There are people in my life who I pray for daily. I want them to change. Either they aren't believers and I’m desperate for them to know God or they are believers but they are struggling with deep, crippling ongoing sin and I want them to repent and break free by the power of Jesus. Of course, I want this for everybody, including myself, but there are a few close friends and family who have been on my heart in this way for years.
So I pray and I pray and I pray for repentance… and nothing happens.
Or at least nothing seems to happen from my limited human perspective. From my point of view, I don’t think these loved ones will ever change. Their hearts are hard.
But on other days there are glimmers of hope. Is that change I see? Is that the tiniest piece of fruit waiting to grow large and ripen?
When I think about spiritual transformation, I want the story of Paul. I want God to show up to those who are struggling, strike them blind, speak audibly to them, and change their hearts and their whole lives. I even used to want that for myself when I was struggling in my faith and didn't know how to repent.
But that’s not how God always works. Instead he gives us examples like the Valley of the Dry Bones. God gives Ezekiel a vision of a valley where thousands of bones lie after a battle. This is a graveyard, but the brittle skeletons are sitting on top of the sand instead of buried underneath the dirt. The piles of slaughtered bodies indicate there was a battle and these people lost miserably. But then God says something remarkable. He asks Ezekiel, “Can these bones live?” Ezekiel isn't sure. It seems very unlikely that this pile of sun-bleached bones could come back to life, so he submits to God, “Lord, you know" {Ezekiel 37:3}.
These bones represent Israel. Israel was rebellious and hardened. They disobeyed God so many times they finally got displaced to foreign countries. They were conquered. They were dead spiritually and lost physically. They were dry bones with no hope of life. But then God steps in and says “I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live” {v.5}.
So Ezekiel prophesies over the bones, but they don’t come back to life instantly, the way I always want transformation to happen. Ezekiel speaks over the bones to come back to life and they begin rattling around. Eventually, the bones connect, and sinews and flesh grow over them. But there is still no breath. Now the valley of dry bones is full of lifeless corpses instead of skeletons. God tells Ezekiel to prophesy again, to ask the four winds to breathe upon the slain. Ezekiel calls upon the breath, and it enters the corpses and brings them to life. They stand in unity. They are an exceedingly great army {v. 10}.
I want instant transformation. I want my friends and family to believe and repent and live full lives for God’s glory. But that doesn't always happen instantly and sometimes I can’t perceive that it’s happening at all. But that doesn't mean God is not at work. He might be joining bones together slowly. He might be turning hard hearts to hearts of flesh by the invisible power of His Word. And when the time is right He might breathe new life into what was once dead. It doesn’t matter if I can see it. It doesn’t matter if it happens quickly or slowly. What matters is there is always hope because Christ can make all things new, and I have to trust that He is doing so always. So I pray, and I hope, and I wait, and I trust that someday I will see the dead brought back to life.
