If you have had the privilege to know the Lord, you may have had the experience that your life suddenly has new dimensions. Maybe you can’t quite describe it, but your universe swells, your joy multiplies, your hope rises anew. It’s like taking a deep, full breath after living off of so little oxygen for so long. This is an experience every believer has: Just as physical life begins through a baby’s first crying breath filling his lungs with oxygen, our spiritual life is enlivened when we first believe and call His name (Rom. 10:13). At that moment, the Spirit comes in to fill our spiritual lungs — our spirit — and then our spiritual breathing begins.
In fact, God has always wanted man to live this way. If we look at the story of man’s creation, we see that God’s purpose was not to create a solid being without an opening, but a vessel with the capacity and space to contain Him. God’s breath of life came into man’s nostrils to fill and create a space in a lump of clay (Gen. 2:7). Without this filling, there would be no dimension, but when God’s breath came in, suddenly, there was space and volume. Suddenly, this lifeless clay became a living soul — something as grand as the Creator Himself mingled with something seemingly so small and limited as earthen man.
But even after we are saved, we often find that our capacity is quite limited. Many times, we live selfishly by our own measurement, limiting God’s reach in us. We may know a lot about the Lord in knowledge or do many “Christian” things in practice, and yet we fail to do the most important thing for life: breathe. The more we breathe, the more our lung capacity expands, the more our soul gains depth, breadth, and height. The more we inhale His very breath into us, the more this universe in us grows and expands. And so when we look up at the night sky or out across a vast canyon, that breathtaking expanse of creation outside is not foreign; it is connected to us and in us, a mirror of and tether to the immeasurable life of our Creator within. God has crafted such a world around us so that we can walk in it, just as He walks and expands in us. Just as we interact with the world around — walking under the sun, smelling the air, feeling the wind — the Lord is craving to have the same interaction within the expanse of our soul. He desires that we be mingled with Him and have Him come in to dimensionally fill, craft, and enjoy us as His created beings.
A believer’s life is that simple: It is a life of breathing in and containing God Himself. In ourselves, our breath is fleeting (Psalm 144:4), but when God breathed Himself into man, something of eternity was deposited in us. Holding this divinity within us actually is the true definition of humanity. His capacity becomes our capacity. Our mind is renewed. We can love in simplicity once again. Our decisions and choices are in line with Him. Our everyday life is recovered back to what He designed us to be: living souls meant to contain, know, and express Him. Don’t be satisfied with being lifeless clay, living a flat, heavy, earthen life. You were meant to contain something so grand, so limitless, so vast — all you need to do is breathe.
(Above are notes of fellowship taken from a gathering on 1/11/2025, not reviewed by the speaker.)