The Living Dead...

As I prepare for Pentecost Sunday, I've been reading and studying the different movements of the Holy Spirit in the Bible. Each story is unique and is important but God laid the story of Ezekiel on my heart as we share some of the same struggles.

In Ezekiel 37:1-14 the Spirit of God lifts Ezekiel up in a vision and takes him to a valley of dead, dry bones... Ezekiel is asked can these bones live? He has the correct answer in responding that only the LORD GOD knows!

Ezekiel then is directed to preach at these bones - so he does what is commanded and in verse 7  while he was yet preaching he heard this noise, a rattling sound (I'm imagining a old horror movie sound of bones clanking and rubbing together) - the bones were coming together... Then tendons began to appear, flesh grew, skin covered them... All the semblance of life yet there was no breath in them... It's as if he were watching an episode of Twilight Zone.... (which by the way does tend to be a reoccurring theme in the book)

These bodies were nothing more than empty shells...

Kinda sounds familiar doesn't it? Every day we get up and go about our lives, our routines become sacred, our time is precious to us, as is our public persona. Living our lives for ourselves we either go out of our way to avoid conflict with the lost world around us or we seek it out and abuse them to make ourselves feel better... The result?

We end up remaining nothing more than empty shells...

 Why??????

Because we haven't allowed the breath of heaven to penetrate us and fill us with the spirit of God...

If you follow the rest of the passage - when Ezekiel calls for the breath of heaven to come those lifeless forms are transformed, they come to life and stand to their feet...

Verse 14 explains is like this to us: "I will put my Spirit in you, and you will live..."

Without the Spirit in us we are dead... Galatians 2:20 says it all... "and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me."

This life that we are "living" is not our own, it has been been bought with a price, Christ paid the ultimate price that we could find restoration into the presence of God... WE need to get with the program and stop trying to dictate God's will and be obedient to his call today... Whose with me?