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The God Who Brings Life.
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In this inspiring and thought-provoking episode of Bellevue For Humanity, hosted by Mandrell & Gaines, we explore the profound and uplifting truth behind "The God Who Brings Life." In a world that often leaves us feeling weary, uncertain, or spiritually drained, this conversation serves as a beacon of hope, reminding us of God’s unmatched power to restore, revive, and breathe new purpose into every area of our lives.
Together, Mandrell & Gaines delve into rich biblical wisdom to unpack how divine grace operates in our darkest moments. They share practical insights on faith, spiritual deliverance, and moral restoration, showing how true renewal begins when we surrender our struggles to the ultimate Creator and Source of life. Whether you are navigating personal trials, searching for deeper spiritual direction, or simply seeking daily encouragement, this episode offers timeless wisdom for your journey.
Key Highlights of This Episode:
The Promise of Divine Restoration: Discover how God brings spiritual vitality and fresh beginnings to broken or weary hearts.
Navigating Modern Challenges with Faith: Practical discussion on maintaining moral purpose and spiritual strength amidst life’s daily trials.
Living in the Reality of Grace: Understanding how recognizing God as the giver of life transforms our decisions, relationships, and worldview.
Join Mandrell & Gaines for an engaging and soul-stirring conversation designed to elevate your faith and bring clarity to your daily walk.
Subscribe to Bellevue For Humanity, share this episode with a friend or family member who needs spiritual encouragement, and leave a review to help us continue bringing hope to people around the world!
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Transcript
Introduction to 'A River Runs Through It' and Family Dynamics
00:00:01
Speaker
One of my favorite movies of all time is Robert Redford's A River Runs Through It. It's a haunting story of two brothers, Norman and Paul McLean, the sons of a pastor.
00:00:12
Speaker
Norman is the steady one, the rule follower, while Paul is reckless and always chasing thrills and coloring outside the lines. Norman loves his brother deeply and is troubled by Paul's life choices and wants so desperately to see him make a better move and take a better path for his life. But no matter how hard he tries to convince Paul, he just keeps slipping away like a trout in the Missoula River.
00:00:36
Speaker
As the movie unfolds, Norman is the narrator of the story and he has so many poetic moments and penetrating words. At one point, as he sees his brother's commitment to walk the wrong path, he utters these words.
00:00:50
Speaker
We can seldom help those closest to us. Either we don't know what part of ourselves to give, or more often than not, the part we have to give is not wanted.
Internal Change and Divine Influence on the Heart
00:01:01
Speaker
Anybody relate to Norman's words there? Surely we all know what it's like to want to change a person, to want to just grab the steering wheel of their life and help them find a better path.
00:01:13
Speaker
But no matter how hard we try, we can't do it because only God can change the human heart. The gate to life change is locked from the inside. So it's like a door that has a latch, but only the person on the inside can loosen the latch.
00:01:26
Speaker
That has to be done internally. And no matter how hard you and I try, we cannot force a person to obey God and follow his path for their life. The heart, though, is closed off to us. It's wide open to God.
00:01:39
Speaker
What is closed off and sealed to us is wide open to God, and he changes hearts. So here's the uncomfortable question that's gonna come along in Ezekiel's prophecy today. Am I trying to fix someone that only God can change?
00:01:52
Speaker
Am I trying to play God in someone's life? Am I trying to be the all-powerful, all-knowing, I know what's best for them kind of person in their life? Am I carrying a burden that I was not intended to carry as a human being trying to play the part of God?
00:02:06
Speaker
That's a really convicting question, especially if you're a parent. It's difficult when we watch our loved ones make decisions that we wish they'd go another way. So I want you to look at Ezekiel 36, 26 and see what it has to say, because it has a lot to say to us. Here's the context. The prophet is looking through his telescope through time, and he sees a time when the promised land is coming back to his people. The exiles are going back to the promised land, and not only is he going to change their geography, he's going to change the whole way their heart is structured. He's going to change their hearts. Look at it, it says in 36, verse 26, I will give you a new heart, and I will put a new spirit within you.
