God's not done yet...
Has this ever happened to you? I am listening to the message today at church(a church I am visiting while looking for my forever church) and I begin thinking this is a message just for me. All of the sudden I hear the points and realize my points and the Pastors points don't match up.
I am hearing something totally different, I am taken back to a moment in time that interacts differently than what is being said. Without even realizing it, I have read on further in the Bible. I have remembered a time when bones was a word spoken to me from the Lord and I am stunned to find myself deep in thought about it.
The verse is 2 Chronicles 34:5 "Then he burned the bones of the priest on their altars, and purged Judah and Jerusalem.
It was a spiritual cleansing. He also tore down the altars and idols and beat everything to dust. Pretty dramatic don't you think? The King Josiah(really still a boy) had discovered the God of his ancestors (King David) and he was moved. He took action. He burned the bones. The dry dead bones, he created a graveyard of the old ways. Did the bones burn quickly? Was it a pleasant aroma to the Lord?
Years ago, after a particularly troubling season, a season that I felt we were being unduly attacked. Now, I have to stop right heare and explain a few things. 1. When I say us, I am refering to my ex and I who were at the time pastoring. 2. My ex had a major heart condition that had almost cost him his life. 3. There had been allegations swirling around him from different directions. 4. I was convinced by the ex that it was all just an attack. 5. I later found out the ugly truth of his ongoing affairs with and without the church. You really have to know the back story to understand the impact of these words.
So let me start again. I had received a word from the Lord that all of our flesh would be ripped away. That our bones would be left scavenged and white. This did not sound fun at all. I remember weeping at my ex's feet and saying a terrible pain was coming but it would cleanse us of the flesh that keeps us from being all that God has called us to be. His response was to say it was a good thing that was going to happen. I believed him, until my son died. I believed him until I found out about his multiple affairs and the terrible damage to the women within the body of Christ he had done. I believed him until the day I didn't. Once that happened, I just survived. I spent years in a grave yard of memories and regret and I kind of forgot about it. I spent years just surviving all the pain.
Fast forward and six years have gone by and I realize what it is to feel naked and lost. To feel you have nothing to cover your shame. To feel like you have been stripped to the point of not recognizing yourself anymore. I know I sound dramatic but try to imagine the upheaval I have gone through. I lost a son, a marriage, a community that I loved and I moved away to Texas. I held tightly to my faith, kept trying to be strong and one day I just gave up. Not on God, not even on myself but just gave up on trying so hard to figure it out.
Slowly, my flesh had been torn off, picked off by scavengers, burned away by disappointment, dried out by a lack of love. Lack of love for myself. Now I am on the cusp of the scripture that says dry bones come alive again (Ezekiel 3). I am getting better each day, true love, faith and friends. Slowly restoration, rebuilding and realigning are happening in my heart, in my faith and in my life.
