Day 9 – Revive All

Ezekiel 37:9–10 (NIV84)
Then he said to me, “Prophesy to the breath; prophesy, son of man, and say to it, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe into these slain, that they may live.’ ” So I prophesied as he commanded me, and breath entered them; they came to life and stood up on their feet—a vast army.

In Pastor Chris Hodges’ book, Fresh Air, he talks about how we often find ourselves “in the doldrums,” an expression people have long used for feeling lifeless, stuck, bored, and without hope of any change in their life.

Before the age of motorized sea vessels, ships depended upon the trade winds to fill their sails and propel them across the sea from continent to continent. Without the wind they would be either stuck or at the mercy of the ocean currents. This is why they avoided certain areas near the equator, where the winds of  the northern and southern hemisphere would meet and cancel each other out, The result was that a ship could find itself stuck for days or even weeks without the ability to move on. To make matters worse, the weather systems of the two hemispheres would collide there and cause powerful storms. 

Like many Christians, you may be stuck “in the doldrums.” Like the sailors who are not in the northern or the southern hemisphere but caught in the middle, you’re neither hot nor cold, but lukewarm. And like that place in the ocean, these life doldrums are magnets for the storms of life. So many Christians are miserable because they are stuck in a storm and don’t seem to be able to move forward and escape the storm.

You need the breath of God! The wind of God. The Spirit of God. In the Hebrew language it’s the ruach (wind, breath, Spirit) , as in the verses above. In the Greek language it’s the pneuma, as in John 20:22:

And with that (Jesus) breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.

Let your prayer be, “Come, Holy Spirit! Come, breath of God, and fill the limp sails of my life, and revive me, that I can move on from this stuck place of hopelessness, and move toward the life of promise you have for me. Revive me, Lord. Revive All, Lord.  Come, breath of God, and fill me.