Impossible Part 2

This is part 2 to a blog that was written in December. If you want to read the first, click here.

What is possible if we start to believe in the impossible?
Are there examples of this in our life? Should there be?
There has to be examples in the Bible, right?
What does it say? We already know that the thought of Jesus existing in the way the Bible describes should be impossible. So what else does it say? What else is possible with an impossible God?

Ezekiel 37:1-3
[ ¹ The hand of the LORD was on 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, “Sovereign LORD, you alone know.”]

This sounds impossible, right?
Can these bones live?
How can they? When it says they were very dry, it means there was no longer flesh on them.
This is not like the story of Lazarus who had only been dead for a few days when Jesus raised him from the dead. This is completely different. These bones had been there for a long time. There was nothing on them. They were just bones. A huge pile of bones.
If you were asked if those bones could live, what would be your response?
That seems like a very easy question, right? And maybe that is where we go wrong.
We never even consider the impossible to be possible.
There is no way they could live, right? It is a pile of bones. That is impossible. There is no way that can happen. Impossible things don't happen in this world. Why should we believe any different?

Ezekiel  37:4-7
[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^[a] 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.]

So these bones can live? The passage goes on and Ezekiel does something else and the bones come to life. How insane is that? Dry bones that came to life? It should be impossible.

This passage pointed out a few things about Ezekiel that I think generally are true about us also.
1. God Spoke to Ezekiel.
2. Ezekiel had a choice to make.

God spoke to Ezekiel. He brought him somewhere and asked him a question.
Do we ever think this happens in our life? Maybe we don't hear the audible voice of God, but you know there is something going on. You know that there is potential for something big. Maybe God is going to want something big from you? Maybe it is going to take some trust from your part, because once God spoke, Ezekiel had to make a choice.
God asked him if the bones could live. Ezekiel said it was possible. He then did what God told him to do. He made the choice to do God's work. Because of his believing that anything was possible with God, dry bones came to life.
Ezekiel believed and the impossible happened. Do we?

It seems easy enough, right?
Believe that all things are possible with God. How on earth could I say no to Him?
He is God. I would be foolish to say no.
But how often does it happen?
How often do we get the feeling that we are supposed to do something and actually act on it?
We get this nudge that we should go talk to someone or pray for them or help in some way. 
Does this ever happen to you?
I know it does to me.
How often do you act on it?
Maybe if we started doing more of the things that followers of the Way should be doing, we could see something like this valley of dry bones in our life.
We are surrounded by dry bones everywhere we go.
People are dead. They are lost. They have no hope. It is almost like there is no flesh on them.
They are past the point of ever being saved.
Well, that is what we think. So it is best to just keep to ourselves. We don't want things to get awkward.
But, what if we did open our mouths? What if we did make the decision to do what God asked us to do? Do you think it would be possible for these bones to come to life?
Isn't that what our purpose is? Isn't that what we believe?
We do carry the hope with us, right?
So what the heck are we waiting on?
What are we so scared of?

Good=Suffering?

God is good. Right?
Well that is what we always say. God is good. God works everything together for our good.
That is what we are always told at least. And that last part was almost scripture.  But do we believe it?
We say and hear it all the time, so it has to be true, right? But did the writer believe it? Or what exactly did the writer mean by good?
The verse that people more than likely take this from Romans 8:28, and it says, "And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good for those who are called according to his purpose."
The writer was Paul. 
What do we know about Paul?
He persecuted to their death the followers of this new religious sect called, "The Way."
He was an extremely devout Jew.
He had a radical conversion into this religious sect.
Through a process he became a very important player in this sect.
He wrote many books in the New Testament.
He faced much persecution and suffering for his part in this thing.
2 Corinthians 11:24-25 give a hint of what he went through.
"Five times I received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one. Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was pelted with stones, three times I was shipwrecked, I spent a night and a day in the open sea."
This life sounds like a dream, right?
Who wouldn't call this good?
Well it does not fit the definition I normally use for the word.
With everything that Paul did for the Kingdom, why did he still have to suffer?
Was he not doing what God had called him to do according to his purpose?
If he was, what exactly was good about it?

Maybe, our definition of good and how it is used is slightly different than the definition God uses.
Or maybe we just don't understand and won't understand.
The platform that Paul had gave him a voice to reach many for the kingdom.
That same platform is also why he faced all the persecution.
If the Jewish leaders at the time didn't view Paul as a threat, they would have let him go.
But they knew what he was doing and how powerful he was. So they tried to stop and stop him.
They didn't want the potentially dangerous word to get out. The message Paul carried made everything they believed obsolete. What did Paul do when he faced the troubles? He continued on. He wasn't going to stop proclaiming the message he knew he was supposed to proclaim.

Did Paul get caught up in what was going to happen to him? He knew the consequences.
Did he think he deserved some comfortable life just because he was gracious enough to follow the Lord? He knew what he was doing. He knew what was going to happen to him. He then called it good. I think what we can learn from Paul in this situation is something very valuable.
He looked at the big picture and realized where he fit into it.
He knew that if his life was glorifying the Lord by the message he preached and the life he lived, then all the side things did not really matter.
Maybe it is that simple. Maybe that is what we need to get from Paul's life.
Maybe we just need to see that all the small side things do not matter. We have to glorify God with everything that we have.  We have to start realizing the importance of living for the Kingdom.
If something good happens for the Kingdom and if we are followers of this belief, how then can we complain about it?

Paul knew his calling. He didn't get caught up in the distractions that were coming his way. He didn't get caught up in this idea of a comfortable Christian life. He glorified God with everything he had and the world was changed drastically because of it. Are we ready to do the same thing? Or are the distractions of life going to stop us?