How many of these jingles do you remember?
“Put a Tic Tac in your mouth and get a bang out of life!”
“Juicy fruit, the taste the taste the taste that gonna move ya!”
“Double your pleasure, double your fun, with Doublemint gum.”
“Kiss a little longer with Big Red.”
“Two, two, two mints in one.” Certs
“The Original Celebrated Curiously Strong Mints.” – Altoids
Today has been designated as National Fresh Breath Day. Dentists, hygienists, and those we talk with in close proximity ALL admonish us to floss, rinse, brush, gargle, and get regular dental checkups. Sugar free mints and ample hydration keep our mouths moistened to keep the monstrous smells of halitosis at bay.
Now, if you just had a bunch of onion or garlic, these things are going to help but time and DISTANCE are your best bets. If someone says, “You take my breath away,” it’s probably not a romantic comment!
Biblically speaking, we need fresh breath. Follow me on this. 2 Timothy 1:6-8 says, “Wherefore I put thee in remembrance that thou stir up the gift of God, which is in thee by the putting on of my hands. (7) For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind. (8) Be not thou therefore ashamed of the testimony of our Lord, nor of me his prisoner: but be thou partaker of the afflictions of the gospel according to the power of God.”
The Greek word for spirit and Spirit is pneuma. We use that word as the prefix for anything that has to do with air or breath. Pneumatic tools are driven by compressed air. If someone is suffering from pneumothorax, they have an abnormal collection of air in their chest cavity. Pneumonia is an infection in the air sacs of the lungs. Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis is the longest word in the English
language according to the Oxford Dictionary. This 45-letter word means a lung disease caused by inhaling very fine ash and sand dust.
The Holy Spirit is that air, that breath we need. We received the Holy Spirit the moment we accepted Jesus as our Savior. I want to be very careful with this because there are those who falsely teach that we need a fresh or new anointing of the Spirit of God. That is an unbiblical concept and that is not what this devotional is about. The moment of salvation, we were indwelt, baptized, anointed, and sealed by the Holy Spirit of God. We cannot get any more of the Spirit than what we already have.
Ephesians 5:18 tells us that we are to be “filled with the Spirit.” This speaks of control. While we have all of the Spirit and He has all of us, He doesn’t have full control of us. Hopefully, we can see ourselves relinquishing more and more control to Him every day.
The passage in 2 Timothy tells us that God has not breathed into us fear. Instead, He breathed into us power, love, and soundness of mind. The purpose of this was to make us the witnesses in this world that we need.
Sometimes, this “gift” needs to be “stirred up.” The phrase means to rekindle. We might say that the flames need to be fanned so that they will burst forth in a blaze of fire. We get tired, lackadaisical, or we allow sin to grieve and quench the Spirit.
If your walk with the Lord has become dull and lifeless, it’s time to do something about it so that we can serve the Lord with the “fresh breath” of His Spirit working in our lives, unfettered by anything. We need to awaken with a renewed passion and purpose for serving the Lord with a renewed desire to “walk in the Spirit” so that we don’t “fulfil the lusts of the flesh.” (Galatians 5:16) Let’s join with the Psalmist in praying Psalms 51:10 for our own lives. “Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me.”
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