As I Prophesied . . .

In 2005, my family was stationed in North Carolina, after living in Okinawa, Japan for four years. One day while at the base legal office doing whatever needed to be done to facilitate our transition, I got into a conversation with a woman. The woman asked me a question that would ultimately change the course of my life. She asked me what I wanted to do. Without hesitating, I said, “I want to be an attorney.” Attorney had long been on my long list of things that I wanted to be “when I grew up.” I had wanted to be a writer, director, teacher, journalist, actor, so on and so forth, and I had done all of those things to varying degrees. Next on my list was lawyer. So, that’s what I told the lady I was speaking to. I told her I wanted to be a lawyer. She sort of smiled politely and said something along the lines of, “That’s nice,” but I could tell she’d written my wanting to be a lawyer off as a pipe dream. After all, I wasn’t some young co-ed who’d just finished undergraduate school. I didn’t fit the image of a typical law school student. I was an almost forty-year-old woman with three children, none of whom had even graduated from high school yet. I just didn’t fit the bill. Eight years later, I was in law school.

One thing I love about the Word of God is that it’s living (Heb. 4:12). No matter how much you read Scripture, there is always more to glean. Just recently I studied Ezekiel 37:1-10. In the beginning of this chapter, Ezekiel and God have a conversation. God places Ezekiel in the midst of a valley that is full of dry bones and asks Ezekiel, “Son of man, can these bones

live?” I love Ezekiel’s answer. It shows that the people we read about in Scripture were just that—they were people who had strengths and weakness just like we do. This should encourage us because this says that if God can use them to change the world, then surely, He can use us to do the same. In response to God’s question as to whether all these dry bones can live again, Ezekiel says, “O Lord God, You know.” In essence, Ezekiel’s response was, “Lord, You are God. You know everything. Why are You asking me?” Ezekiel knew that God had the power to do whatever He wanted to do, including revive dry bones, so he wasn’t sure why God was asking him whether the bones could live or not.

Next, God does something really interesting. God tells Ezekiel to prophesy to the bones. Not only does God tell Ezekiel to prophesy to the bones, He tells Ezekiel exactly what to say: “Prophesy to these bones, and say to them, ‘O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord! Thus says the Lord God to these bones: ‘Surely I will cause breath to enter into you, and you shall live. I will put sinews on you and bring flesh upon you, cover you with skin and put breath in you; and you shall live. Then you shall know that I am the Lord’ ” (v. 4-6).

Now, I’ll tell you, I read all of that and thought, “Okay, if God is right there in the midst of the dry bones telling Ezekiel exactly what to say, why doesn’t God just say all of that to the dry bones Himself? Why have Ezekiel do it. Just cut out the middleman.” That’s What I thought, but evidently that’s not what Ezekiel thought because Ezekiel opened his mouth just like God told him to do and began to say exactly what God told him to say (v. 7). And as Ezekiel began to prophesy, he heard noise and saw rattling as everything that God told him to prophesy began to happen! Bones came together, bone to bone; sinews and flesh came upon the bones; and skin came upon the flesh! (v. 8).

Everything that God said would happen happened, except there was no breath in these bodies. Dead bodies are about as useless as a bunch of dry bones. So, what does God do? Once again, He tells Ezekiel to prophesy, and once again, God tells Ezekiel exactly what to say: “Also He said to me, “Prophesy to the breath, prophesy, son of man, and say to the breath, ‘Thus says the Lord God: “Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe on these slain, that they may live” ’ ” (v. 9). And once again, Ezekiel does exactly what God told him to do. He opens his mouth and prophesies. This time, however, Ezekiel isn’t prophesying to dry bones. This time he’s prophesying to the breath. He calls breath from the four winds into these bodies, and “breath came into them, and they lived, and stood upon their feet, an exceedingly great army” (v. 10).

While this is an amazing story, it’s not just a story. God is speaking to His people. The question is whether we have ears to hear what the Spirit is saying. One of the things I believe God is saying through this story is that He is willing and able to resurrect those dead things in our life—dead dreams, dead relationships, dead prognoses, dead whatever. God is willing, and He is able. But here’s the thing: We have to open our mouth and speak to that dead thing. Why doesn’t God just speak to it on our behalf? Because God has His part in resurrecting our dead situations, and we have our part. God is not going to do our part. We have to have some skin in the game (pun intended). Moses had to lift his staff. Ester had to go before the king. Lazarus’s family and friends had to roll away the stone. And we have to open our mouth and prophesy! There is sooooo much more I could say, but this is a blog post (already too long), not a book.

Let’s circle back around. In 2005, my dream of becoming an attorney lay in the bottom of a valley looking like a sea of dry bones. I began to prophesy. The first time I applied to law school, I didn’t get accepted. I kept prophesying. The first time I took the bar, I didn’t pass. I kept prophesying. As I did my part, God did His part and in 2019, I sworn in as a licensed attorney. What is it you’re believing God for? What have you been prophesying over that situation? Have you prophesied until you’ve gotten exactly what you were believing God for, or did you fall short and are not stuck with a body with no breath. Open your mouth and say what God says about your situation. And don’t stop prophesying until that dead thing in your life is standing on its feet full of breath!