Then he said to me, “Prophesy to the breath; prophesy, son of man, and say to it, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: Come, breath, from the four winds and breathe into these slain, that they may live.’” So I prophesied as he commanded me, and breath entered them; they came to life and stood up on their feet—a vast army.

Ezekiel 37:9-10

The worship group All Sons & Daughters has a song called Great Are You Lord. It was released in 2013 and I’ve always really loved this song. There is a line in the song that says, “It’s your breath in our lungs, so we pour out our praise.” This specific line, and the whole song in general, took on new meaning in 2016 after I had a profound encounter with the Lord in a worship service. 

It was March, 4, 2016 and I was at a Cultivate Revival conference put on by Global Awakening. It was hosted by a Methodist church in Washington Crossing, Pennsylvania. Bill Johnson, Dr. Randy Clark and Dr. Tom Jones were the main speakers. I drove up and stayed at an AirBnB by myself for the first few days of the conference. By Friday, some other friends had joined me. 

Friday night Randy Clark did his impartation service. This is when he invites the Holy Spirit to come and radically touch everyone in the room. After some worship and teaching, Randy invited the Holy Spirit to move. We were instructed to wait on the Lord as worship played and, if we felt anything, we were to come to the front for someone to lay hands on us and pray for us. 

As I waited, I asked the Spirit to fill me to overflow. Nothing much happened…at first. But then I noticed that my right hand started to shake involuntarily. This had never happened to me before so I didn’t know what it was. I didn’t think it was significant enough to go down front so I stayed in my seat near the back of the sanctuary. 

After a while, the prayer team that was down front started to move out into the congregation and pray for people standing at their seats. A number of other things happened to me in that service as the prayer team began to come out to the people in the congregation. I started trembling and shaking involuntarily. I felt tingling in my hands. I felt the heavy weight of the glory of God resting on me. It felt like someone put a 20 lb. lead vest on me, like the kind you wear before getting X-rays on your teeth at the dentist. 

One by one a prayer team member would come and pray for me and as they did God continued to do more. As one man began praying, something different began to happen to my breathing. 

I was standing with my hands by my side and suddenly my lungs didn’t seem to work. They weren’t getting enough oxygen and I felt like I had to heave just to get any air. It was like my trachea had closed and very little air was getting in my lungs. It was so hard to breath that I asked the Lord what was happening to me. I heard him speak to my heart and say, “You’re okay. It’s going to be okay.” Then I got the distinct impression that I was breathing in the Holy Spirit. 

Fast forward nearly 8 years to today. I have seen many times now that when someone is getting free from a demonic spirit, they sometimes experience this phenomenon where they can’t breathe. This happened to one lady in my church when a spirit of death left her. This happened to another person when a spirit of fear left. I am now convinced this same thing was happening to me.

After a few moments of trying to trust God in the midst of struggling to breathe (it probably lasted only a minute but felt much longer), a man on the prayer team came and gave me this huge bear hug. Now I really couldn’t breathe. I have no idea why he did that except that he felt compelled by the Lord to do it. After he let go, I slumped down into my seat, and I could breathe again without issue.  

I don’t know what left, but I believe some demonic spirit that had been attached to my life couldn’t stay while the Holy Spirit was getting poured out on me. And as it was on the way out, I couldn’t breathe. But after it left, the Father breathed His breath into me. He filled my lungs with His Spirit. 

And this is why, from that moment on, I could never again sing that line in the worship song the same way. 

“It’s your breath in our lungs

So we pour out our praise, 

we pour out our praise”

Great Are You Lord, All Sons & Daughters

While I’m sure All Sons & Daughters meant this line to be metaphorical, I experienced this in a very literal, physical way. When I sing this song, I remember that God literally put His breath in my lungs, set me free from whatever was holding me back, and filled me with His Spirit.