This is what the Sovereign Lord says to these bones: I will make breath enter you, and you will come to life. (EZEK. 37:5)

We come to the second fundamental of awakening: the Spirit of God. We have the Word of God and now we hear about the Spirit of God.

This is a new creation story isn’t it? Remember in the garden of Eden we are told, “Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being” (Gen. 2:7).

The Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity, is the breath of life. He breathes life into our lifelessness. The Holy Spirit’s presence is eternal life itself. The interesting feature of breath is its on-going-ness. While a single breath means life for the next moment, that same breath will not be life for the moment after that. Note, though, this is not life support. This is life itself. As human beings we are shaped and crafted by the Word of God and raised to life by the Spirit of God. This is the prophetic Word of God to us: “I will make breath enter you and you will come to life.” And as we come to life so we stay gloriously alive—by the breath of life from the Holy Spirit.

All too often, awakening (both personal and corporate) is arrested at this point. We have an infinitely high capacity for the life of the Holy Spirit in us and yet we have a desperately low reality of the Spirit’s presence and power in our lives. We hear the recreating Word of God about salvation but we never fully open ourselves to the Spirit of God. Or we started well enough but over time our breathing has grown shallow. Perhaps we find ourselves at a place where we know it’s time to learn to breathe more deeply than we ever have before.

Awakening grows as our reality starts moving again toward our possibility.

Perhaps we need to stretch toward prophesying over one another. To prophesy is to speak the Word of the Lord with the same Spirit and authority by which it was inspired. To prophesy is to boldly declare the living, working Word of the Lord in faith. It means to speak to the things that are not as though they already were.

PRAY FOR ONE ANOTHER
Heavenly Father, we want to speak to one another in this band in the authority of the Word of God and in the power of the Holy Spirit, saying, “Hear the Word of the Lord, [one name at a time], ‘I will make breath enter you, and you will come to life.’” And now I open myself to this reality of your Spirit like never before. Awaken us to the reality of your possibility in our lives. We pray in Jesus’ name, amen.