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 awakened to see

Both the prophet Ezekiel and the apostle John saw people of God without breath.

This is the third of three posts that explore their two stories. The post titled, SOS! 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 frightening, foolish or futile it might seem.

Someone trusted to act

If God alerts you to lifelessness, powerlessness, hopelessness in people who identify 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 his breathless people, he urged someone who could breathe to 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 the prophet 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 acted upon 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

Notice that Jesus describes himself as “him who holds the seven spirits of God” – or, in New Living Translation, as “the one who has the sevenfold Spirit of God.”

Whatever does that mean?

It seems Jesus is identifying himself with the Messianic prophecy in Isaiah 11:2 and its sevenfold description of the Spirit. That verse announces:

The Spirit of the Lord will rest on him [that is, on Jesus], 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).

Key to all that is this: The Greek word for spirit literally means “breath.”

Pointedly, Jesus identified himself to a dead church as the one who has and gives fullness of Breath. He is the Living One who quickens and revives.

Those without breath

The second post in this series explores God’s cry to his breathless people in Ezekiel 37, and his very different cry in the first verses of Revelation 3. There, we examine the 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 breath-filled one who acts

Notice, too: 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.

Speak to the bones!

In an even earlier era, Ezekiel “was carried away by the Spirit of the Lord to a valley filled with bones” (Ezek. 37:1 NLT).

Another call from God

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 Lord 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 vision is just too weird? The assignment, futile? Do you balk at spending yourself for people who seem to be reaping what they’ve sown? Do you cringe at the thought of calling God’s people “dry bones” to their face?

Another breath-filled 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.

Speak 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 and new ability to move as one, with one another and with their Lord.

Preparing for God’s SOS call

In a community, state or nation, people who serve as emergency responders go through extensive training before they ever head into a crisis.

Whenever, wherever the Lord sees his people profoundly quenching and grieving the Spirit within them, he summons someone he has prepared.

Note, too: God does not command the responder to make breath happen in another. He calls the responder to start CPR – and to act now.

The ones he calls may not feel prepared. They may not think they will know what to do or have the strength to do it. Yet they know the Lord; and he, them. Consistently, he has worked in their lives, and they have chosen to cooperate with him.

Dear ones, this is not an assignment reserved for apostles and prophets of old. Without our even realizing it, God is ever preparing each of his breath-filled followers for any “such a time as this” situation when he sounds an SOS – and summons us by name.

As we walk with him each new day, he teaches us things like these:

Breathe!

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

Watch!

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

Learn!

Wait for me to make clear what to do about what you see. When I want you to act quickly, I will not leave you guessing as to what. Whether I call you to deliver strong encouragement or a wake-up cry, or to act in some other way, I will give you grace to know and to do it.

Above all, it’s crucial that your heart echo my heart as you act. Finger-pointing, judging, seeking to control and warring as the world does – all differ dramatically from crying out and rising up to save someone’s life.

Answering God’s call to act now

When the living, life-giving Lord shows you a dire situation and calls you to respond, go where he sends you. Ask his Spirit to work in and through you. Humbly, faithfully, courageously, say and do what 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, Breath of God!
And breathe into these slain,
that they may live!

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The original version of this renovated 2026 repost was published August 14, 2013, under the title, “God’s call to the breath-filled.”

Featured image: Milosspsnd, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

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.” Between October 2023 and October 2026, 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 breathing crises:

• SOS! Breathing crises in the church
• God’s SOS cry to his breathless people
• God’s SOS call to the breath-filled: Act now!