There are few things more intimate than a person’s breath.
Love songs speak tenderly of our breaths, Listerine has made a fortune from sanitizing it, and emergency room physicians carefully monitor breathing as a key vital sign.
Take food or water away and you live on for quite a while; take your breath away and you’re dead in seconds.
Breath speaks of life, of essence.
So, it’s not surprising that human (and divine) breath receives considerable attention in the Bible, especially in the creational account of mankind’s beginnings, as written in Genesis 2:7:
“Then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living person.”
Breath and life are inextricably linked. It’s fascinating that with all the advances of science throughout history, scientists have yet to discover how to cause something that is nonliving to become living, no matter how hard they try.
The initiation of life remains a profound mystery.
Yet in the above passage, God causes plain dust to spring to life with nothing more than his own breath.
The fact is, human life originates from the Author of Life and nowhere else.
“Then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living person.”
Genesis 2:7
It’s quite a personal matter with God, Max Lucado wrote in In the Eye of the Storm:
“The Maker looked earnestly at the clay creation. A monsoon of love swelled up within him. He had died for the creation before he had made him. God’s form bent over the sculptured face and breathed. Dust stirred on the lips of the new one. The chest rose, cracking the red mud. The cheeks fleshened. A finger moved. And an eye opened.
“But more incredible than the moving of the flesh was the stirring of the spirit. Those who could see the unseen gasped.
“Perhaps it was the wind who said it first. Perhaps what the star saw that moment is what has made it blink ever since. Maybe it was left to an angel to whisper it:
“‘It looks like … it appears so much like … it is him!’
“The angel wasn’t speaking of the face, the features, or the body. He was looking inside — at the soul.
“‘It’s eternal!’ gasped another.
“Within the man, God had placed a divine seed. A seed of his self. The God of might had created earth’s mightiest. The Creator had created, not a creature, but another creator. And the One who had chosen to love had created one who could love in return.”
Mankind has been forever bound to God ever since.
Tethered to God
Atheists, agnostics, the rebellious, the faithful, are joined together with God by the air we breathe.
In Job 33:4, the grand Old Testament patriarch Job uttered:
“The Spirit of God has made me, and the breath of the Almighty gives me life.”
We are inescapably tethered to God. When He decides to “reel us back in,” all He must do is withdraw our next breath.
So why try to live your life as though God doesn’t exist?
God the Son exercised His life-giving power In the latter part of His earthly ministry. Not so much in initiating physical life, but in granting eternal life to those who received Him.
Jesus is still breathing on men today.
In John 20:21-22, Jesus said to His followers, “Peace be to you; just as the Father has sent Me, I also send you.” And when He had said this, He breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit.’”
Here we see the direct connection between God’s breath and His Holy Spirit.
In my book, My Origin, My Destiny, I wrote: That “breath of life” … involves an entirely different dimension of existence, an immaterial spiritual life that reflects qualities of the life of God himself and that goes on for eternity. When a person has been born again, this restored life (from the Greek, zoe, which means “comes from and is sustained by God’s self–existent life”) cannot be faked, imitated, or conjured up … The Apostle Paul explains in 1 Corinthians 2:14-16:
“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. Spiritually alive, we have access to everything God’s Spirit is doing and can’t be judged by unspiritual critics. Isaiah’s question, ‘Is there anyone around who knows God’s Spirit, anyone who knows what he is doing?’ has been answered: Christ knows, and we have Christ’s Spirit.”
How About You?
Want in on the secret of life? Ask God to breathe on you with His breath of life.
4-1-1
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