Tony Evans - Dry Bones Dancing: Resurrecting Your Spiritual Passion

DRY BONES DANCING
published by Multnomah Books
2005 by Tony Evans
eISBN: 978-0-307-56364-4

Italics in Scripture quotations reflect the authors emphasis.
Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are from:
The Holy Bible, English Standard Version
2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers.
Used by permission. All rights reserved.

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v3.1

Contents

Down in the Valley

One day someone much like you or me paused long enough to look back on his life and land upon this realization:

First I was dying to finish high school and start college. Then I was dying to finish college and start my career. Then I was dying to get married and have children. Then I was dying for my children to grow up and get out. Then I was dying to retire. And now, Im just dying and suddenly I realize Ive forgotten to live.

Could that be the road youre driving down? Have you often found yourself waiting and hoping and looking for that next thing that could fill the vacuum in your life?

So many of Gods people are like that. So many often feel stranded in a desert of hopelessness and emptiness. Its true today and it was especially true at one particular moment in history that can teach us so much when we look back and reflect carefully upon it. In that moment, Gods people were dying in the most tragic desperation conceivable.

But in their despair, God had a spiritual miracle to show them. And for your edification and mine, He has placed a record of that miracle in His Book. With the eyes of our hearts focused on that account, I want to quickly take you back with me to that amazing moment in that amazing place so that we can learn all we can.

I want to take us there to help us comprehend the degree of despondency His people were then experiencing (and into which we ourselves can often sink).

I want to take us there to discover how God invaded that place of despair in such a powerful and unforgettable way.

I want to take us there because the promise that almighty God announced on that occasion and in that location is for all His people for all timeand that means you and me, right now.

D ISASTER A REA

It was a scene like nothing Hollywood ever imagined.

In fact, only the Spirit of God Himself could fully imagine it. And only in the Spirit of God could it be witnessed firsthand by any human being. Thats exactly what happened to the prophet Ezekiel in the passage were about to penetrate. So lets consider carefully every detail in the big picture God gave him.

O nly the Spirit of God Himself could fully imagine it.

The hand of the LORD was upon me, the prophet tells us, and he brought me out in the Spirit of the LORD (Ezekiel 37:1). This was a supernatural encounter. It was a supernatural intervention into the life of a natural man. Gods hand took hold of Ezekiel and lifted him above his everyday existence, outside his normal routine, and beyond his natural senses. What he experienced was a vision, yet because it came straight from the Spirit of God, it reflected a reality more real even than the physical reality we perceive around us.

Gods hand carried off this man in the Spirit. And what was their destination?

Ezekiel goes on to tell us exactly where he was taken and what he observed. He says that the Lord set me down in the middle of the valley (v. 1).

Ezekiel had been in such a place before. This same Hebrew word for valley is identical to the term used earlier in Ezekiels book for a broad stretch of land where the Lord Himself had once instructed Ezekiel to go and meet Him (3:2223; 8:4). On that occasion, when the prophet obeyed and went there in solitude, he saw in that place the glory of the LORD with such awesomeness that he fell to his face.

Perhaps in this new spiritual vision Ezekiel was transported to the very same expanse of land where hed previously fallen to the ground in the presence of Gods holy light. But if so, the sight now before him was something different in the extreme from his earlier encounter.

Ezekiel glanced all around him at this broad valley where the Lord had placed him and saw that it was full of bones (37:1). Not just piles of bones here and there, but a valley full of them.

Like a modern-day public official being flown in a helicopter over a disaster area, Ezekiel was given the full tour of this strange and gruesome sight. The Lord allowed him a careful inspection of this vast accumulation of human skeletal remains: And he led me around among them, and behold, there were very many on the surface of the valley, and behold, they were very dry (v. 2).

Not just several bones, but very many. Skulls and shoulder blades, kneecaps and ribs, femurs and vertebrae, hipbones and anklebones and fingerbones, all by the thousands.

And not just drab or stale, but very dry as if theyd all been lying out there on public display, dead and exposed and baking in the hot sun for a long, long time.

God had a particular command to give Ezekiel in regard to these parched and brittle bones, and very shortly He would also provide him with a quite detailed explanation about them. But first God had a probing question to ask him, just as He sometimes has a few piercing questions for you and me to address before Hes ready to reveal to us what He wants us to do or to know.

B IGGER THAN M E

Here was His question. The Lord God asked Ezekiel, Son of man, can these bones live? (37:3).

Ezekiel had just surveyed this vast and bizarre scene. He could not escape the conclusion that life and vitality were nonexistent in these bones. Bones, of course, are organic formations, developing only as part of some living creature; where there are bones, then of necessity there once was life. But in these dry relics filling the valley before Ezekiels eyes, that life was long gone.

Could it be restored? Could there be life again where life had totally departed? Can strength and movement and energy and awareness and responsiveness somehow reappear in those who are so utterly dead that their bodies have decayed away, leaving nothing but bonesand even those very bones are disconnected and bleached and dry?

Is such a miracle possible?

God wanted to hear Ezekiels answer, just as He sometimes wants us to carefully assess the true potential in whatever difficult situation lies before us. Perhaps weve concluded that a way out or a remedy or a resolution is impossible. Our condition or our circumstances seem hopeless. But is that really the case?

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