For everything that has a physical side, there is a spiritual side also. Most Christians relate more to the physical to the detriment and neglect of the spiritual. Even though man exists in the physical realm but is ultimately a spiritual being. Essentially there are two sides to man, the physical side and the spiritual component. The famous story of the dry bones (Ezekiel: 37) illustrates this foregoing explicitly. God instructed Ezekiel in verse 4 to “prophesy upon these dry bones and say to them O ye dry bones, hear the word of the Lord”.
As far as common sense goes, dead things don’t hear. And God, of all people should know that. He knows everything, doesn’t He? It seemed bizarre therefore that God would expect the dead bones to hear the words of Ezekiel. The bones in question were very dry and very dead. So why did God instruct Ezekiel to talk to dead things. Maybe God knows something we don’t know, maybe God knows that everything that has a physical side also has a spiritual side, maybe He knows that physical death does not translate to spiritual death.
No question, the bones were dead but that fact is not by any means conclusive or irrefutable. As far as death goes, Sarah’s womb was dead, physically that is, but spiritually, it’s a different ball game. Life and death are in the spirit, not in the physical. No one can be certified dead except their spirit leaves them, conversely, no one can be said to be alive or living if they didn’t have the spirit inside of them. It is the spirit that dictates whether one is dead or alive. Same applies to issues and situations that daily confront us. We only see the physical side of things but we never bother with the spiritual side. For everything that has a physical side also has a spiritual side. Doctors may have certified that you have a rupture in your womb and therefore are not able to bear a child. That is the physical side, how about the spiritual side? You are looking at your bank account which is almost always in red and you’re thinking ‘Am I ever going to be financially solvent? Am I ever going to be able to afford a home of my own?’ Again, that is the physical side you are looking at, how about the spiritual side? It might seem hopeless, look hopeless but it does not necessarily mean it is hopeless. It might seem dead look dead or even certified dead, but it does not necessarily mean it is dead.
Is it not amazing that both Ezekiel and God were looking at the same thing at the same time and yet were both seeing different things. Ezekiel was seeing a valley full of dead bones whereas God was seeing an exceedingly great army. There are eyes that look and there are eyes that see. Sometimes what you see determines what you get. How far you see determines how far you go. So the question I pose before you today is: what do you see?
The fact is, we relate more to our physical side but ever hardly our spiritual side. We are more comfortable on this side (physical side) than the other side (spiritual) and that is simply because all our 5 senses are on this side. We connect more to things we can see, hear, touch, smell and taste rather than things we are intangible. We do not relate to our spiritual side because we do not understand it, we do not see it. We tend to ignore things that we do not understand, we never want to explore them.
But the big problem is that all our blessings are on the other side, the side tend to ignore, the spiritual side. In Ephesians 3:1 the scriptures say we have been blessed with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places. ‘Heavenly places’ is not some far away random place as many people are wont to think; it simply means spiritual place - our spiritual side. Spiritual place is the other side of you, your spiritual constituent. Same you. One coin, two sides. Man is spirit being who lives in a body and has a soul.
What is on this side is what the other side has released. Whatever blessings you have in the physical is what has been released to you from the spiritual side. Whatever treasures you have here, no matter how much, is a trickle, an infinitesimal proportion of what is on the other side. A story was told once of a man who after his transition to eternity was taken on tour of heaven by Angel Gabriel. On beholding the grandeur splendour in heaven he was completely awed. After the tour, he pointed to a locked door that he deemed the angel had missed. Angel Gabriel however waved it off as not important and suggested they moved on. His curiosity taking the better of him, the main insisted he would love to see what was behind the locked door. Eventually, Angel Gabriel yielded to his persistence. On opening the door the man saw the most glorious and beautiful blessing that eyes could behold. He then asked the angel – ‘whose are these?’ to which the angel replied ‘these are the blessings that were reserved for you while on earth that you failed to claim’. On receiving this revelation the man immediately burst into tears knowing how much he suffered while on earth when he could have had all the goodness of life. The logic to the story therefore, is for you to come into the fullness of God’s blessing, you have to reach across to your spiritual side to bring them into the physical. The big question then is how?
5 keys to accessing the blessing on the other side include:
Prioritise God. Let God, His interests and His needs be your priority. Matthew 6:33 reads ‘seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things shall be added unto you’.
Be diligent in prayer. To relate with your spiritual side you have to be a man of prayer because God is spirit. 1Thessalonians 5:17, Luke 22:44. Spend quality time in His presence. Always bear in mind that prayer is a two-way traffic. Make out time to listen to God not just talking to Him.