00:02:44
Speaker
I will remove your heart of stone and I will give you a heart of flesh. I will place my spirit within you and cause you to follow my statutes and carefully observe my ordinances.
00:02:56
Speaker
You will live in the land that I gave your ancestors. You will be my people and I will be your God. I want you to see here and in the chapter to follow, there's three powers of God, three capabilities that God has that we don't. This is why we need him.
00:03:09
Speaker
The first capability is simply this. He is the God who can get through to us. He can cut to the heart. Notice how the Lord takes it upon himself to bring change in the people that he's prophesying to. Verse 26 begins with the word I. I will give you a new heart. And then he says, I will give you a new spirit.
00:03:25
Speaker
He says, I will take out that heart of stone and I will put in a heart of flesh. I will install a softer heart that wants to obey and follow. As we grow up on planet earth, our hearts, our soft hearts get hardened by life.
00:03:39
Speaker
We get hurt We get hurt by people. We sometimes feel hurt by God or disappointed by God. And we calloused. You know what a callous is? A callous is that thick, tough piece of skin, like maybe on the bottom of your foot, that keeps a little rock from busting through the bottom of your your foot when you walk barefoot on the sidewalk.
Heart Transformation: From Callousness to Receptiveness
00:03:58
Speaker
and That crusty layer of skin is your body's way of protecting you from pain. In fact, if you've been watching the U.S. Open tennis tournament this week, the great Novak Djokovic was forced to the sidelines because the callus on his big toe failed him.
00:04:13
Speaker
And he he sat there frustrated while they applied band-aids to his big toe because that such a big blister had formed on the bottom of foot. do you Do you like gross things? Would you like to see it? If you don't like gross things, just look down for three seconds, but check this out.
00:04:29
Speaker
Ouch.
00:04:32
Speaker
It's like his hotel was coming off. A callous. Some of you are like, you shouldn't have shown me that. I can't unsee that.
00:04:42
Speaker
A callous on your big toe is good for you if you play tennis. A callous on your heart is not good. As a human being, when we get hurt, we get calloused. And the natural tendency when somebody hurts me is to make sure that never happens again.
00:04:59
Speaker
And so I'm just going to hold that person at a distance. Or if God lets me down, I'll be cordial and kind, but I'll hold him as at a distance too. And God says, don't think you can ever hold me at a distance. I will penetrate your heart.
00:05:14
Speaker
I can get through no matter how high your level of resistance No matter how thick the callous, Ezekiel's prophecy reminds us the Lord can break through it. He saw a day in the future when the material that makes the human heart is swapped out into new material. No more stone. Now it's flesh heart.
00:05:31
Speaker
From stone heart to flesh heart. And let that comparison sink in for just a moment. let me Let me put it in a medical profession analogy. Imagine trying to take a hypodermic needle and give a flu shot to a boulder.
00:05:43
Speaker
The tip of that needle is going to break before it gets through. We all know that. but But try the same thing with a shoulder, the human shoulder. And what you will see is the needle simply disappears. It penetrates. It goes all the way in. And God says, I'm seeing a day when I not only bring my people back to the promised land, but I put them there and I put in a new heart.
00:06:03
Speaker
And this heart is not one that resists my word or my spirit. This is a heart that receives my word and my spirit. It's ah it's a time of great revival. when God would pour out his spirit on his people. And once they got the Holy Spirit, they would feel freedom.
00:06:19
Speaker
Not just freedom from their oppressors, but freedom in their hearts to love. As 2 Corinthians 3, 17 says so beautiful, where the spirit of the Lord is, there's freedom. So the greatest thing that can happen to the person you're trying to change is not for you to coerce them. The greatest thing that can happen is that through your prayers, the Holy Spirit is unleashed on them and it penetrates to the human heart and wants to give them freedom.
