After Life

August 8, 2018

AFTER LIFE

"I will put my Spirit in you and you will live" Ezekiel 37:14

IN WORD The world is full of death. Despite the fact that billions of people live in this planet, few of them really live on this planet. Spiritually severed from the God who loves them - from the Living One - people live transient lives in painfully mortal flesh. We walk among human graveyards waiting to happen.

That sounds pretty stark, doesn't it? it certainly doesn't fit the mood of our generation, which believes that all people are basically good and everything's okay. It does, however, fit the Biblical assessment of human fallenness. Paul wrote that we, in our natural condition, are "dead in [our] transgressions and sins" (Ephesians 2:1), and Ezekiels's vision of dry bones does nothing to contradict that truth. God had even spelled it out long ago in the Garden: "When you eat of it [forbidden tree] you will surely die" (Genesis 2:17). In a fallen world, death reigns.

Christians should appear dramatically different from the world around us. We should seem strangely "alive" compared to the walking dead of creation. When non-believers observed Christian believers, they should see a spark of life, evidence of a new creation that comes from beyond fallen flesh. The evidence of joy, purpose, and gratitude among people who have those blessings should speak volumes to those who don't have them. in a desolate world, Christian should flourish.

IN DEED Are you flourishing? Does life overflow from your heart? If not, There's some sort of disconnect or obstacle between you and the Living One. That doesn't mean that Christians should put on happy masks for the world around us; we must be authentic. It does, however, mean that a chronic lack of joy and peace and life indicates a problem. If that's the case, ask God to breath new life into you daily. Invite His Spirit to be as alive in you as He was in the bones of Ezekiel's vision. Let Him restore and resurrect you with the kind of life a dead world needs to see.