They lay in bed in the middle of the night – he, snoring loudly; she, trying to sleep. Suddenly, she heard a sharp intake of breath followed by … nothing. He did not exhale.
While long seconds ticked by, she heard no breathing at all.
She waited … waited … then cried out his name.
He woke with a start. And breathed again.
In Scripture, a single word means both breath and spirit. This post is one in a series that explores how the crucial act of breathing reflects the vital practice of living by the Spirit of God.
In a nutshell: Spiritual vitality hinges on our continually receiving and releasing – or, inhaling and exhaling – what is spirit and life. Anything that cuts off this flow can quickly deteriorate into a crisis.
This post and two others explore two stories from Scripture, to find how it can look and what God does when his people have cut off their breath.1
The hopeless breathless
In Ezekiel 37, the Spirit of God takes the prophet Ezekiel to a valley full of dry bones. The scattered bones represent people of God who feel hopeless, broken, spent.
What does the Spirit 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)
Three times, the Lord declares, “I will.”
- I will send my breath – my Spirit – into you.
- I will restore you to wholeness – bringing together all the fractured pieces, creating anew what has appeared forever gone.
- I will put breath – a new spirit – within you, and release my life through you.2
Three times, the Lord declares, “you will.”
- You will come to life.
- You will come to life.
- You will know that I am the Lord.
God cries out to promise life. He promises to give it, and he promises that the breathless will be able to receive it.
Any time, ever, that you find yourself lying broken and spent, the Lord has a message for you. It’s not a message that shames. It’s not a command to fix yourself. Rather, it’s his promise to revive and restore.
My words bring life!
From the first chapter of Scripture, we learn: The Lord speaks things into being. His words give life.
Listen actively!
In Ezekiel 37, God’s life-giving words to his people begin this way:
Dry bones, hear the word of the Lord!
That may sound like a foolish cry. After all, how can dry, scattered bones possibly hear or respond to anything?
Also, the way God addresses his people may sound harsh. But consider how an alarm sounds that urges us to flee a burning building.
In two words, the Lord reveals his people’s dire situation. Yet he does not write them off. Rather, he communicates this hope to the hopeless: “It is possible for you to hear and respond.”
With those same two words, the Lord seeks the willing. Identifying the crisis, he watches for anyone who will cry out in answer: “Yes! I’m dry and broken! I know it and am willing to own it.”
This cry teaches us one attitude that can open any of us to newness of life at any time: willingness to recognize and admit the truth of where we are and what’s going on inside us.
Dry bones, hear the word of the Lord!
Seeking the willing, the Lord identifies himself. Where we read a title, “the Lord,” God says his Name – the Name he uses in relationship with his people, the Name he invokes most often when revealing who he is. In essence, he cries, “It’s me. You know me. I AM he who has delivered you and brought you to myself.”
Dry bones, hear the word of the Lord!
The Hebrew word translated “hear” in this verse is shama. It means: to hear and pay attention – and also, to yield, obey.3
When God cries, “Hear!” he is saying, “Inhale! Receive the living word I am speaking into you. Exhale! Respond to my words in faith.”
Listen expectantly!
Any time you feel hopeless and spiritually dry, please don’t shame yourself, or minimize it, or try to fix it. Instead, face it. Feel it.
And also, look to the Lord your God – waiting, watching, listening. Trust that he will speak in his time in such a way that you can hear. Trust that his voice and words will guide you in right paths. He can help you …
- understand when to act, what to do, when to be still;
- know when to seek help, and from whom;
- discern when he is speaking through people – and when he is not;
- receive his comfort through music and art, animals, nature and other quiet joys;
- recognize his voice speaking through his Word.
When he speaks, whatever he says, open up to the words that bring life.
My Spirit gives life!
The Lord’s words in Ezekiel 37 affirm what other passages also teach: His Breath, his Spirit, gives life – life that is ours to receive.
How often have first responders given mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, yet the breathless person didn’t revive? Breath was imparted – but not received. The breath being poured in did not successfully trigger the person to inhale and exhale again.
Ah, but God says, “I will make breath enter you, and you will come to life.” His breath always has the capacity to revive. Our spiritual vitality will be restored – as we quit fighting against him, or shutting ourselves off from him, and remain open to the Spirit of God.
The clueless breathless
In Revelation 3:1-6, the Son of God speaks to the apostle John about Christians who have stopped breathing – and are in denial of it.
What does Christ say to them?
These are the words of the one who holds God’s seven spirits and the seven stars.
I know your works.
You have the reputation of being alive, and you are in fact dead.
Wake up and strengthen what you have left, teetering on the brink of death,
for I’ve found that your works are far from complete in the eyes of my God.
So remember what you received and heard.
Hold on to it and change your hearts and lives.
(Rev. 3:1-3 CEB)4
Identifying himself with God’s breath (spirit), the Lord Jesus reveals a dire situation in the church in Sardis. In short:
You have the reputation of being alive, and you are in fact dead.
Sometimes, the physically dead do appear to be alive. Rumors, apparent sightings, supposed communications can all make the falsehood seem true.
