O Lord, breathe Thy Spirit on me

When you have a time with the Lord to confess, do not seek any feeling; just confess and pray thoroughly. To confess is to empty yourself out, and to pray is to receive the Lord into you. Hence, confession plus prayer is a breathing out and a breathing in. We breathe out our sins and breathe in God Himself. A. B. Simpson wrote a hymn that says, "I am breathing out my sorrow, / Breathing out my sin; / I am breathing, breathing, breathing, / All Thy fulness in" (Hymns, #255). Through continuous confession we breathe out our filthiness until all of our uncleanness is gone, and as we breathe out, we also breathe in. As we breathe out our sins, we breathe in God Himself. Thank and praise the Lord that although we are still filthy, He comes to us with His blood as the Lamb-God, the redeeming God. As soon as I breathe out, my sins are gone, and as soon as I breathe in, God comes in. This does not take any effort. As long as I breathe out a little of my sins, I immediately breathe in a little of God. When I confess my sins a little, God comes in to fill me a little. When I have completely breathed out all of my sins, I will be completely filled with God within, completely filled inwardly with the life-giving Spirit as the consummation of the Triune God.

Calling is spiritual deep breathing. Because I am elderly, the doctors have taught me to breathe deeply. Deep breathing is very useful and should be done often. Moreover, the doctors tell me that when I walk, I should not walk too slowly but should walk a bit faster; this will force me to breathe in more air, increase my metabolism, and spontaneously make my body healthy. When we call on the Lord, there will be a spiritual organic effect. There is a hymn that says, "I am breathing out my sorrow, / Breathing out my sin" (Hymns, #255). When we call, we breathe out all our sin, filthiness, sorrow, sickness, and worldliness. We breathe out the things that should not be in us, and we breathe in the heavenly air that we need. As a result, we are saved and healed.

When we talk to people, we must learn to deny our self and take Christ as our life to express Christ. We should not talk with people by our self. We must learn and practice to talk to people by denying our self. Not only daily but also moment by moment, we must practice to do things, to live, to act, and to have our being in Christ, with Christ, and by Christ. We should also learn how to walk by praying to Him all the time (1 Thes. 5:17). While we are going to work, we have to go by praying. The best way to pray unceasingly is to call on the name of the Lord. While you are taking the cross, you have to do it by calling as a kind of instant and unceasing prayer to the Lord. To call on the Lord's name is to breathe in Christ (Lam. 3:55-57). Whenever you say "O Lord Jesus," you really breathe Christ into you.

When the Lord's recovery came to the United States, a brother who had been a preacher turned this way. One day I called Hymn #255 by A. B. Simpson. The chorus of this hymn says:

After we sang that hymn this brother did not understand what A. B. Simpson was talking about, and he told me he did not like this song. A number of years later pray-reading the Word and calling on the name of the Lord Jesus came into the Lord's recovery, and this brother practiced these things. One day I met him in another city and he told me, "Brother Lee, to me the best hymn is #255 on breathing."

Incarnation, death, resurrection, and regeneration are all clearly unveiled in the Gospel of John. However, this Gospel goes on to show us that Christ gives us Himself as the living water (John 4:10, 14), that He is the bread of life, good for eating (6:35), and that He has breathed Himself into us as the Holy Breath (20:22). From the time of our regeneration we need to always eat, drink, and breathe the Lord. To eat, drink, and breathe the Lord are finer steps in His dispensing. Trees need their roots, but without the root hairs, a tree will not be able to grow. The root hairs are the finer means for the tree to absorb all the riches from the soil for its growth. Regeneration has planted Christ as the "root" in our spirit, but we also need the "root hairs" of eating, drinking, and breathing the Lord. These are the finer means for God's dispensing. We may say, "Hallelujah! God was incarnated for me, He died for me, He resurrected for me, and I have been regenerated!" However, we may still be superficial. Day by day we may not be breathing, drinking, and eating the Lord. Hymn #255 in Hymns speaks of our need to breathe in the Lord. We may sing this hymn, but do we breathe in the Lord day by day? Breathing in the Lord will make us another kind of person. Many Christians today are spiritually dead because they do not have the root hairs. All Christians know that God was incarnated and that Jesus died for us and our sins and was resurrected. However, many do not know what it is to eat and drink the Lord. Many of us in the Lord's recovery do know how to eat, drink, and breathe the Lord, but we may not be practicing this in our daily life. We may not know the practicality of the Spirit spreading Himself with our spirit into our soul and saturating our body. We have the teachings of these matters, but we may not have the reality in our tripartite being.

You may say that we have already heard a lot of this kind of teaching in the Lord's recovery, but unconsciously these things seem to have vanished in our living. This is because we have been too deeply influenced by the traditional religious thinking that God is too great, too solemn, and too majestic. Although there is nothing wrong with this aspect, God is also practical; He is breath. He breathes out, and we breathe in; this breathing in and breathing out is life. Hymn #255 speaks specifically about this. Because the writer of the hymn had such an appreciation and experience of the Lord, he said in the chorus, "I am breathing out my sorrow, breathing out my sin; I am breathing, breathing, breathing, all Thy fulness in." This kind of hymn is indeed profound; merely singing it will cause us to be cleansed and be washed from all the spots and wrinkles in our lives. Today if we can learn the secret—to come to the Lord to breathe Him in, to call on Him from deep within, to breathe in this breath of life of the Lord—then our spiritual life will surely be healthy.

In order to learn how to enjoy Christ by praying, we must drop the old way of prayer. Also, we should not pray for business affairs or personal concerns. Instead, pray to praise Him, to adore Him, to thank Him, to behold His beauty, and to inhale Him. Many times we have to pray by groaning, saying, "O Lord, O Lord...." This is the best prayer. The real prayer is not out of us, so that the Lord will do something for us. The real prayer is the Spirit, who is Christ Himself, working and moving within us, that we would open to Him to breathe Him out and breathe Him in (see Hymns, #255). We must offer Him the free way to go out and to come in to express something of Himself.

d. We must build up the habit of living Christ for the building up of the Body of Christ by building up the habit of prayer, the habit of breathing in the pneumatic Christ unceasingly by calling on Him and conversing with Him—Lam. 3:55-56; Psa. 102—title; Hymns, #255.

a. The Spirit is the heavenly air for us to breathe; by exercising our spirit to call upon the name of the Lord, we breathe in the Spirit and thereby receive the Spirit—John 20:22; Gal. 3:2; 1 Thes. 5:17; Lam. 3:55-56; Hymns, #255.

In 20:22 the Lord Jesus told the disciples to receive the holy breath, the Holy Spirit. We should not analyze the breath but receive it by breathing it into us. Unfortunately, many of today's Christians know only to reason and consider; they do not have any experience of breathing the holy breath. A. B. Simpson was one who knew the experience of breathing Christ in. The opening lines of one of his hymns read, "O Lord, breathe Thy Spirit on me, / Teach me how to breathe Thee in" (Hymns, #255).

Experientially speaking, to live by the Spirit is to receive the Spirit by breathing the Spirit into us. Hence, the words since we live by the Spirit mean "since we receive the Spirit." In A. B. Simpson's hymn on breathing the Spirit, one stanza says,

I am breathing every moment,
Drawing all my life from Thee;
Breath by breath I live upon Thee,
Lord, Thy Spirit breathe in me.
Hymns, #255

A. B. Simpson realized the need to breathe the Spirit continually. To breathe in the Spirit is to receive the Spirit. This is to have life and live.