Laurie Hopkins

The Lord could have spoken to those dry bones and commanded them to live and then to breathe, 

but instead, 

He commanded Ezekiel to prophesy to those dry bones.  

There is power in the words given to us by the Lord.  

We have the authority to speak to the dry bones in our lives and to speak to the dry bones in the lives around us. 

The word for prophesy is naba’ which is translated, in the Gesenius’ Hebrew-Chaldee Lexicon as: 

to cause to bubble up, hence to pour forth word abundantly, as is done by those who speak with ardour or divine emotion of mind. 

I love this definition.  

To cause to bubble up, speaking with divine emotion of mind! 

When the Lord puts a word within you, 

let it bubble up and go forth and 

do it with excitement and expectation.  

And watch those dry bones live and breathe and rise up and become a mighty army.

There is grace in the wilderness.  

We often only see the challenges in the wilderness; the dry barren land, the thirst and the isolation.  But there is also grace in the wilderness – 

a place of rest and quiet where one can hear the Voice of the Lord, where one can check out from the people and the noises around them, 

where one can stop pressing forward and just allow time to move slowly and sometimes to stand still. There is a rest in the wilderness that is unusual and which we don’t always understand – 

a rest that comes when we realize that we can no longer push against what is out of our control, 

a rest that comes when we lean in, rather than push back. 

And after the wilderness, comes the rebuilding.  

There is a time of breaking down in the wilderness.  

A shedding of those things that are not useful or necessary.  

And with the shedding comes the opportunity to build again.  

We are loved by the Lord with an everlasting love – 

a love that promises to rebuild and to return to us our joy – 

the joy that comes forth in dancing.  

Are you in the wilderness?  

Accept the grace, lean in and rest.  

Are you in the process of shedding?  

Let it go!  

Are you coming out of the wilderness?  

Prepare to rebuild.  

And above all, remember, that in the midst, 

regardless what your midst looks like,

there is a God that loves you with an everlasting love! 

After the crucifixion of Jesus, two of his followers walked on the road to Emmaus with a Man. 

They told Him the story of Jesus, His arrest and crucifixion.  

And the Man unfolded the Scriptures for them. 

What they didn’t realize was that the Man was the resurrected Christ.  

They did not recognize Him.  

However, when they stopped for a meal and He blessed the bread and broke it, immediately their eyes were open and they recognized Him before He vanished. 

They didn’t recognize Jesus in His resurrected body until He did something familiar 

–  the breaking of bread.  

Sometime we don’t recognize the working of Jesus in our lives unless He is doing something familiar.  

The moment He moves in a new or different way we begin to doubt that it is He at work.  

The unfamiliarity of the move leaves us inflexible.  

But the moment He moves in a familiar way we recognize His Hand at work.  

We need to get to know our Jesus more intimately.  

We need to understand that He moves in various and sometimes mysterious ways.  

We must not depend on the fact that He will always move in a familiar way in our lives. Unfamiliarity doesn’t need to lead to inflexibility. 

Oh that our faith would rise above the expectation of the familiar into the realm of the unknown!