Hills & Valleys

Hills and Valleys

At this point in time, the church is right in the middle of Ezekiel’s Valley of Dry Bones. (Ezekiel 37) That’s not to say the church is full of dry bones but certainly it is surrounded by them. I have been in this position recently and, although I am coming out of it, it has been a place of waiting on the Lord for His word. So it is with the church today. It is surrounded by a wounded and hurting society who do not know the Lord. These ‘dry bones’ are aching for something more from life other than the hopeless rounds of insecurity offered by successive leaders who promised them security in order to get elected but then turned their backs on those who trusted them and betrayed every promise they ever made.

The church has never had better or greater opportunity to sow and reap the gospel as it has today. Yet it stays in the valley of dry bones. It seems to have lost its vision of the hilltops where no dry bones exist; where all the bones are properly ordered and dressed and have life. The land of milk and honey, it seems, has been replaced by the valley of dry bones. That which could be has been replaced in the church’s affections by that which is now – change deferred and paradise missed.

Is it not time that we spoke to the dry bones; that we prophesied to the breath; and that we march our new army up the hill, out of the valley, and towards paradise? The battle has been won already. The enemy is defeated. All we have to do is to enforce the victory that Jesus won for us on the cross, and claim our promised land – eternal life. The enemy can do no more about that than he could stop Christ’s resurrection as it is the same resurrection power working in us that gives us the victory.

So it’s up to us. We can choose to stay where we are, surrounded by the dry bones and do nothing about them. Or we can take God at His word, speak to the bones and the breath, head for the hills, and claim the promised land and the victory.