As you inhale, you’re filled with breath.
As you inhale spiritually, you’re filled with the Breath of God. Spirit-to-spirit, you receive his life.

---

Scripture makes a profound connection between spirit and breath. In fact, in Hebrew and Greek, the same word means both.¹

That’s no coincidence. God does everything with purpose, and he often uses the natural to help us understand the spiritual.

As we ponder the intimate, life-giving act of breathing, what might God the Spirit want to show us about how he relates to us and how we can relate to him?

Let’s start with two simple yet unfathomable statements:

Jesus breathed on his disciples and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” (John 20:22)

Keep on being filled with the Spirit. (Eph. 5:18 CJB)

The word of God has many layers, many facets. We gain insight as we seek, and he reveals. These verses, especially, describe a mystery. They tell us to do what we cannot fathom. But when we realize the word for Spirit also means breath, and we seek him, we may hear God saying, “Breathe in.”

• Receive the Holy Spirit – Welcome God the Spirit into yourselves and, like newborn babes, take your first breath.²
• Keep being filled with the Spirit – Remember who is your Breath, and never stop inhaling.

The essence of breathing

As you inhale physically, you’re filled with breath. As you inhale spiritually, you’re filled with the Spirit. Opening yourself to receive the Breath of God, you also open up to the many aspects of his life that he is breathing into you. They include (but are not limited to) his truth, his grace, his mind, his heart, his character, his riches, his power, his joy, his love.

The reverse is also true: You cannot breathe in any aspect of God’s life when you’re quenching or grieving, stiff-arming or exploiting God the Spirit.

Jesus

Jesus is fully God who became fully human. On earth, he stripped himself of his divine privileges and operated from his humanness, to model for us how to live by the Breath of God. Here are a few glimpses of Jesus receiving the Spirit and receiving from the Spirit:

As soon as Jesus was baptized, he went up out of the water. At that moment heaven was opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. (Matt. 3:16)

Jesus was filled with the Holy Spirit as he left the Jordan River. The Spirit led him while he was in the desert. (Luke 4:1 GW)

He went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom. He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written: “The Spirit of the Lord is on me.”  … He began by saying to them, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” (Luke 4:16-18, 21)

At that time Jesus was filled with joy by the Holy Spirit. (Luke 10:21 GNT)

Us

Here’s a sampling of what we open ourselves to receive, as we inhale the Breath of God. Notice that this receiving happens Spirit-to-spirit:

We received the Spirit who comes from God so that we could know the things which God has freely given us. (1 Cor. 2:12 GW)

The unspiritual self, just as it is by nature, can’t receive the gifts of God’s Spirit. There’s no capacity for them. They seem like so much silliness. Spirit can be known only by spirit – God’s Spirit and our spirits in open communion. (1 Cor. 2:14 MSG)

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. (Rom. 15:13)

May He grant you out of the riches of His glory, to be strengthened and spiritually energized with power through His Spirit in your inner self, [indwelling your innermost being and personality] … [that you may come] to know [practically, through personal experience] the love of Christ which far surpasses [mere] knowledge [without experience], that you may be filled up [throughout your being] to all the fullness of God [so that you may have the richest experience of God’s presence in your lives, completely filled and flooded with God Himself]. (Eph. 3:16, 19 AMP)

The blessing of inhaling

God cries, “Inhale!” often. He says it in many ways. Again and again, he challenges us to take in, to receive, by his Spirit, what we may not understand or think we want, but what will always bring life.

[Jesus] said to them, “I AM; don’t be afraid.” Then they were willing to take him into the boat, and immediately the boat reached the shore where they were heading. (John 6:20-21)

Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. (Matt. 11:29)

Pay close attention to what you hear. The closer you listen, the more understanding you will be given – and you will receive even more. (Mark 4:24 NLT)

Receive your sight. (Luke 18:42)

Receive meekly the Word implanted in you that can save your lives. (James 1:21 CJB)

Receive God’s overflowing kindness and the gift of his approval. (Rom. 5:17 GW)

Those who receive God’s abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ! (Rom. 5:17)³

The link with exhaling

We look more closely at exhaling the breath of God in another post. But this is key: As with physical breath, inhaling cannot happen apart from exhaling.

Give [exhale], and you will receive [inhale]. Your gift will return to you in full – pressed down, shaken together to make room for more, running over, and poured into your lap. The amount you give will determine the amount you get back. (Luke 6:38 NLT)

Until now you have not asked for anything in my name. Ask [exhale] and you will receive [inhale], and your joy will be complete. (John 16:24)

You need to persevere so that when you have done the will of God [that’s exhaling], you will receive what he has promised [that’s inhaling]. (Heb. 10:36)

And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or fields for my sake [again, that’s exhaling] will receive a hundred times as much [that’s inhaling] and will inherit eternal life. (Matt. 19:29)

The wonder and the challenge

As you inhale the Breath of God, you embrace life. Moment by moment, Christ in you teaches you to “breathe through” struggle and peace, suffering and joy, wilderness and home. As you open up to the Spirit, you open yourself to mystery and paradox, growth and change. The change may happen subtly, almost imperceptibly, so that only in retrospect do you see how far you’ve come.

More and more intimately, you know him who is breathing his life into you. The more you realize, “I see in a mirror dimly,” and, “I know in part,” the more you glimpse of his nature and his ways. The greater your awareness that his love is beyond knowing, the greater your capacity to be filled with his love.⁴

More and more clearly, you see your own true, God-given identity. Little by little, you grow up into the “you” he designed you to be. The more you become uniquely you, the more you reflect his character and his ways. And the quicker you realize it when you’re refusing the Breath.

Again and again, you bring to God what leaves you breathless: your busyness, your weariness, your willfulness; what frightens you, threatens to smother you, incites despair. As you pause, as you choose again to be filled with him who lives in you … wait for it, wait for it … the Spirit-Breath restores your rest.

Inhale the Breath of God, dear one. Never stop. In the big middle of real life, really live.

---

The original version of this post, titled, “Inhaling the Breath of God,” was published July 24, 2013. The title was changed slightly May 20, 2024.

Life and Breath series

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

Other posts on Spirit-to-spirit intimacy

• Dear weary one, can we talk about the spirit realm?
• Humble your soul, release your spirit
• Living by the Spirit
• Our Spirit-to-spirit birthright
• Mastering the language in which God speaks
• Praying for God
• Truth, desperation, spirit, life

Footnotes

1. See the first post in this series, Spirit to spirit: A matter of life and breath. ↩︎
2. See comments on John 3:5-8 in the post, Spirit to spirit: A matter of life and breath. ↩︎
3. For an in-depth look at how spiritual inhaling and exhaling relate to reigning in life by grace, see The Esther Blessing: Grace to Reign in Life. ↩︎
4. See 1 Corinthians 13:12-13; Ephesians 3:17-19. ↩︎