Friday, August 7th 2020

God is calling you to LIVE!

Ezekiel 37:11 NLT
Then he said to me, “Son of man, these bones represent the people of Israel.
They are saying, ‘We have become old, dry bones—all hope is gone. Our nation is finished.’

Ezekiel 37:1-2 NIV
The hand of the Lord was on me, and he brought me out by the Spirit of the Lord and set me in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. He led me back and forth among them, and I saw a great many bones on the floor of the valley, bones that were very dry. 

When we fixate on our problems hope dries up!

Ezekiel 37:3 NIV
He asked me, “Son of man, can these bones live?” I said, “Sovereign Lord, you alone know.”

Ezekiel 37:4-5 NLT
Then he said to me, “Speak a prophetic message to these bones and say, ‘Dry bones, listen to the word of the Lord This is what the Sovereign Lord says: Look! I am going to put breath into you and make you live again! 

Ezekiel 37:7 NLT
So I spoke this message, just as he told me. Suddenly as I spoke, there was a rattling noise all across the valley. The bones of each body came together and attached themselves as complete skeletons.

When we speak God’s promises hope begins to stir!

Ezekiel 37:8-10 NIV
I looked, and tendons and flesh appeared on them and skin covered them, but there was no breath in them. 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.

When we breathe in God’s purpose hope becomes reality!

God is calling you to LIVE

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Have you ever been really thirsty?

When I have a stuffed up nose, I’ll sleep with my mouth open then when I wake up can’t even close my mouth or it will stick closed. So dry it’s like I’ve got a mouth full of sand!

Have you ever felt like that on the inside? In a situation and everyone around you is laughing…but you don’t feel it. You force it to fit in, but you don’t feel it in your soul. 

Maybe you’ve been so empty and dry that you are just craving that next hit of excitement or energy. You’re living from moment to moment trying to find that next thing that will make you feel alive, feel hope, feel ANYTHING!

This was the experience of the Children of Israel felt. Ezekiel 37:11

How did they get there? They started worshipping idols. Yes, they were going to temple/church, they were listening to the message, they were making their sacrifices; they were going through the motions of worshipping God but it was dead, lifeless religious practice.

They were looking to other sources to solve their problems, to meet their needs, and to fix their situations. They had disobeyed God, they no longer trusted God.

It got so bad and they had gotten so far from God that finally God said, enough is enough, I’ve got to do something radical to shake them out of this. He sent the prophet Jeremiah, and for 40 years he preached and prophesied and tried to get the people to see what was coming if they didn’t repent. Spoiler alert: they did not repent. 

The Empire of Babylon swept in from the North, King Nebuchadnezzar II lead his army into Judah and carried away captives, destroyed the cities, and plundered the whole nation. 

But even in exile, God spoke through the prophets Ezekiel and Daniel, and God promised the people that he would restore them after 70 years. Do you think that would bring repentance and hope? No, they continued to worship idols. They continued to complain about their situation. They continued to wallow in their problems

So, God gives the prophet Ezekiel a vision. Ezekiel 37:1-2

The bones, God tells us, represent the people of Israel. More specifically they represent their hopes, their dreams, and their life!

He takes Ezekiel and he puts him in the middle of a valley filled with dried out skeletons. The left over remains of what was once living, active, breathing; now is dried out, brittle, and breathless!

Couple of things we need to notice:

• God hasn’t said anything yet, he is currently silent, he simply shows Ezekiel the current situation

• Then without saying a word, God leads Ezekiel around the valley, allowing him to take it all in, to see the vastness of the bones, the hopelessness and despair of the situation. 

So, let’s do the same thing today. Take a walk amongst all of your dry bones! 

Your unfulfilled dreams, broken promises, shattered relationships, desperate situations, the hurt you’ve cause, and the hurt that others have caused you. 

Feel it for a moment. Allow the gravity, the weight of that dryness, that emptiness to fill your soul.

It hurts doesn’t it? Maybe it even brings tears to your eyes.

Now, there’s something very important we need to notice as we read this, Ezekiel points out, very intentionally that these bones are VERY DRY! They’ve been here a while, they are not just dead, they are beyond dead. They are irredeemable. Unsalvageable. Useless. Ezekiel is very clear in showing us that there is NO HOPE!

