Dry Bones (Always, always hope.)

It's hard not to feel the heaviness of these days.  I try to get a deep breath and wonder how much longer the Lord will tarry before He calls us up in the rapture.  I think He was good in telling us that when we start to see end times prophecies happening to look up because our redemption is soon!  God knew we would need the focus of keeping our eyes on the One who is sovereign over evil and also tender to our souls.  He knows.  Whatever you are facing, He knows and is working on your behalf.

I was thinking yesterday about how God told Ezekiel (in chapter 37) to speak to the dead, dried out bones.  God didn't take the prophet to the dead scene so that Ezekiel could watch God speak...God took him there so the Ezekiel would speak life over the scene.  God tells him to prophesy over the bones:  that they would HEAR the WORD of the LORD. 

Ezekiel obeys and God does the resurrection work that He is so famous for.  Ezekiel speaks and God raises up the bones and covers them with flesh and sinew.  But, the bones are still without breath.  Ezekiel speaks again and God breathes life into the bones. 

This passage had its ultimate fulfillment in 1948 when the nation of Israel was restored.  In a single day, God took a scattered and seemingly dead people group and gave them back their land and national identity.  (Verse 14 says:  I will place you in your own land. Verse 25 says they will dwell in that land FOREVER.)

While this passage has had its primary fulfillment, God is still in the resurrection business.  The same resurrection power that raised Jesus from the dead lives in us!!!  God is still looking for people who will speak life into dead situations.  The WORD of the LORD can take anything that is dead and dried out and beyond rotten and raise it to NEW LIFE.

Authors Hays and Duvall say, "The point of this chapter is that these people are really, really dead, yet God brought them back to life.  Thus there is always hope.  IF God can bring these bones back to life, he can restore fallen Israel, and he can bring anyone else back to life that he chooses.  There is always hope when God is involved."

I love that.  Always, always hope.

What situation can you speak life into today?

Your words are beyond powerful when it's THE WORD you are uttering.