The Creative Voice

You and I have creative potential with our words. We have that potential because we were reborn as God’s children by the breath of the Spirit. We carry the very breath of God. He has assigned our words to be His spiritually reproductive sound on Earth. We use our breath for two purposes. One is to keep our physical organism alive and functioning. The other is to move our breath across our vocal chords to make sounds and deliver a message.

Two creative acts took place in Scripture that involved the breath of God. Genesis 2:7 reveals God breathing into Adam to create the first human being, “Then the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.” The second breath-related creation took place in John 20:22 where Jesus appears to His disciples and creates the first born again human beings to ever walk upon the face of the Earth,  “And when He had said this, He breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit.’” The first Adam failed to complete his assignment because of his failure in Eden. The second Adam succeeded in His assignment because of His success at Calvary where He secured forever an unfailing salvation for those who would take in the same life-giving breath and become reborn as new creations in a new kingdom under a new covenant.

This morning, I was reading through my wife Jan’s new book, Blessings for Love and War, and came across the following words in a blessing titled, Blessing for Awakening:

“I bless you with the wind of the Spirit,

awakening your passion,

and bringing dormant things to life.

Do only those things God is breathing on.”

As I pondered Jan’s blessing and the creative events of Scripture where the breath of God is involved, I was struck with the importance of our words. We breathe out the content of our hearts forming the words we deliver. The words “Do only those things God is breathing on” made me pause. I recalled Proverbs 18:21 where it says, “Death and life are in the power of the tongue”. Unlike Jesus who only spoke life, we can speak both life and death with our words. The choice is ours to make.

Every breath requires inhaling and exhaling. There is that moment between inhale and exhale where we can pause for a split-second to determine the sound and content of the words we choose to release. In that pause revisit your assignment on Earth to bring life, not death. To create, not destroy. In doing so you will place yourself in a creative chain of events that began in John 20 when Jesus appeared to a group of yet-to-be-reborn disciples who were locked away in fear. The life-giving breath of Jesus brought them to life and removed their fear. That is your assignment. Do only those things God is breathing on and you will become a creative presence in the world because your voice will have the same sound as the creative voice of God.