00:06:42
Speaker
Something you could never give them. But we we all, even after we become Christians, struggle to follow
Human Limitations and Spiritual Empowerment
00:06:48
Speaker
God, right? Our hearts still get hardened at times. We all fail. One of my most embarrassing moments, one of the worst moments in the Ben Mandrell highlight parenting film.
00:06:58
Speaker
I'm about to share it with you. I was attempting to lead a family Bible study during COVID. i i was frustrated because I'm a people person and I was six feet away from everybody. Not to mention, i don't like to smell my own breath in a mask.
00:07:10
Speaker
I didn't like COVID. I didn't like the whole thing. I wanted it over as soon as possible. Churches couldn't meet. Pastors were frustrated. Everybody was angry, including me. But I thought, okay, I'm going to make the most of it. We're going to have family Bible study on Sunday morning. And I um i was just excited to sit down and unleash a life-changing message on my children.
00:07:35
Speaker
And as I launched into the introduction, I noticed that they were not that into me. And the material that I thought was inspiring and quite interesting, they were completely uninterested in. They had that glassy-eyed look on their face like they'd been hypnotized.
00:07:50
Speaker
Like they were looking at me, but looking right through me. And I knew I needed to wake them up with some wrath, because God is a wrathful God. And sometimes they need to feel His wrath through me. And so this now goes down as the day our kids refer to as the day dad went ballistic in Bible study.
00:08:09
Speaker
And in my own insecurity that day, because they weren't listening, I wanted my words to matter. I wanted to control something. Because everything else in life felt out of control. I wanted them to feel impacted by me.
00:08:22
Speaker
In a time when I felt like I couldn't impact anybody. And I had to be reminded that day that all of us are just simply... conduits of the Holy Spirit.
00:08:33
Speaker
That we cannot force anything on anyone. It's only what God does through us that makes an impact, not what we try to do ourselves. Jesus said, apart from me, you can do nothing.
00:08:45
Speaker
I love the old book by E.M. Bounds, Power Through Prayer. It's an ah incredible resource, especially for preachers and teachers. But this is what he says. The preacher is the golden pipe through which the divine oil flows.
00:09:00
Speaker
The pipe must not only be golden but open and flawless that the oil may have a full, unhindered, unwasted flow. I was not a golden pipe that day. I was a hateful hammer.
00:09:11
Speaker
And the spirit, i i remember feeling like the spirit was not flowing through me And it's like Jesus said to Nicodemus that night when he was trying to explain how salvation works. He said, hey, it's kind of like the wind. The wind blows wherever it pleases. So it is with the Spirit of God. You don't know where it comes from. You don't know where it's going. You just know when you're experiencing it.
00:09:31
Speaker
And God, through Ezekiel, says there's coming a day when the when the people of God are going to feel something blowing through them. The Holy Spirit working in and through them. It won't be them just on their own, but the Holy Spirit providing and and inspiring and empowering them for a great work.
00:09:49
Speaker
And so God is the only one that can change the human heart. But let's keep going in chapter 37 because we have one of the most vivid pictures in the Old Testament. I think this is one of the most interesting scenes in and the Old Testament when we learn a second thing about God. But let me read the passage. It says, the hand of the Lord was on me, chapter 37, verse 1. The hand of the Lord was on me.
00:10:08
Speaker
And he brought me out by his spirit and he set me down in the middle of the valley.
Faith Amidst Chaos: Biblical Lessons and Personal Stories
00:10:11
Speaker
It was full of bones. He led me all around them. There were a great many of them on the surface of the valley and they were very dry. And then he said to me, son of man, can these bones live?
00:10:22
Speaker
I replied, Lord God, only you know. He said to me, prophesy concerning these bones and say to them, dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. And this is what the Lord God says to these bones. I will cause breath to enter you and you will live. I will put tendons on you, make flesh grow on you, cover you with skin. I will put breath in you so that you come to life. And then you will know that I am the Lord.
