A Year with Jesus: 'Can These Bones Live?'

Dear Precious Believer,

My resurrection was a surprise to everyone, including My closest followers. It was a glorious shock to their system in many ways, but the truth of My resurrection became obvious through My many appearances. The reanimation and the reinvigoration of My followers — their "resurrected" lives — suddenly became a possibility with My resurrection.

New life was no longer a symbolic truth, but a genuine reality. When I poured out the Holy Spirit — the Helper as John the beloved disciple liked to call the Spirit — the power that raised Me from the grave was suddenly poured into the lives of mortal people. That's why the apostle Paul could pray the following prayers for My disciples in Asia Minor:

God of our Lord Jesus the Anointed, Father of Glory: I call out to You on behalf of Your people. Give them minds ready to receive wisdom and revelation so they will truly know You. Open the eyes of their hearts, and let the light of Your truth flood in. Shine Your light on the hope You are calling them to embrace. Reveal to them the glorious riches You are preparing as their inheritance. Let them see the full extent of Your power that is at work in those of us who believe, and may it be done according to Your might and power.

Friends, it is this same might and resurrection power that He used in the Anointed One to raise Him from the dead and to position Him at His right hand in heaven. There is nothing over Him.
(Ephesians 1:17-20)

Father, out of Your honorable and glorious riches, strengthen Your people. Fill their souls with the power of Your Spirit so that through faith the Anointed One will reside in their hearts. May love be the rich soil where their lives take root. May it be the bedrock where their lives are founded so that together with all of Your people they will have the power to understand that the love of the Anointed is infinitely long, wide, high, and deep, surpassing everything anyone previously experienced. God, may Your fullness flood through their entire beings.

Now to the God Who can do so many awe-inspiring things, immeasurable things, things greater than we ever could ask or imagine through the power at work in us, to Him be all glory in the church and in Jesus the Anointed from this generation to the next, forever and ever. Amen.
(Ephesians 3:16-21)

This power and glorious reanimation of what was dead was foreshadowed by the prophet Ezekiel hundreds of years earlier. Seeing the people of Israel "beyond dead" — nothing more than symbolically being a bunch of scattered, dried, and unburied bones piled high and abandoned in an open valley as the remnants of war — the Father told Ezekiel to speak life into those bones. When those bones took on sinew and flesh, the Father told Ezekiel to prophesy the breath of the Eternal, the Spirit of the living God, to make those bones live.

The gloriously strange vision you find in the verses below is what the coming of the Holy Spirit means to My followers. Where there once was death, the Holy Spirit, the Breath of Heaven, can bring life. As the Father said, "I will breathe My Spirit into you, and you will be alive once again." With My resurrection, I defeated death, sin, and hell. I poured out the Spirit on My people at Pentecost (Acts 2:14-21; Acts 2:33-39). I continue to pour out the Spirit on each believer (Titus 3:3-7) when she or he shares in My life, death, and resurrection based on faith and experienced through immersion with Me into My saving grace (Romans 6:3-7).

The Breath of Heaven that Ezekiel prophesied to make the dead bones live was at work in My resurrection. This same Holy Spirit, Who was the power behind My resurrection, has also been at work in the lives of My disciples from Pentecost up until your time and will continue His work among My disciples until I return. This Breath of Heaven, this glorious power of the Holy Spirit, is available to you now. The Spirit has the power to bring life out of death, hope out of despair, and strength out of powerlessness. Can these bones live? Yes, by the power of the Holy Spirit, you can begin to experience everlasting life!