Without the Spirit of God inside our lives, motivating us to do the will of the Father, we will manifest a lifeless and wayward expression of God’s Creation. Only the breath of God at work in us is what defines us as the people of God.

At the creation of Adam, the breath of God was needed to make Adam a living human: “Then the Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground. He breathed the breath of life into the man’s nostrils, and the man became a living person” (Genesis 2:7). 

After the sin of Eden held us captive to sin, Jesus’s resurrection set us up to receive the second breath of God. This second breath happened when the Lord appeared to His disciples after He rose from the dead. 

The disciples were huddled together behind locked doors in fear, not knowing what would happen next. The Lord appeared to the disciples and showed them His wounds. Two times in a very short interaction with the disciples, He declared peace over them and “Then He breathed on them and said, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit’” (John 20: 22). The disciples who had followed Jesus for three years received the Spirit and became the first born again believers of many who would follow their teaching and ministry to become personally transformed by the introduction of the Spirit into their lives.

Both events were acts of Creation. One impartation of God’s creative breath happened in a perfect setting where the first human was created. John 20 revealed another act of creation, creating something new that would be called the Church.

When Paul was speaking in Athens, he referenced the breath of God: “He himself gives life and breath to everything, and he satisfies every need. From one man he created all the nations throughout the whole earth” (Acts 17: 25-26).

This indwelling presence of God and the release of His breath would be used to reach the nations, “His purpose was for the nations to seek after God and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him—though he is not far from any one of us. For in him we live and move and exist” (vs. 27-28). Each follower of Jesus has the indwelling presence of God living within them. His presence and our yielding to Him are what define and direct our lives.

There are times when it can appear we are only breathing in and out human solutions, not eternal directives from the Spirit. A move of God interrupts our limited understanding of our lives and our purpose for existence. A move of God happens when a group of people are responding together under the leading of God’s Spirit, revealing the creation of something new. The breath of God is a resurrecting breath that always carries with it a creative potential if we choose to inhale His truth and trust Him with our future..