00:10:43
Speaker
Here we see a picture of a God who brings order to our chaos. And I don't know if you're like me, but it feels often that I need God to take the dry bones around me and bring them to life. He is placed in the center of the sea of skeletons as far as the eye can see. And then there's this pop quiz question, verse 3. Son of man, can these bones all around you be reassembled? Imagine the scene, the sight.
00:11:04
Speaker
He's standing there and there's bones all around him. And God says, do you think I can put all this back together? It wasn't a question about anatomy and how the human body fits together. it was a question of theology. What's your view of me as God? Do you believe that all things are possible, that I can take any situation...
00:11:22
Speaker
and I can untangle it and make it right again? Do you believe that I can work all things together for the good of those who love me? He was being tested, and as he said and he asks the same question to us today, doesn't he?
00:11:37
Speaker
When you're surrounded on every side by a mess, do you still hold on your faith in God?
00:11:44
Speaker
Can you hold on to him even when a day feels like it's completely coming apart? It's one of the hardest things to do as a Christian, isn't it? Um, This past week I had ah the joy of moving all of our possessions with a moving company from Nashville to Memphis. Oh, what a joyful time that is.
00:12:02
Speaker
It was a day we were anticipating greatly because I've been camping in our house in Memphis for weeks, sleeping on mattress on the floor. I never realized until August 2025 how much I love lamps and end tables.
00:12:16
Speaker
And the movers were nice enough guys, but they were not good labelers. And so they scattered boxes all over our house in the wrong rooms. And not only that, they weren't good packers either. Labeling and pack link packing were not their their strongest gifts.
00:12:31
Speaker
And so we had a lot of fragile items that were broken as we opened these boxes. A very frustrating day. And a friend of mine texted me and he said, so how's it going? And I sent him this picture right here. This is a picture of how it was going.
00:12:44
Speaker
Boxes everywhere. That was our kitchen, but like every room, just boxes everywhere. If you've ever moved, you know the chaos. And here I was standing in my own house, like like Ezekiel, like with bones all around. I had boxes all around me.
00:12:57
Speaker
And I had stress going on. And I know it's so a little bit trivial to compare my boxes to Ezekiel's day with bones. It's a little over the top. But I do want to say this.
00:13:08
Speaker
Is there a harder verse in the Bible than when prophet the prophet Isaiah says, he will keep him in perfect peace, he whose mind is stayed upon thee? It doesn't take...
00:13:19
Speaker
but just moving our physical items around our house and we become practical atheists.
00:13:27
Speaker
That we know that God exists, but in this moment we pretend as if he doesn't. And you might be here today and your life is a picture of like my house right now. It's just scattered. Stuff is scattered everywhere. It's not it's not how it's supposed to be. Your life feels very chaotic right now.
00:13:44
Speaker
And i want to encourage you with a little New Testament here. It reminds me of Mark in his gospel. He tells a story about how Jesus wanted to push up from the shore one day and he got into the Placid Sea and he fell asleep, took a nice long nap. And the disciples were whispering and not wanting to wake their rabbi, but suddenly a furious storm just jumped upon them and and things were out of control.
00:14:06
Speaker
And scripture says this, Jesus was in the stern sleeping on a cushion. And the disciples woke him and said to him, teacher, don't you care? If we drown? He got up, rebuked the wind and said to the waves, quiet, be still. And then the wind died down. It was completely calm.
00:14:22
Speaker
He said to his disciples, why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith? They were terrified and asked each other, who is this? Even the wind and the waves obey him. And I want you to notice normal reaction when when we human beings, when our stuff is scattered everywhere, when life becomes chaotic, the normal reaction is, teacher, don't you even care if we drown down here?
00:14:45
Speaker
I don't know if you noticed the first baptism. I got a kick out of that one. Did you notice that one? little guy got into the baptism. He thought for sure Derek wouldn't drown him, but he wanted to keep a hand on the glass just in case.
