The Spirit, the Wind—Unboxed

4/11/2026

“The Wind Without a Box”:

(Ooh, yeah... hmm...)

It’s not the “talk, talk, talk” and the busy hands,

Running in circles trying to prove where I stand.

It’s not the sacrificing of the “bad” things I do,

It’s dying to the “who” I was before I met you.

Not just about the things we say,

The endless doing, day by day.

It’s giving up who we are,

Into who He is.

Into who He is!

Denying myself is more than denying my things,

It’s shedding the weight that this performance brings.

I’m stepping up now from having it my way,

I’m giving Him all, I’ve got nothing to say.

He’s like the wind that can’t be contained!

More than a meeting or a box for the rain!

Let the ventilation system collapse to the floor!

I’m opening wide every latch on the door!

He’s like the wind, you can’t contain,

More than a box to hide the rain.

(More than a box, more than a box!)

Let Him have His way...

(Oh, let Him have all of you... yeah...)

Into who He is...

(Into who He is...)

The Wind Unboxed

Not talk.

Not the steel sound of service, clanging from the heart’s factory of deeds.

Not busy feet chasing sacrifice through holy streets.

Not “give, give, give” until the echoes fill the room and die in a cloud of applause.

True faith begins where sound ends—

Where the voice falters,

And the self is spilled like oil before flame.

To deny the self is no trimming of pleasures,

No fasting of the senses;

It is the unmaking of the one who clings,

The loosening of the fist named me.

Jesus is not a system of air—

He is the air itself.

The breath that moves unseen,

Turning faces toward heaven without consent,

Shaping tides in the soul that never ask permission.

We built meetings to box the wind,

Called the cage “revival,”

And patted it when it blew politely through our pipes.

But the Spirit laughs at ventilation.

He rends the walls,

He smashes expectation,

And He calls the bones by name until they stand alive.

Christianity is not ours,

Not the molded thing we do or say.

It is becoming what breath meant

When God drew it from Himself—

The surrender of being,

The quiet death of autonomy,

That great exchange:

Our wind for His.

This is what I was trying to “say”...

True Christianity is not about something to say, talk, talk, talk, or something to sacrifice, or something to do, go, go, go, talk, talk, talk, give, give, give. Christianity is giving up WHO WE ARE, into who He is. Denying our very self is not the same as denying ourselves things. It is not talking or believing the right things, or sacrificing the “bad” things. Letting God have His way feels like a step up from having to have everything our way. But letting God have us in our entirety, singular and plural, is what Christianity really is. Christianity, Jesus, is “like the wind” not a meeting that puts the wind in a box, and then concocts a ventilation system.

All tied to this, it seems:

Audio recording: God Is Rich in Mercy. Are You? Am I?

•  God Is Rich in Mercy. Are You? Am I?