No Signs Of Life

The LORD took hold of me, and I was carried away by the Spirit of the LORD to a valley filled with bones.   Ezekiel 37:1

God took Ezekiel to a grim valley, a graveyard filled with human remains—perhaps the result of a great slaughter hundreds of years ago. He told Ezekiel the bones in the vision represented the house of Israel (see Ezekiel 37:11). The people had complained, “We have become old, dry bones,” so God used a valley of dry bones to speak to them.

The first thing God did to show Ezekiel the scale of the problem was to give him a guided tour: “He led me all around among the bones that covered the valley floor. They were scattered everywhere across the ground and were completely dried out” (Ezekiel 37:2).

I don’t suppose Ezekiel enjoyed the whole experience. The longer the tour continued, the more deeply the hopelessness of the situation was impressed upon him. There were no signs of life. God was saying, “You need to see how hopeless things have become.” The only hope would be through God’s direct intervention.

You have to begin in ministry with an honest assessment, and God essentially told Ezekiel, “I want you to minister in a place where there are no signs of life.” Ezekiel had remarkable abilities, including an unusual flair for creative communication, but that would be of little use in a valley of dry bones. The first thing to understand in ministry is that what God calls us to do is impossible. If you don’t grasp this, you won’t survive long in ministry.

Perhaps God is showing you a valley of dry bones. You’ve been looking for signs of hope in the spiritual condition of someone you love, but there’s not the slightest sign of life. When you talk with them about spiritual things, their eyes glaze over. They’re about as unresponsive to the things of God as Ezekiel’s dry bones.

God took Ezekiel over the valley of dry bones again and again until Ezekiel was convinced that the only hope would be a direct intervention of God. Do you see that? God can bring the dead back to life. Pray for God’s intervention.

For further reading, see Ezekiel 37