God is our life-support

In Genesis 2:7, we find that God breathes life into us: "...and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life." Literally, this refers to the Spirit of God being breathed into us. At creation, He formed from dust our fleshly bodies, but he breathed His Spirit into us to give us life.

And thanks to Jesus' redemptive work on the cross, we don't have to live by our flesh. Our life support can be His Spirit which empowers us:

"But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you" (Romans 8:11; see, too, Eph 2:1).

I almost didn't consider this as an attribute. Of the ones listed in Acts 17, this isn't as clearly stated as God is... Instead, it's alluded to twice: 

"He gives to all life, breath, and all things" (Vs 25)

"For in Him we live and move and have our being" (Vs 28)

I loved that:  "have our being." I chose to say God is our life-support because if you've ever seen a life-support machine, you know it's doing all the work. It does the breathing--which is our life, right? I mean, without breath, we are dead. So, in essence, the life-support does for us what we cannot do on our own. 

There have certainly been moments in my life, seasons where I needed God to breathe for me because I didn't have the strength to breathe on my own. But other times, I think that God as our life-support is, instead, a picture of what our dependence on Him ought to look like.

I touched on this last week when I talked about the presence of the Holy Spirit being with us. Because of that truth, we have access to His power. We can instead operate out of the power of His grace by walking in the strength, the life, of His spirit. 

For me, I am still learning what this means - the daily, hourly choice to choose His Spirit in me over my flesh and my own strength. I don't always live it, and I certainly don't have a formula or steps for doing it. But, here is what I do know: When I choose Him, when I choose to sacrifice my time, when I choose quality relationship over quantity time, He strengthens me and allows me to accomplish abundantly, exceedingly more than I could ask or imagine (Eph 3:20).