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God’s Breath - part 3 of 3 (Amplified and KJV) Seldom do those who are physically dying refuse to receive oxygen to help them breathe; yet how often do those who are spiritually weak and dying insist on rejecting the Divine breath of God? With Adam’s disobedience came immediate spiritual and later physical death. But with the birth, death and resurrection of Jesus, the last Adam, came a new opportunity for mankind to receive and live by the Spirit-breath of God the Father. The heavenly Father still seeks for those who are willing to die to themselves that He may live His life and speak His words through them here on earth. Following His resurrection, Jesus explained to the apostles that “…[Just] as the Father has sent Me forth, so I am sending you. Having said this, He breathed on them and said to them, Receive the Holy Spirit!” {John 20:21-22}. Within that breath they received the earnest of that which would be poured out upon the hundred and twenty of His followers at Pentecost “When suddenly there came a sound from heaven like the rushing of a violent tempest blast, and it filled the whole house in which they were sitting…And they were all filled (diffused through their souls) with the Holy Spirit…” {Acts 2:2, 4}. In like manner, His followers today are receiving ever-increasing in-breathings of the Holy Spirit that they may impart to others the life-giving Spirit of God. Ultimately, the Divine breath will so fill each person of the many-membered body that the Father’s desire will be exhibited and fulfilled through the union of Christ and His body, manifesting and operating as one new corporate man. In his Messianic prophecy of Christ, about Whom Isaiah prophesied, “And there shall come forth a Shoot out of the stock of Jesse…and a Branch out of his roots shall grow and bear fruit,” {Isa 11:1} the prophet also foretold : “And the Spirit of the Lord…shall make Him of quick understanding in the fear of the Lord…” {Isa 11:23}. Within this idea, Isaiah uses two expressions with similar meanings. The first is “Spirit,” meaning “to blow, i.e. to breathe.” The second is “of quick understanding” which means “wind, by resemblance breath, i.e. a sensible (or even violent) exhalation.” The “quick understanding” so characteristic of the Branch becomes progressively characteristic of the branches which come forth bearing the fruit of His nature and purpose. Much of the fruit-bearing the Father desires to receive from us is aborted or malformed when we ignore, disobey or misconstrue, either in timing or execution, the promptings and directions of the Holy Spirit. When we choose our wills over His, we quench the Holy Spirit. Without repentance and a renewed desire to be transformed into the image of Christ, we leave only eternity to reveal the price we have paid and the cost to the Kingdom of God. In Peter’s witness to the Gentiles in the home of Cornelius, for example, God required that Peter act contrary to what he had been taught as “religiously correct” {Acts 10-11:1-18}. Today, when God is reaching beyond our customary and traditional methods, we, too, must be willing to recognize and sacrifice the idol of “religious tradition” on the altar of total obedience to the ever-living God. -Ruth French March Newsletter 2006 | Much Too Hard | Here, World, Take My Children part 2 of 3 Pastor's Journal March 2005 | His Fullest Riches | God's Breath part 3 of 3 |
Biblical Counseling for Leaders
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