; you have a reputation of being alive, but you are dead. Wake up! (Rev. 3:1-2)

The One who gives breath

Jesus had already told John the seven stars were “the angels of the seven churches.” But what did it mean, that Jesus “holds the seven spirits of God”?

The Amplified Bible suggests he spoke of “the sevenfold Holy Spirit” (Rev. 3:1). Perhaps Jesus referred to the sevenfold description of the Spirit in Isaiah 11:2:

The Spirit of the Lord will rest on him, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and strength, the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord. (NAS)

In Scripture, seven is the number of completeness. Like the Father and the Son, God the Spirit carries “all the fullness of the Deity.” Further, the Father, Son and Spirit work together to bring us to fullness (Col. 2:9).

Remember, too, the Greek word for spirit literally means “breath.” Pointedly, Jesus identified himself to a dead church as the one who alone gives fullness of Breath. He is the Living One who quickens and revives.

Those without breath

Another post, God’s cry to the breathless, explores the strong statements Jesus used to wake up the believers in Sardis. For now, realize:

Without mincing words, God the Son exposed their dire need. And he told them what to do to breathe again.

A trusted responder

God entrusted his cry to a person. For any number of reasons, that person might have balked at writing what Jesus said.

John may have considered harsh or extreme Jesus’ pronouncement that the church was dead. John may have hesitated to shout, “Wake up!” to those who counted themselves alive and alert. Or, he may have felt that people who had chosen such a path would not change course now.

Yet the same Lord who showed John their breathless state held John accountable to sound the warning and to tell them the way back to life.

Prophesy to the bones!

In an even earlier era, Ezekiel stood in a valley full of parched bones.

Another cry from God

The Lord told Ezekiel:

Prophesy to these bones and say to them, “Dry bones, hear the word of the Lord! This is what the Sovereign Lord says to these bones: I will make breath enter you, and you will come to life. I will attach tendons to you and make flesh come upon you and cover you with skin; I will put breath in you, and you will come to life. Then you will know that I am the Lord.” (Ezek. 37:4-6)

Imagine yourself in Ezekiel’s place. As far as the eye can see, you’re surrounded by disconnected bones. No living people. Not even a dead body in sight. You know the cause of this catastrophe: God’s people have stiff-armed the Spirit for generations.

After showing you this grim scene, God tells you to speak … to bones. He tells you to call them what they are: “Dry bones.” But the rest of his message isn’t one of judgment. Nor is it a cry to the scattered and broken to “get up and get moving.” From first to last, it’s a message of promise – God’s promise to restore and revive his hopeless, lifeless people.

Standing in that valley, what do you do? Do you decide the whole thing is just too weird? The assignment, futile? Do you balk at speaking life to the consummately stubborn, now reaping what they’ve sown? Do you cringe at the thought of calling God’s people “dry bones” to their face?

Another trustworthy responder

Standing in that valley, Ezekiel obeyed God. The results were immediate and stunning.

So I prophesied as I was commanded. And as I was prophesying, there was a noise, a rattling sound, and the bones came together, bone to bone. I looked, and tendons and flesh appeared on them and skin covered them, but there was no breath in them. (Ezek. 37:7-8)

As Ezekiel spoke, the miraculous happened. All across that valley, dry bones were reconnected and covered with muscles, tissue, skin. Before Ezekiel’s eyes, scattered bones transformed … into dead bodies.

God had begun what he had declared. Yet still, the people lacked the one thing the Lord had promised first and last, the one thing essential to life: his Breath.

Prophesy to the breath!

If you think speaking to bones is weird, imagine being told to speak to breath.

Then he said to me, “Prophesy to the breath; prophesy, son of man, and say to it, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: Come, breath, from the four winds and breathe into these slain, that they may live.’” So I prophesied as he commanded me, and breath entered them; they came to life and stood up on their feet – a vast army. (Ezek. 37:9-10)

When Ezekiel found himself surrounded by people utterly, spiritually “dried up,” he didn’t condemn them. He didn’t give up on them. Ah, but he did see and say what they had become. He challenged them to hear the word of God. He cried for them to receive the breath of God. Then, he called for the breath to come.

As a result, the Spirit of the Lord swept in, raising dry bones to new life. As incredible as that is, there’s more! With his life, God imparted to his people new wholeness, new purpose, new unity and new (and exceedingly great) strength.

God’s emergency responders

Wherever in the world the Lord sees his church gasping for air, he summons his emergency responders. They know him; and he, them. He has worked in their lives for a long time to prepare them. Resolutely, he continues to call to them:

Breathe!

Learn what it means to live before your God, Spirit-to-spirit. Moment by moment, make sure you yourself are deeply inhaling and freely exhaling.

Watch!

Don’t judge by what your eyes see. Let your Lord show you where the life is being sucked out of his people. Let him reveal where the outward appearance differs dramatically from the inward truth. Look where he points. When what you see distresses you, refuse to look away.

Learn!

Wait for the Lord to make clear what to do about what you see. When God wants you to act quickly, he will not leave you guessing as to what. If he calls you to deliver a wake-up cry, he will make clear what to say, how to deliver the message and to whom.

It’s crucial that your heart echo God’s heart before any words come out of your mouth. Finger-pointing and judging are different things entirely from crying out to save someone’s life.

Speak!

When the living, life-giving Lord shows you a dire situation and calls you to respond, go wherever he sends you. Ask his Spirit to talk through you. Humbly, faithfully, say whatever he tells you – even if you think there’s about as much chance of people responding as of dry bones coming to life.

But don’t stop there. Speak to the Breath. Cry out to God the Spirit,

“Come!
And breathe into these slain,
that they may live!”

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The original version of this post was published August 14, 2013, under the title, “God’s call to the breath-filled.”

Image by misku from Pixabay

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