Starting Well
Our two previous messages of January aimed at getting us to a message that reveals our agenda for this now ending month. We wanted to get the youth ready to start their year well with the right story, gear, and methods of survival. It is unfair to ourselves to make new plans and resolutions every year but to do the exact same things we are used to, yet expect different results. Therefore, we started from changing our stories right from the source, changing how we live out our story, and owning the right to tell our stories. Then we looked at taking back our place as children of God and our voice to proclaim His word that brings about trust and confidence.
“Starting well” puts us in a valley of dry lifeless and meatless bones in Ezekiel 37. When God gives Ezekiel, a tour in this less pleasant valley with a vast army deprived of its former glory (life), God interacts with Ezekiel as “Son of Man.” This word has a number of different usage in the Bible but I find this particular usage close to or the same as Jesus’ referencing of himself sixty-nine times in the gospels. This echoes our previous talks on taking back our place for God to rightfully take His. “Son of Man”, God calls Ezekiel, and Jesus (Being God) calls himself ‘the Son of man’, (God purposefully becoming one of us). This message emphasis a proper recognition of our place in relation to that of our God.
When Ezekiel was asked, “Son of man, can these bones become living people again?”, only a proper placement of our humanity in the presence of the Almighty would bring us to the answer that I believe is the right answer to most if not all life ’s baffling questions. He allows God to be God and reminds God and himself that he is not equalled with the Almighty, “I said, ‘Sovereign Lord, you alone know.’” The church should be that place where we come to remember this very truth. The society and our fast-paced culture are setting up our young people to fail and if we do not encompass them to this truth we will witness this downfall. As mental health instability, drug use and abuse, poor self-image, suicidal thoughts and attempts (just to mention a few), hunt down the youth and young adults today, at the root of it all is failed attempts to be and do what only God can. “God, you alone know....,” Right answer Ezekiel!
Ezekiel walks with God, converses with God, adores God, obeys God and witnesses God do only what God can do. That could be your story!!
https://youtu.be/nm5w-T_dJLg