Meditate on His word. Spend time studying and meditating on His word. God speaks through those pages. Joshua 1:8-9, Psalm 1:1-3, 2Timothy 2:15.
Holy living. The second part of Matthew 6:33 reads ‘and His righteousness’ The righteousness of God can only be achieved through His spirit. 1Peter 1:15-16. The accuser cannot bring any charge against you if you are living a holy and blameless life. John 14:30, James 5:16.
Raise your faith level. There are 2 parts of faith (1) the hearing part - Romans 10:17 – faith cometh by hearing and (2) the acting part. James 2:17 – even so faith, if it hath not works is dead being alone. Act on what you have heard. Hebrews 11:8
In verse 4 of our main text (Ezekiel 37) to “prophesy upon these dry bones and say to them O ye dry bones, hear the word of the Lord”. The word prophecy is translated from the Hebrew word ‘nabal’ which means ‘to speak God’s message to a person, people or situation’ Prophecy is also translated as the ‘speaking forth or the ‘declaring of the mind and counsel of God’.
Notice that in verse 4 God instructed Ezekiel to speak ‘to’ the dry bones. Rather than speak to the dry bones of our lives, most of us speak to God. God is not the problem, the dry bone is. When Moses was caught between the red sea and the pursuing Egyptian army the scriptures records that he cried to God (Exodus 14) but God showed His irritation when He replied: ‘wherefore criest thou unto me? . . . Lift thou up thy rod and stretch out thine hand over the sea’. In essence, what God was saying here was: don’t cry to me, speak to the situation, prophecy to your dry bones.
God is not interested in your tears. Tears do not move God, faith does. There is a reason why God located our blessing in spiritual places, so we can reach out by faith to our other side and access the blessings. Sometimes we do not fully grasp the fact that we carry the fullness of God, not ¾, not 99.9%, but the fullness of God (John 1:16, Ephesians 3:19). We carry His nature, His power, His glory, His beauty, His presence, His authority, His personality – the full essence of God.
Job 22:28 reads: Thou shall decree a thing and it shall be established unto thee. For your decree to be established you have to carry the authority of God. For the earth to yield to you, you have to possess the authority that created it. The fact of the matter is that your dry bones will remain dry unless you prophesy to it; the situation will not change unless you speak to it; the mountain will not move except you command it. The dry bones will not come alive in the physical realm except they first come alive in the spiritual realm.
Why are prophetic words important?
Prophetic words prepare the ground for miracles. In 2King 4 the scriptures record the account of a Shunammite woman who laid her dead son on her bed and went in search of Elijah, the man of God. Upon sighting her far off, Elijah sent his servant, Gehazi to meet her asking whether everything was alright. The words she uttered in response were prophetic. She answered ‘it is well’. Those words activated the miracle that she subsequently received. Prophetic words carry the power to activate the supernatural.
Prophetic words give direction; they forecast the future. In 1Samuel:1 the scriptures records that Hannah was barren. Year after year she made trips to Shiloh for sacrifice; year after year she cried unto God for a child; year after year God ignored her. . . until one particular year when she made a vow. The vow she made was prophetic – ‘if thou will give thine handmaid a man child then I will give him unto the Lord all the days of his life and there shall no razor come upon his head’ (1Samuel 1:11). Those words opened her womb. Those words also forecast the life of Samuel, her son, as a prophet. All the days of his life, Samuel never left the house of God.
Prophetic words bring orderliness to messy situations; they bring shape and give form. In verse 7 of our main text, the bible records that as soon as Ezekiel prophesied, bones began to move towards bones. There were piles upon piles of countless dry bones from countless bodies scattered all over the place but amazingly, bones from same genetic make-up located their genetic match. Not one single bone going the wrong direction.
Prophetic words create. They bring something out of nothing; tangibles out of emptiness. Prophecy actives the power of creation. Hebrews 11:3 records that ‘the worlds were framed by the word of God’. The word of God word created the world out of a vast nothingness. When God said ‘Let there be’, those words were uttered into emptiness, into void but the words were able to generate tangibles out of the said emptiness. Verse 8 of Ezekiel 37 say sinews and flesh came upon the assorted bones after the Ezekiel had prophesied on them. Prophecy gives flesh to God’s promises. Prophetic words have the capacity to create something out of nothing.
We all have a spiritual component which we have neglected for far too long. We cannot become all God has purposed for us to be; possess all God has reserved for us; enjoy the fullness of His blessings except we relate to our spiritual side. The spiritual is as real as the physical. The fact that we cannot physically see it does not in any way diminish its actuality or existence. Hebrew 11:3 reads ‘. . Things which are seen were not made by things which do appear.’ Put in another way: the physical is created by the spiritual.
