I once heard of a seminary Professor who took his extremely confident and zealous class of soon-to-be-preachers to a cemetery. And there this Professor introduced his young students to a man. A man who by that time had been dead and in his grave for a number of years.

The professor then made his students, one by one, preach to that dead man lying in his grave.

And nothing happened.

Except for some extreme awkwardness and confusion on the part of the students.

Until the professor looked at each one in turn and said (essentially) this, “You can preach words of life till you have nothing left. But you do not have the authority or the power to bring back the dead. Only the Spirit of the Living God can revive the dead. So you must summon the Wind every time you preach.”

You must summon the Wind.

Opinions Everywhere, But No One’s Listening

Believer, we are living in crazy days. There is more “talk” going on then ever before. Opinions are being shouted from the rooftops and on every screen. You can blog, (ahem I realize the irony here), tweet, IM, text, podcast, vlog, FB live, write a book, get an interview, be on tv, the news, the radio, or even get a megaphone and stand in the street corners shouting out your opinion.

There are opinions everywhere and about everything.

And people aren’t listening any more.

I was struck by this the other day.
I can tell you truth till I am blue in the face.
I can post a billion posts a day.
I can scream, rant, sweet talk, sugar-coat, and even lie to you.

But I can’t change my own heart, much less anyone else’s.

I can’t revive the dead. I can’t fix the problems our country is facing by posting my opinion on social media. I can’t change your mind by posting article after article “proving” my viewpoint.

I Can’t But God Can

But with God all things are possible. He is able to change all our hearts and line them up with Scripture. God is able restore His people and bring unity in the midst of our division, love in the midst of our anger, forgiveness in the midst of our fights, and healing in the midst of our grief.

God is able, Believer.

He is bigger than social media, and more influential than the culture. God cannot be censored, silenced, or ignored when He chooses to act.

So, it is time, oh Church, to summon the Wind.

Ezekiel 37
The hand of the Lord was on me, and he brought me out by the Spirit of the Lord and set me in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. He led me back and forth among them, and I saw a great many bones on the floor of the valley, bones that were very dry. He asked me, “Son of man, can these bones live?”

I said, “Sovereign Lord, you alone know.”

Then he said to me, “Prophesy to these bones and say to them, ‘Dry bones, hear the word of the Lord! This is what the Sovereign Lord says to these bones: I will make breath enter you, and you will come to life. I will attach tendons to you and make flesh come upon you and cover you with skin; I will put breath in you, and you will come to life. Then you will know that I am the Lord.’”

Later on in the chapter God tells Ezekiel to call up the winds that will breathe life into those dry bones and they become an army, a picture to Israel. That although she appears to the world as dead, God will not forsake His people. He will fulfill His promises to His people and restore her.

God would breathe life into the old dry bones of His people Israel.

But Ezekiel was called by God to summon the Wind that would bring the change.

It is time, oh Church, to get serious. It is time to summon the Wind.