Breath of God

Genesis 1:2

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God has built a training into how life works into every moment of your day. This occurred to me recently, and it occurred while I was studying the Holy Spirit, and that the word that is translated spirit in the Old Testament in the original language is this word ruach. Hebrew is a really fun language. You get to clear your throat all the time. Ruach. You say it with me, Ruach. And it’s a word that literally means spirit or means breath or wind. And so you have this beautiful picture in Genesis one of the Spirit, the ruach of God, the breath of God, hovering, and actually that word too describes like a bird hovers. So here we get this beautiful already an image of the Holy Spirit right there, over the waters. And the breath of God as it’s breathed out is what’s there kind of stirring things up and getting creation started.

So as I was thinking about the breath of God, I realized, what do we have to do each moment of our lives? We have to breathe in.

We won’t live if we don’t breathe in this breath that comes from outside of us. If you hold your breath and try to do it yourself, you don’t get very far. We can’t manufacture breath in and of ourselves. Our very existence is dependent on breathing in something from outside of us. God’s training us every moment that we have to receive life from him. Isn’t it foolish, then, that we have this idea, this tendency to try to do it on our own? But that’s what sin is. Sin is trying to do life to live your own way instead of God’s way, acting like we’re God, not him. That’s what happened with Adam and Eve in the garden. That’s what we do again and again today. I’m going to live life my way. But really, that’s just holding our breath. And while it might work for a bit, it only gets us so far. Doing life for our own way, living like we’re God, it’s a path towards not just sin, but also death and eternity separated from God.

But we have a loving God who has made a way for us to breathe in life again. Jesus came, lived, and died and rose again. He has taken away your sin, your guilt, your shame, everything that separated you from God. He defeated death itself to give you life again. And now the Holy Spirit, the Ruach of God, has breathed new life into you. Spiritual life, the ability to believe in God again, to have life from him again. And he’s even built into our daily life as Christians a new way for us to really practice and exercise this. When you take the Lord’s Supper, the bread and the wine with it, you get the body and blood of Christ. What do you have? The life of God. You are taking it into yourself again.

So today, breathe in. Breathe out.

Think about your breathing. Not too hard, that’s when breathing gets weird. Is when we think too hard about our breathing. But just think about the fact that every moment you have to take in something from outside of yourself. And that’s something, is the life that God has given you. And God today has given you new life through the death and resurrection of His Son, and by the work of the Spirit. So breathe in this life that comes from God, today.