Born to be Free

During some of the hardest parts of last year, there was one phrase God told me more than others. "You forget Who I am." When I've been on my knees in my closet, scrawling God's promises to me out on the walls, that phrase soon joined them. In the midst of my everyday, in the middle of any crisis we face - We end up forgetting Who He is. Isn't it strange?  How we can develop this soul-amnesia, lose sight of all that He's gotten us through? Remembering the past and passing down stories of their ancestors was very important to the people of Israel.  There were accounts delivered from generation to generation by word of mouth.  There were feasts, festivals, sabbaths, fasts and even certain years in their entirety set apart as a time for the people to gather, rest and  remember.   Remember the faithfulness of their God - how He had delivered them, brought them to the place they called home, gave them victory over powerful armies - and would soon send ...

I've been thinking over Ezekiel 37 a lot lately.  Ezekiel was a priest called to be God's prophet during the Babylonian captivity.  In chapter 37, we see God's power demonstrated in His ability to raise up His people in a new spiritual birth. "The hand of the Lord was upon me, and he brought me out in the Spirit of the Lord and set me down in the middle of the valley; it was full of bones.  And he led me around among them, and behold, there were very many on the surface of the valley, and behold, they were very dry.  And he said to me, “Son of man, can these bones live?” And I answered, “O Lord God, you know.”  Then he said to me, “Prophesy over these bones, and say to them, O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord.  Thus says the Lord God to these bones: Behold, I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live.  And I will lay sinews upon you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall l...