Sermon Central
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The Valley Of Dry Bones
Contributed by Steve Hahn on May 18, 2004 (message contributor)
Summary: For those whose desire and longing is for intimacy with Jesus, and to know and experience His manifest presence.
THE VALLEY OF DRY BONES
A. We need a spiritual awakening!!! Our bones are dry.
1. There are many people in the world and in church, who have dry bones, who are spiritually dead, who need to hear the Word of the Lord, and for the Lord to awaken and breathe new life into there bones!!!!
2. Not only do we need to awake our spirits, but also we need spiritual enlightenment, because it reveals what is real beneath what is apparent.
a. Reality vs. spirituality
1. There is much more realism in the spiritual, than actually in the flesh, or what we see with our own fleshly eyes.
2. When you spend time in His presence, He will reveal the reality of the sin that is in your life. Sometimes it can be very painful to deal with some of the issues that the Lord brings to light, but if we allow Him to work on us, He will rebuild us into a new creation, and bring us to a new level of intimacy with Him.
3. The reality is this: we are a prideful people, we always seem to resort back to pleasing ourselves, or what makes us happy, and He wants to show us the reality of trusting only Him, and allowing Him to awaken our dead spirits.
a. We have allowed our spirits to die by not spending time in His Word, and in His presence.
4. WAKE UP!!!!!!!! Wake up and smell the coffee, we are a dying generation, and this youth group will die if we don’t allow the breath of God to revive us, fill us, restore us and bring us back to the true reality of who He really is.
Dead Cat
Our neighbor’s cat was run over by a car, and the mother quickly disposed of the remains before her four-year-old son Billy found out about it. After a few days, though, Billy finally asked about the cat.
“Billy, the cat died,” his mother explained. “But it’s all right. He’s up in heaven with God.”
The boy asked, “What in the world would God want with a dead cat?”
b. What in the world would God want with dry bones? The spiritually dead? The lukewarm?
1. It just goes to show us that it is evident that God wants all of us or none of us. Don’t ride the fence, cause someone is going to knock you off, and it’s going to hurt.
c. How many of you have seen the sixth sense?
1. “I see dead people!”
2. That is what I see in the spirit, I see dead people, in church, and in the world, so many people are dying spiritually.
3. My heart breaks, because I know the Way, I know the Truth, and I know the Life, and His name is Jesus!!!
a. He is the life giver, He is the bone moistener, and He has come to breathe new life into us.
B. We need to choose life
1. Let’s take another walk in scripture; lets go all the way to Gen. 2:7-9.
a. God talks about two trees here,
1. The tree of life
2. The tree of knowledge of good and evil.
3. Now skip down to Gen. 3:1-6
a. Eve had two trees to choose from; so which one did she choose?
4. Serving the Lord is so easy, so many people complicate it, and all we are called to do is come with child-like faith, and just love Him.
a. The Lord is relentless, He INSISTS on purity of our motives of hearts and in the lives who seek Him.
b. When your motive is pure and is simply just to be with Him, than that which is produced is like the tree of life.
1. The truth that you receive in His presence produces life.
c. When you choose to spend time with God and turn the other cheek to the world, and from all your other activities, and just seek His face, your life will produce Life.
5. In the Garden, Adam and Eve walked with God, they had fellowship with Him, and they chose knowledge over intimacy!!
a. We need to learn how to choose intimacy over knowledge, or insight.
1. Intimacy: tree of life.
2. Insight: tree of knowledge of good.
b. There is a choice we have to make, do you choose to come to Him for truth and revelation, and for just your needs, or
c. Do you choose to come to Him just to be with Him?
6. We can come to Him when we need Him, and when we want knowledge and revelation, but:
a. If you come to Him for intimacy, to just be with Him, you get knowledge and revelation as a bonus,
