Soul CPR

Ezekiel 37:1-14 The hand of the LORD was upon 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. 2 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. 3 He asked me, “Son of man, can these bones live?” I said, “O Sovereign LORD, you alone know.” 4 Then he said to me, “Prophesy to these bones and say to them, ‘Dry bones, hear the word of the LORD! 5 This is what the Sovereign LORD says to these bones: I will make breath enter you, and you will come to life. 6 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.’” 7 So I prophesied as I was commanded. And as I was prophesying, there was a noise, a rattling sound, and the bones came together, bone to bone. 8 I looked, and tendons and flesh appeared on them and skin covered them, but there was no breath in them. 9 Then he said to me, “Prophesy to the breath; prophesy, son of man, and say to it, ‘This is what the Sovereign LORD says: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe into these slain, that they may live.’” 10 So I prophesied as he commanded me, and breath entered them; they came to life and stood up on their feet– a vast army. 11 Then he said to me: “Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel. They say, ‘Our bones are dried up and our hope is gone; we are cut off.’ 12 Therefore prophesy and say to them: ‘This is what the Sovereign LORD says: O my people, I am going to open your graves and bring you up from them; I will bring you back to the land of Israel. 13 Then you, my people, will know that I am the LORD, when I open your graves and bring you up from them. 14 I will put my Spirit in you and you will live, and I will settle you in your own land. Then you will know that I the LORD have spoken, and I have done it, declares the LORD.’”

Earlier today, I was talking to another pastor who said he’d felt a bit discouraged because he wasn’t seeing more lives changed in his church. It made him think he wasn’t doing a good job. As I was replaying that conversation later in my mind, I started thinking about this passage. Here you got a bunch of dead bones that desperately need some new life breathed into them. And the thing is, there’s only one person who can do that…God! Ezekiel is actually the one who wrote that passage, and can you imagine if, after describing the dead bones, he describes walking over and trying to give mouth to mouth to the rotting corpses? Besides thinking, bet his breath smelled good after that, we’d want to say to him, why in the world would you do that? There’s no point Ezekiel! It don’t matter how much you breath into those skeletons, life ain’t comin’ back anytime soon.

Ahhh, but if now God decides to send His breath (or His Spirit) into them, it’s a whole other story. God, as we well know, can surely bring life back into rotting corpses. Now, this story is just an analogy, or a picture of God restoring life – true life – to the nation and people of Israel. This story comes right after God talks about one day giving new hearts, new spirits, and new lives to the Israelites who’d become in a sense spiritual dead in their rebellion against God (chpt. 36).

So I was thinking about the pastor I spoke with, and then I got to thinking about our upcoming mission trips. And I figured it would be a good thing to remember again that really, we’re not going to the Dominican Republic and Rehoboth to do soul CPR on people. If that’s going happen, it’s going to be God who does it. We are going simply as servants for God’s sake! As Lori mentioned in a devotional a few weeks back, we’re going as messengers, hoping God might be pleased to work through us.

We always need to have the mentality that its not us who will be saving anybody. We won’t be the ones changing lives. We ought never to take credit for whatever spiritual new life we might see. All the credit belongs to God…because He’s the only one who can do it. He’s the only on who can save, who can bring that glorious new life back to into spiritual deadness. So again, what’s our job? Well, for one, its to pray – to pray that God would actually do just that, that He would bring new life to the people we meet. And secondly, its simply to have the hearts of servants, being willing to go wherever God leads, willing to do whatever God wants us to do (to the best of our abilities!) so that His will and His plans might be at work through us…if He so chooses!