What’s more, an imposter may insert herself or himself into the picture, claiming to be the dead person and fooling a lot of folks.
Similarly, people can have a reputation of being alive spiritually, when they aren’t inhaling and exhaling God’s life at all. Oh, the words and activities may seem godly, but they come from the soulish self, not the Spirit-led spirit.
The people themselves may not know the truth. And they also may fool other people, perhaps for a very long time. But God knows deadness when he sees it, and he cries out.
Wake up!
That is not a “you slept past your alarm again” cry. It’s an “I cannot get a pulse!” cry. A get-in-your-face-and-shake-you cry.
“Wake up!” the Lord Jesus urges anyone who belongs to him, yet who desperately lacks breath and cannot or will not see it. He further urges:
Strengthen what remains and is about to die. (v. 2 NIV)
People in the Sardis church had not admitted their desperate condition. Rather, they cultivated the illusion of being fully alive in Christ.
When deception enters the picture, so do complacency, complicity, cluelessness. That’s when the dangers of breathlessness multiply exponentially. That’s when Jesus cries out sharply, urgently:
- Exposing. “You have a reputation of being alive, but you are dead.”
- Confronting. “I’ve found that your works are far from complete in the eyes of my God.”
- Warning. “But if you do not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what time I will come to you” (Rev. 3:3).
But if you do not wake up …
When the One who raises the dead says, “Wake up!” you can wake up, even from profound deception. And yet, God won’t force you.
Once again, his words may sound harsh. Yet they come from his fierce love. Jesus cries out, not to shame, but to redeem, to jolt the not-breathing back to the place of receiving and responding to his Spirit and his word.
Rise up!
Remember therefore how you have received and heard; hold fast and repent. (v. 3 NKJV)
Most English versions of Revelation 3:3 say, “Remember what you have received.” But New King James gives us the literal translation: “Remember how you have received.”
The moment we yield to Jesus as Lord, we know how to breathe spiritually.
We may not think we know. We may not have words to explain it. Our breathing may have become shallow, labored or erratic.
But consider: A newborn baby has the capacity to breathe, and intuitively knows how to use it.
In the spiritual realm also: From the moment we are born again, the Breath of God lives in us, and we have the capacity to breathe. What’s more, we know how to receive and release God’s life, because he teaches us, Spirit to spirit.
So when Jesus finds any of his own not breathing and not facing it, he cries …
Remember how!
Remind yourself of the day you received Jesus as Lord. Recall how you took your first breath, and the next, and the next.
Revisit and relive the ways “Spirit-to-spirit, by grace through faith” has looked in your life.5
Hold fast!
Hold onto what you recall. Begin again to respond to the Spirit in that way – moment by moment, by faith. It may be a tentative thing at first. You may go forward by fits and starts. But keep it up and over time, it will become as natural as … breathing.
Turn back!
One more thing, and it’s vital too. Recall when and how you have cut off your breath. How have you quenched the Spirit? How have you grieved him? How have you taken on yourself what is God’s job in your life?
You don’t have to figure it out. If you will listen, he will tell you. And if you will receive it, he will give you desire and power to own what you’ve done and to return to him.
I can testify from experience: Even when we have turned away from God so profoundly, for so long, that we are cutting off our life-breath – but still want to believe we have not – even then, we can turn back.
And there’s more good news. We confess and repent the same way we do everything else in this God-life: Spirit to spirit, by grace through faith.
I am here to revive and restore
Therefore,
just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord,
continue to live your lives in him.
(Col. 2:6 NET)
Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale.
And if you utterly blow it? To the point that you cannot breathe?
Know this, dear one: The God who is our life always notices when someone he loves stops breathing. He notices, and he cries out:
Listen to me, my breathless people!
Hear and do what I say.
For in me you can hear. You can act.
And I am here to revive and restore you!
The original version of this post was published August 21, 2013, under the title, “God’s cry to the breathless.” This 2024 repost has been renovated and renamed.
Photo by Donna Weeden, courtesy of and copyright Free Range Stock.
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
Footnotes
- See links to the Life and Breath series at the end of this post. ↩︎
- See also Ezekiel 36:26-27 and the posts, Humble your soul, release your spirit and Our Spirit-to-spirit birthright. ↩︎
- Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon, Unabridged, Electronic Database, 8085: shama. © 2002, 2003, 2006 by Biblesoft, Inc. ↩︎
- The rest of this letter (Rev. 3:4-6) reveals that “a few people” in the Sardis church had avoided this breathing crisis. But we’re focusing here on God’s cry to the breathless majority. ↩︎
- Posts in this Life and Breath series are intended as helps, both for remembering and continuing. ↩︎
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Just found you … I thank God for you .. your words are deep , alive , truthful & encouraging… I have been in a desert space.. dry bones ..
he will revive me.. x
Thank you so much for speaking up, Su. My heart goes out to you. And I believe with you: He will revive you.
Thanks again for getting my nose back into the Word that gives LIFE!
You’re welcome!