God’s cry to the breathless

In a wilderness setting, a girl wearing white t-shirt and jeans stands on a chalky rock taller than she is, beside an even taller desert evergreen

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 crying out his name, asked, “Are you all right?”

He woke with a start. And breathed again.

The post, Breathing crises in the church, investigates two times in Scripture when God’s people quit breathing. Now let’s explore what God cried then, and what he cries today, when he finds his people desperately short of breath.

To the hopeless breathless

In Ezekiel 37, the Spirit of God takes the prophet Ezekiel to a valley full of dry bones. The dry bones represent people who feel hopeless, broken, spent.

So what does the Spirit say?

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 into you.
  • I will restore you to wholeness – bringing together all the fractured pieces, creating anew what has appeared forever gone.
  • I will produce my Breath within you and elicit it from you.

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.

In the cry, “Dry bones, hear the word of the Lord!” God identifies himself. He calls attention to a dire situation. And he urges the people in that situation to receive the living words he speaks.

Dry bones, hear the word of the Lord! God addresses those who will recognize and admit, “Spiritually, I’m dry. Others may not realize it, but deep inside I feel hopeless and lifeless. I know it and am willing to own it.”

Dry bones, hear the word of the Lord! 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” is shama. It means: to hear and pay attention, yield, obey.1

When God cries, “Hear!” he is saying, “Inhale! Receive the living word I am speaking into you. Exhale! Respond to my words in faith.”

Any time you feel hopeless and spiritually dry, don’t shame yourself, minimize it or try to fix it. Instead, acknowledge it. Feel it.

And wait on the Lord. Listen for his voice. Practice noticing and affirming the promptings deep within by which God speaks Spirit-to-spirit. Pay attention as he guides you:

  • to understand when to act, what to do, when to be still;
  • to know when to seek help, and from whom;
  • to discern when he is speaking through people – and when he is not;
  • to receive his comfort through music and art, animals, nature and other quiet joys;
  • to 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!

“I will make breath enter you, and you will come to life.” “I will put breath in you, and you will come to life.” Twice the Lord’s words affirm: His Breath, his Spirit, gives life – life that is ours to receive.

How many first responders have given mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, yet the breathless person didn’t revive? Breath was given – but it wasn’t received. The breath being poured in did not successfully trigger the person to inhale and exhale again.

Ah, but the Breath of God always has the capacity to restore and revive. You will come to life – your spiritual vitality will be restored – as you quit fighting against him, or shutting yourself off from him, and remain open to the Spirit of God.  

To the complacent breathless

In Revelation 3:1-6, the Son of God speaks to the apostle John about Christians who are not breathing – and have not admitted it.   

So what does Christ say?

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! Strengthen what remains and is about to die, for I have found your deeds unfinished in the sight of my God.

Remember, therefore, what you have received and heard; hold it fast, and repent. (Rev. 3:1-3)2

The Lord Jesus identifies himself. He calls attention to a dire situation, this time in the church in Sardis.3 Then, the Lord of life cries to the complacent breathless:

Wake up!

That’s a respond-to-this-cry cry. It’s a get-in-your-face-and-shake-you cry. It’s God’s cry to anyone who belongs to him, yet who desperately lacks breath and will not own up to that fact.

Strengthen what remains and is about to die. Sometimes in medical crises, ventilators “breathe” temporarily for people who cannot breathe on their own. Breath remains, but only artificially.

Ventilators are a stopgap tactic. The goal and the hope is that the patients regain strength to breathe on their own.

The Christians in Sardis had become ventilator Christians – but did not see themselves that way, and so were content to remain that way. Their lives now barely sustained by artificial breath, they fostered the illusion that, spiritually, they were doing quite well.

When self-deception enters the picture, so do complacency and complicity. That’s when the dangers of breathlessness multiply exponentially. That’s when Jesus cries out sharply, urgently:

  • To confront. “You have a reputation of being alive, but you are dead.”
  • To expose. “I’ve found that your works are far from complete in the eyes of my God” (Rev. 3:2 CEB) .
  • To warn. “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).

These words, too, give life. Jesus cries out from his fierce love, not to shame, but to redeem, to jolt the breathless back to the place of receiving and responding to his Spirit and his word:

“Wake up! See the dire situation you’re in! Don’t let the choices that have gotten you here dictate what you do now. Choose my breath, my life, and so get off that ventilator. Strengthen what remains and is about to die.”

Remember how!

And then Jesus cries, “Remember, therefore, what you have received and heard; hold it fast, and repent.”  

The Greek says literally, “Remember how you have received and heard.” If you know Jesus as Lord, you know how to breathe spiritually. You know how to receive and release what he is pouring out. You may not have words to describe it. You may have gotten rusty at it. But in your spirit, you know. So, remember.

Remember how you received the Lord Jesus, how you took your first breath, and the next, and the next. Remember how “Spirit-to-spirit, by grace through faith” has looked in your life in the past.4

Hold it fast. As you remember, hold onto what you recall. And begin again to respond to Christ in that way – your spirit responding to his Spirit, 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.

Therefore, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live your lives in him. (Col. 2:6 NET)

Repent. When you’ve gotten to a place where you’re not breathing and you’re profoundly denying it, you’ve made a wrong turn somewhere, and most likely, a series of wrong turns. When Paul found the Galatian Christians in that place, he cried out:

Tell me this one thing: How did you receive the Holy Spirit? Did you receive the Spirit by following the law? No, you received the Spirit because you heard the Good News and believed it. You began your life in Christ by the Spirit. Now are you trying to make it complete by your own power? That is foolish! (Gal. 3:2-3 NCV)

If we wake up to find ourselves breathless, and we want to live again, it’s imperative that we recognize how we quenched and grieved the Spirit. It’s imperative that we turn back. The good news is, we confess and repent the same way we do everything else in this God-life: Spirit-to-spirit, by grace through faith.

I AM

Know this, dear one: God always notices when someone he loves stops breathing. He notices, and he cries out:

I AM here to revive and restore you.
I AM your breath.

Wake up!

Hear and respond to my word.
Receive and respond to my Spirit.

Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale.

Remember how!

You will come to life.
You will come to life!
And you will know who I AM.


The original version of “God’s Cry to the Breathless” was published August 21, 2013.

Photo by Donna Weeden, courtesy of and copyright Free Range Stock.

Life and Breath series

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

Three posts explore the concept of spiritual breathing:

Three posts explore a letter to a dead church (Rev. 3:1-6) and a cry to dry bones (Ezek. 37:1-14), to find what happens when God’s people stop breathing:

Footnotes

  1. Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon, Unabridged, Electronic Database, 8085: shama. © 2002, 2003, 2006 by Biblesoft, Inc. ↩︎
  2. The rest of this letter (Rev. 3:4-6) reveals that “a few people” in the Sardis church had avoided such dire breathing problems. But we’re focusing here on God’s cry to the breathless majority. ↩︎
  3. See more about these aspects of the message to the Sardis church in the posts, Breathing crises in the church and God’s call to the breath-filled. ↩︎
  4. Posts 1-3 in this Life and Breath series are intended as helps, both for remembering and continuing. ↩︎

This Post Has 4 Comments

  1. thoslyonsattnet

    Thanks again for getting my nose back into the Word that gives LIFE!

    1. Deborah

      You’re welcome!

  2. Su Larkins

    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

    1. Deborah

      Thank you so much for speaking up, Su. My heart goes out to you. And I believe with you: He will revive you.

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