Breathe

Words sometimes penetrate the very fabric of your life.

Particularly simple words, the type that make you say, "o yeah! That is so true."

The bible does it all the time.

On this occasion the words were not from the pages of the bible but from a book I happened to be reading.

They were in the form of a question. "How come Christians hold on to so many dead things when we say we believe in the resurrection?"

And you know what?

It's true isn't it guys?

But I am not sure if we hold on to dead things or whether they just need new life breathed in to them.

This has been rattling around the airspace that surrounds my brain for a few weeks now!

Especially in my prayer space. My one on one times with God that have been pretty potent lately.

Once in a while amazing revelation comes in these times. Although I have to admit that most of the time these times are fairly tough, and I have to commit to work really hard to maintain the work of personal prayer, and any other type of prayer for that matter!

But it's well worth it.

On occasions though I get real clarity from God.

I guess you know what I mean?

I'll skip back to the prayer times later!

But for now I want to share something with you today that is simple but important. Important enough for me to feel compelled to write it down to share on my blog today.

And I want to put a health warning on this blog! Please read it to the end, especially those who love SA bands! I love you honestly!

This last week brass band fever has hit the SA. A concert featuring a number of Salvation Army Staff bands was happening in London at the weekend just gone. The brass band community of the Salvation Army has been really excited.

I am not a lover of brass bands. They do not float my dinghy!

Which is a real big thing to say considering I was for a large part of my life in the Salvation Army probably affectionately considered as a bando! I was brass band mad. It was my life in the Salvation Army.

For a long time I did everything band.

My life had room only for football and brass bands, O and the occasional girlfriend!

But didn't know God at all. Even having been born into the Salvation Army and being a fifth generation Salvationist.

I had no understanding, and absolutely no relationship with God whatsoever.

But I loved my cornet. (for those who are reading this who have absolutely no idea what I am talking about, that's a brass instrument not an ice cream!)

God saved me from all that band stuff.

I say saved because I was not a Christian. I was just doing the band thing in the Army.

And I really needed saving from that because it kept me from having a relationship with Jesus.

Big time!

I have managed to keep myself away from the band scene for many years now.

But this week I was invited to a concert in Durham. A concert featuring the Chicago Staff Band. So I felt I had to go.

And during the concert I found myself amongst a very niche market of people. Mostly people who liked Salvation Army bands. And I was once an integral part of that niche market.

But it was as if I was in a concert in the 70s, 80s or any other time in brass band history because it was pretty much the same as any concert I've played in or listened to. And I found myself praying all the way through asking God to show me what was the point to this?

I could appreciate the skill of the musicians. I could acknowledge the limited appeal of brass band music to a certain minority of the planets public. The red tunics were resplendent even if they did make a person look like a wine gum. The shoes that they wore you could see your face in them wow! But if we say that everything should be missional in Christianity then what was missional about it?

I still couldn't make head nor tail of it.

The best thing to do in that situation is talk to the king of the heavens.

So I prayed.

"What's the point God?"

It was a genuine request.

I didn't get an answer that night.

I went from the concert with a heavy heart.

Back to the prayer times.

In fact, fast forward to the very next morning following the concert. I was locked in a prayer room at my church. I had actually forgotten about my question the previous night.

I put some Albert and Kimberly Rivera on my iPod. Quickly I connected with my beautiful Jesus. I had just started to talk a few opening sentences to him when a picture just dropped in my head from seemingly nowhere.

It was a blast from the past.

I pictured the ROOTS conference big top a few years back.

In one of the praise sessions I remembered a fantastic trumpet player called Raul, who was part of Graham Kendrick's backing band for the weekend, coming down from the stage and walking in and out of the aisles playing his trumpet over the gathered people. I remembered the spiritual high I experienced as those notes landed in my heart with Exocet like precision.

As I pictured this blast from the past.

I heard the voice of God in my thoughts.

The voice said, "I am in the breath."

I am in the breath!

I connected quickly my question from the previous night and the words that had just been spoken into my ears.

I had asked, "What is the point of SA bands?"

God had answered, "I am in the breath."

And. Realised a simple thing. If the breath of God isn't in SA banding then it is meaningless.