Have you felt that? Have you been there? Standing in and amongst your valley of bones? 

There’s no hope, it’s useless, it’s over.  I give up. I give in. I’m tapping out! I’ll never believe or hope for anything again because I’m only going to get let down, and be disappointed!

You’ve painfully accepted that this is the way things will always be, and whenever anyone asks you about your life, you point out all of the bones scattered everywhere. You detail them out in intricate specificity, because you have become an expert at Describing your Problems!

Here is where our hope dries up, when we fixate on the problems.

Some of you may take it personally and call them your failures.
Some of you may take the situational approach and call it bad timing or luck.
And others of you will find others to blame.

But the end result is the same, your surrounded by your own personal valley of dead, dry, brittle, and broken bones!

But, as you stand there, surveying your bones God has a question for you, the same one he asked Ezekie

Ezekiel 37:3 NIV: He asked me, “Son of man, can these bones live?”

Listen up broken promises!
Listen up shattered dreams!
Listen up fractured relationships!
Listen up uncertain future…God’s about to make something happen!

Ezekiel 37:7

Notice, he did as he was commanded. He didn’t do it because he felt like it, I don’t even know if he did it because he believed it, he did it because God said do it!

Now, watch this, “as I was prophesying/preaching” it didn’t happen before, it didn’t happen after, it happened as! When he began to declare the purpose of God, when he began to proclaim God’s plan those dead, dry, brittle, and broken bones began to stir! 

In fact, I love the way Ezekiel describes it, the bones rattled all across the valley…what a sound that must have made! As Ezekiel spoke the vision over those bones, that which was disjointed and scattered came together! What was once just a collection of incomplete pieces formed a completed structure, as he spoke the promise over those bones hope began to stir in his soul!

Hope begins to stir all because of God

You need to look at your missed opportunities and say, God’s not done!
You need to look at your broken heart and say, God can make you whole again!
You need to look at your failures and flaws and say, God can use anything for his glory!
You need to look at your past and say, God doesn’t hold my past against me, by the power and the sacrifice of Jesus Christ my sins are forgiven, my future is secured, and my life isn’t over!

…but wait, there’s more! Ezekiel 37:8-10

You see, we can’t stop at the stirring! You’ve been here before…your heart has been stirred, you’ve felt the pull of hope begin, but you walk out and you begin to inhale all the lies again.

Old Gospel Song:
I’m so tired of being stirred about the lost who need to hear.
I’m so tired of being stirred that His coming is so near;
I’m so tired of being stirred till I cry bitter tears.
I’m so tired of being stirred but not being changed.
Lord, give me a burden that’s so strong, that it will last even when my tears are gone. 

There’s an unfortunately large number of people who look like they are alive, but there is no breath in them! They look good on the outside, but theirs no life. Their external demeanor (I’m fine, everything is okay, I’m smiling) is masking their internal anguish! 

Maybe that’s you! You’re doing all the right things but there’s no life to it, no energy, no enthusiasm. You look alive on the outside, but on the inside you are as dead as the dry bones in the valley!

God says to you, BREATHE! Fill your lungs with God’s purpose for you, stand on his promises, take your place in the kingdom of God and be all that God has resurrected you to be!

Fulfilling God’s purpose for your life needs to become as essential to you as breathing is to life

When we breathe in God’s purpose hope becomes reality!

Breathing in his purpose turns whiners into warriors!

Jesus said that the church would be so powerful, that even Hell itself couldn’t stand in it’s way. 

But too many of us are wallowing and fixating on all of our problems that we that we haven’t felt hope in what seems like forever. We can’t step out if faith because our faith is one of the dry bones laying in the valley surrounded by all the things we CAN”T do, WON”T become, and HAVEN”T lived up to…but it’s time for a change!!!

Others of us are going through the motions, we are look alive, we may even be stirred at times, but unless we breath in God’s purpose, until pursuing him is more important than work, or money, or sports, or status, then we will have a form of religion that is absent of life or power.

God isn’t calling us to stay in the valley surrounded by our dried out broken and brittle bones.

God is calling you to LIVE!

Listen to the Full Message Here