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… bones that were very dry. He asked me, “Son of man, can these bones live?” I said, “Sovereign Lord, you alone know.”

Then he said to me, “Prophecy to these bones and say to them, ‘Dry bones, hear the word of the Lord! This is what the Sovereign Lord says to these bones: I will make breath enter you and you will come to life….. Then you will know that I am the Lord… I will put my Spirit in you and you will live…”

(Ezek 37.1-6&14)

“So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened… If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”

(Lk 11.9,10&13)

For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died…. that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again… All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and … he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God.

(2 Cor 5.14&15, 18-20)

Do you, like me, respond to this command by Jesus to ask, seek and knock by saying… ‘yes Lord, but what about……?’. Perhaps it is just me, with my tendency to see the negative instead of the positive, to focus on the ways that I am not seeing the answers that I want instead of discerning what God is doing.

I am enthralled by the vision of the dry bones coming to life as the word of the Lord is preached to them, and the breath of God, his very Spirit, brings them back from death. I believe that this is a picture of what God does every time a person accepts Christ as their Saviour – they pass from the dry, dusty death which is exile from God and slavery to the ruling powers of this world, into the vivid, spirit-filled and joyous life which is knowing the love of God and fulfilling our place in his plan. The power of the vision is compelling, and motivating – as Paul testifies in his entreaty to the Corinthians not to reject the hope of life which is offered in Christ.

BUT, how many of us have been privileged to witness such transformation? How many of us have prayed for it to happen in the lives of family, friends, work colleagues, members of our community… and seen no change at all? Is this because God’s power is somehow limited? Is it lack of faith on our part, do we fail in perseverance? Surely God is not like some automated vending machine where sufficient input of determined prayer will guarantee the results! But where then does Jesus’ exhortation to persevere in prayer take me?

I have no easy answers to this question, and in honesty I have to confess that at the moment, I am almost apathetic about prayer – the kind of prayer that believes in and hopes for great things to be done; the prayer that keeps on asking, seeking, knocking; the prayer that wrestles with God and will not let go. How can I find the courage and faith to pray like that when I see so many reasons to be hopeless, to lower my expectations as much as possible, to accept the power of sin over so many lives and stop fighting against it?

And so it seems that the dry bones are my own… it is my spirit which is dust-dry and lifeless; my faith which is bowed down into the ground, blind and deaf to God’s work and word. And so I must start with my own heart as I come to God in prayer – prayer as an act of will, a discipline in the teeth of discouragement and weariness, a cry from the heart for renewal and a work of the Spirit in my life so that I may not fail my Saviour. Only God can do this, do I have the strength and faith to keep asking for it?

Lord, have mercy on your child; restore her courage to believe, and strength to live in that faith. May her stumbling efforts at obedience, her dogged attempts to listen and to pray, all these poor rags of discipleship, be objects of your love and compassion. You know how to give good gifts to your children, and you alone know how needy I am. Make these dry bones live, that I might serve you in this place and time, for your glory and in the name of Jesus my Lord, Amen.