As Christians, part of our calling is to herald the coming Kingdom of God to the world around and to start living our lives in a way that models that Kingdom. I have to say that often this is harder than we would like to admit. Screaming kids, a huge bill, an annoying co-worker, sickness – even walking on a piece of lego left on the floor can ruin our day making our lives sometimes a poor reflection of how we would like to imagine the Kingdom of God to be. There is an old saying that says”
“It’s hard to fly like an eagle when I’m surrounded by turkeys!”
So how do we deal with what surrounds us – do we let our circumstances dictate how we feel or is there a way we can begin to impact our circumstances by our knowledge of God and His Kingdom?
Our good friend Bev Murrill has written a book called “Speak Life and shut the hell up’ (available in our resource centre and at Amazon.com.au). In it she talks about how we can speak life to the dry bones we find around us – whether it be long term situations that are grinding us down or even the ‘little things’ affecting our day to day lives. She uses the principles found in Ezekiel 37 where the Lord showed Ezekiel a valley of dry bones that once had life but were now so dry there were no signs of life left at all. God told Ezekiel to start speaking out over the bones declaring life over them, as he did so, signs of life began to appear, sinew, tissue, ligaments until eventually a living person appeared and then a whole army. The everyday circumstances we find ourselves in are a great training ground for us to begin to ‘speak life’ into – declaring God’s plan rather than simply accepting what we see with our eyes. As we practice in our own lives, may be we can begin to have faith that we can speak life into the community around us. Maybe one or two dead things or spiritually dead people will breath again or maybe we will see a mighty army heralding in that coming Kingdom!!