Set the Sail (Preparing for a Move of God) Sýnishorn

Building The Altar: God Breathes Life

There is surely no more dramatic image of revival in the entire bible than Ezekiel 37! Picture the scene: the vast valley floor is carpeted with bones… Dry bones! Sun-bleached, lifeless, dead bones... Everywhere! What a picture of death. What an image of utter hopelessness.

The hopeless scene emphasises the absurdity of God’s question to Ezekiel. “Can these bones live?” Well, of course not God! How could they possibly live? They’ve been dead for years! They’ve been dead for so long they’re dry! Is this a trick question? Yet God tells Ezekiel to preach ‘life’ to a valley of dry bones!

We should never underestimate the power of God, and Ezekiel is right to answer the way he does. For what is utterly impossible for us is effortlessly possible for God. As Ezekiel obediently prophesies, he hears a noise, the rattling of bones! Impossibility fades in the face of the power of God. The words of the prophet bring life!

The point is that God will revive a nation that has been dragged into exile. Hope is not lost, their story is not over, and God has not given up on them! It’s a reminder to us that no suburb, city, region, or country is so far lost that God cannot do a miraculous work of revival! If God can raise up an army from a pile of dry, dead bones, and if He can restore His exiled people – He can surely awaken a region from its spiritual slumber!

I’ve often wondered why God asked Ezekiel to prophesy to the bones. It seems unnecessary. God could simply have spoken the words Himself! But I think there’s an important lesson in it: as the prophet speaks the word, God gives life. This is a lesson in human agency that is no less true today – that as we speak the word of the LORD, the Spirit of God makes people who were spiritually dead, alive!

God has commissioned us to speak life to dry bones with the expectation that as we do, they will begin to rattle! How then can we continue to maintain a low expectation? How can we complain that the soil in our city is “too tough”? How could we ever write off a people when the power of the Spirit of God can bring full life from utter death?

Revival happens when we speak God’s word into hopelessness. May we experience an Ezekiel 37 revival in our city!