Good Stuff!

Genesis 2:7
And the Lord God formed a man's body from the dust of the ground and breathed into it the breath of life. And the man became a living person (Soul).

John 20:22
Then He breathed on them and said to them, "Receive the Holy Spirit."

God is all up into breathing into people. To me, it's kind of like a house that has been shut up for a number of weeks or days.....or maybe it's like having all the windows and doors closed due to winter. Then comes that first really good day of spring where the weather is just right. You open the windows and doors and let the fresh air in.  It just makes you come alive.

When I surrender my life to Christ and turn to Him for salvation, I'm not so sure that God doesn't breath on us then. Repentance, confession, accepting forgiveness and acknowledging Jesus as my Lord and Savior opens me up to receive God's Holy Spirit who is breathed into me.  All the stale and dark places in my heart are removed and I become a new creation...I am "born again." This is the change I have been waiting for, searching for but never could find. Maybe it truly is like the verse in Genesis Chapter 2. Without God's Holy Spirit Breath into my very being, I'm just some dust held together around a bone structure. Oh my heart beats and my lungs expand and fill with air, but the connection between God and me isn't there. That lack of connection is evidenced by the trail of destruction and bad choices I have made over the years.
But with the introduction of the Holy Spirit into me, things begin to change.

Does our environment change? Not really. If you get down to it, we still live in a fallen world that rejects Jesus. Oh I can seek out other believers of Christ and surround myself with like minded people who are walking out the reality of this new found faith daily. But the drugs, alcohol and the lifestyle are still out there. I have to keep going back to a Scripture that has served me well all these many years......"Greater is He who is in me..........than he who is in the world."
Recovery is possible if I break with my former way of life and depend on God's power (the Holy Spirit) to help me. The Steps and other such programs, along with my new friends, are helpful....but if the truth be known....a recovery that lasts only happens when I live daily with the awareness of my need for a Higher Power (Jesus). I look to God who created me and sustains my life.

Yes, this new way of living is scary. And there is an enemy (the devil) who seeks to throw you off track at every turn. But remember whose breath is living inside you....God. The real deal God who fills up the pages of our Bible. The real deal God who is everything you ever thought He was.........and then a Gazillion times more. The real deal God who loved you with such a burning love that He gave willingly His own Son to pay the price for your addiction (otherwise known as sin), so that He could then have a living, breathing, on-going relationship with you.
That is some kind of love this God has.

Ephesians 1:3-8 reads: How we praise God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms because we belong to Christ. Long ago, even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes. His unchanging plan has always been to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. And this gave him great pleasure. So we praise God for the wonderful kindness he has poured out on us because we belong to his dearly loved Son. He is so rich in kindness that he purchased our freedom through the blood of his Son, and our sins are forgiven. He has showered his kindness on us, along with all wisdom and understanding.

Go back and read those verses again. Let them soak in and think on them. Those aren't just feel good, flowery words to encourage us. Those are words of life!!
God on you....
mb