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 people without breath. (See the post, Breathing crises in the church.)
Both saw, because God alerted them. He awakened each to a critical problem:
- 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, God pronounced them dead.
And yet, God did not count either situation hopeless.
Rising up to act, he called first responders who themselves had spiritual life. Each 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 and 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 different eras, when God alerted Ezekiel and John to the dire need of breathless people, he specified different methods, yet told each: Speak up. 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 aloud. 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
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)
Jesus identified himself. He 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.
Jesus identified the people’s problem. Without mincing words, he exposed their dire need.
Jesus called them to act. In “God’s cry to the breathless,” we explore the strong statements Jesus used to confront the believers in Sardis and what he told them to do to breathe again. For now, realize:
Jesus 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. There, 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?
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 were 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 “dried up,” he didn’t condemn them. He didn’t give up on them. 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 call to first responders
Again today – as the Spirit of God moves across the world, but the church in the US gasps for air – God is raising up first responders. He calls:
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 disturbs you, refuse to look away.
Trust. 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. Declare the living, life-giving words of the living, life-giving God to people who need to hear them. Speak up at God’s call, even if you think there’s about as much chance of people’s responding as of dry bones coming to life. But don’t stop there. Speak to the Spirit. Call to the Breath. Cry out for him to come.
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:
- Breathing crises in the church
- God’s cry to the breathless
- God’s call to the breath-filled
Deborah, I am really enjoying the spiritual respiration therapy series. Thanks for all you do for so many and the body of Christ as a community. Love and blessing, Sylvia