Inviting Revival: A Study of EzekielIsampula

A picture paints a thousand words is a common expression. Have you ever processed the truth of it? In Phoenix there used to be an anti–drug campaign that displayed billboards along our freeways. One of them haunted me every time I saw it. A mother sat in a chair beaten to the point of being barely recognizable. The caption read: “My mother knows I’d never hurt her, but then she got in the way.” I found the image so disturbing my stomach turned each time I passed by. Now, if I passed a billboard that merely read, “Don’t take drugs, they make you violent,” I doubt that would evoke the same emotional and physical response in me. But the bruised and battered mother sitting despondently pierces me right to the heart. We are visual creatures and the images we rest our eyes on become stamped in our memory, eliciting emotions deep within us.

Our Creator knows how visual we are; He made us that way. So, in order to get the exiles’ attention, God doesn’t tell Ezekiel to stand on the corner and talk at them. He paints a word picture for Ezekiel to pantomime in order to pique their curiosity and evoke an emotional reaction. God goes after their hearts in hopes that they will return to Him.

You may have found Ezekiel’s visions in 1-3 weird and confusing. What is happening here? The clay brick symbolized Jerusalem. Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon would lay siege to the city and eventually burn the city to the ground. Interestingly, clay becomes strengthened after being placed under fire. God promised the exiles a future strength at the end of their punishment. Iron represented the strongest element. The Jewish people believed that nothing could ever match the strength of Jerusalem because the LORD Himself dwelt there. However, God says that Jerusalem would fall. And His purpose? That His people would know that He alone is the LORD. In fact, God repeats some sort of variation of this phrase over fifty times throughout Ezekiel’s prophecies.

God longed to purify His people and have them depend on Him for their care and provision. The people’s thinking became faulty and they sought other sources of security besides God. Namely, the city of Jerusalem and false gods of prosperity and pleasure. They equated revival with a return to the status quo, but as Ezekiel’s prophecies unfold, we see God longed to do an entirely new thing in the hearts and lives of His people. Revival comes when we invite God to purify us from faulty thinking.

Are we:

Neglecting family?

Demonstrating financial irresponsibility?

Partnering with people with questionable integrity?

Avoiding confrontation?

Turning a blind eye to sin?

Not speaking up for the truth?

Continuing to pursue an unhealthy or destructive habit?

Let’s ask God to search our hearts today and resolve to ask Him to deliver us from any faulty thinking that has crept into our lives. Revival starts with inviting the Holy Spirit to search our hearts and provide inner reflection. God planned to give His people new hearts and to place His Holy Spirit inside of us, renewing our mind and infusing us with power to obey Him. But first His people needed to become aware of just how spiritually dead they currently were. It’s pretty hard to revive someone who forgot they were dead in the first place. Maybe your unexpected circumstances are not the ruin of your life, but the point of reckoning through which you can agree with God that you are ready for revival!

To read through the rest of Ezekiel’s prophecies and fully understand God’s plan for His people, check out Erica’s study An Unexpected Revival: Experiencing God’s Goodness Through Disappointment and Doubt.