But if the breath of God is in the hearts of the bandsmen, the notes of the music, then it is has to be missional because Gods breath is being breathed over those who hear.

And I warmed to SA bands once again almost immediately. And I bless what they do, and admit here and now that maybe I have been wrong about them for some time. And I truly hope that they touch the lives of thousands as they embrace the breath of God.

But the breath of God isn't just about brass bands. (thank God!)

Those of us who say we are Christians have the breath of God breathed into the centre of our lives. I think sometimes we breathe in the wrong air, that's all.

But the breath of God, the ruach, (a Hebrew word used to describe words such as wind, Spirit and breath in the bible) the wind that comes from all directions and the wind of the Spirit that flows out from us is mighty powerful and without it Christianity is completely worthless.

I began to picture this guy Raul playing his trumpet over these gathered people but then suddenly, the people had been replaced by lots of bones, very dry bones.

But as he played they formed and fleshed out and then became alive as the breath of God came from the end of his brass instrument and into the bones.

I obviously then read Ezekiel 37 as I saw this picture. To see if God had anything more to show me.

1. The hand of the lord was on me, and he brought me out by the Spirit of the lord and set me in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones.

2. He led me back and forth among them, and I saw a great many bones on the floor of the valley, bones that were very dry.

3. He asked me, "Son of man, can these bones live?"
I said, "Sovereign lord, you alone know."

4. Then he said to me, "Prophesy to these bones and say to them, 'Dry bones, hear the word of the lord!

5. This is what the Sovereign lord says to these bones: I will make breath enter you, and you will come to life.

Every breath we breathe. Everything we do, If we are serious about mission, it has to be done fuelled by the breath of God. If God is in it, dead things come to life, seemingly spent things can receive life, a new lease of life.

It doesn't matter how clever our mission plans are, how cool our churches are, how hot our evangelistic work is, or whether we have a brass band or a few guitars, or a kazoo for that matter. What really does matter is whether or not the breath of God is flowing through it.

Because if it isn't.

IF IT ISN'T!

WE HAVE NO CHANCE.

We have no chance of reaching anything or anyone, anyhow.

When I surfaced from my prayer session, full of revelation and changed just that little bit more, I headed upstairs for a coffee at our church.

Sitting in the couch area was a girl of about 23.

A girl who we know is broken by poverty, abuse, mistreatment. She had spent the night in a local park sleeping in a bush.
She was tired, hungry, unwashed and by large parts of society, unloved.

There was a vacancy in her eyes. She had a kind of empty blank stare going on.

She just looked like a dry useless bone.

God asked me the same question as he had asked Ezekiel.

Gary, can this dry bone live?

I think this scriptural question is one of the biggest questions facing the church right now as we do our task of reaching the world for God.

On the face of it. This young girl looked hopeless.

But wait. God says I will breathe life into those dry bones?

And I saw the potential, the hope, the possibilities in her sad eyes.

I began to speak to her.

As she spoke back in her beautiful soft voice which kind of cut through the matted hair, the smudged make up, the pallor of her skin. She spoke of her night I the park, how scared she was, how cold she was, how hungry she was.

I really felt her pain.

I heard God again say to me, "speak to her of me."

And I did.

I couldn't find what I thought was an appropriate thing to say.

So I just began to speak words of comfort, encouragement and let her know that God really had plans for her.

We had dealt with her physical needs such as warmth and food. But she needed much more.

As I spoke it dawned on me that the same breath I had been thinking of in terms of the brass band thing was in my lungs as I spoke. And even if the words didn't seem to be landing in her heart too easily.

I knew.

I knew the Spirit of God was in the breath.

And God can do immeasurably more than we dare ask or imagine.

And I knew that a little life was being breathed into the life of this amazing girl who is desperate for a saviour.

There is a great song that says, "This is the air I breathe!"

God challenges us today. Is it? Is the breath of God the air that we breathe?

If it isn't?

Let God breathe his breath into you this day.

Can you imagine?

Dead things come to life when the breath of God touches them!

Can you imagine every time a brass band plays dead things come to life?

Every time we speak, sing, shout or act, dead things come to life?

Surely that's what we want to see?

I know I do.

You are amazing (especially you SA bandsmen and women!)

Blessings

Gaz