00:14:55
Speaker
you notice that?
00:15:00
Speaker
It's kind of a picture of my Christian walk. God, I know that you exist. i know you're go to put I know you work all things together for the good. I know that I am not supposed to worry about anything but by prayer and petition offer my thanksgiving unto God, but I'm going to hang on right there.
00:15:18
Speaker
And that's exactly what we see the disciples doing. I mean, Jesus has performed miracle after miracle after miracle, and he takes one nap, and they all come apart.
00:15:31
Speaker
And that's a picture of us as humanity. And it's humbling. As the old saying goes, a smooth sea never made a skilled sailor. And God allows us at times to go through experiences where we have to where he asks us the question, Son of man, do you believe?
00:15:48
Speaker
that all this can come back to life. And I love his reaction, Lord, only you know. Like, that's kind of smart-alecky, isn't it? God, only you know. You tell me.
00:16:03
Speaker
And then he tells them to preach to the dead bones. And this is where we see the finish in verse 7. So I did. I preached as I had been commanded. I was prophesying. And there was a noise. Then there was a rattling sound. And then the bones came together, bone to bone. And as I looked, tendons appeared on them. Flesh grew on them. And skin covered them. But there was no breath in them. And he said to me, prophesy to the breath. Prophesy, son a man. Say to it, this is what the Lord God says.
00:16:27
Speaker
Breath, come from the four winds and breathe into these slain so that they may live. So I prophesied as he commanded me. The breath entered into them and they came to life and they stood on their feet, a vast army. Ezekiel learns a third thing about God. He is the God who brings revival to the human soul.
00:16:44
Speaker
On the other side of the spoken word, a cemetery morphs into an assembled army of soldiers. He sees what the word of God can do when it's preached to dead people.
00:16:56
Speaker
All through the Bible, indeed, all through Christian history, we see the connection between the revival of God's people and a revived interest in God's word. You see this connection all through Christian history, that God brings revival as people suddenly get more and more hungry for the word of God.
00:17:14
Speaker
They want the word preached to them. they want to They want to sit under the voice of God. They want to hear his voice. And when they do, it's reviving.
00:17:26
Speaker
Psalm says this, the psalmist writes, the law of the Lord is perfect, reviving my soul. The old pastor, Richard Baxter, used to begin every sermon by saying, I preach as though never to preach again, a dying man to dying men.
00:17:39
Speaker
He believed in the power that the preached word would would bring to sleepy people,
00:17:48
Speaker
Way back in the year 2000 when I was dating Lindley, I drove several hours to join her family at a lake house in Mountain Home, Arkansas. And as I was driving those snake-like roads up up there, I took a cassette tape. It's an old technology that was around once.
00:18:07
Speaker
Someone had given me a cassette tape and I popped it into my tape player and a man began preaching to me. I'd never heard this man. He was from Memphis, Tennessee and he yeah had a cool name, Adrian.
00:18:18
Speaker
first time I'd ever heard this person. And when the sound of his voice came into my Ford Tempo, i used to ride in style.
00:18:30
Speaker
I still remember an electricity-like feeling of something pulsing through my body. That as he was speaking, I was coming alive at the wheel. I was i was gripping the wheel. I couldn't not listen to him.
Revival through God's Word and Trusting Divine Paths
00:18:46
Speaker
And... It wasn't just his deep resonant voice, which I envied the moment I heard it. I mean, how manly was he? I'm a woman next to him.
00:18:58
Speaker
It was the simplicity of the way he described what the Bible meant that just really captured me, though. It wasn't his voice. It was that he was just, he was doing, it made he made it seem like anybody could do it.
00:19:10
Speaker
You just read it, you figure out what it meant to the people who heard it, and then you apply it And it just had this massive, it it's first time I'd ever heard someone do it so plainly.
00:19:22
Speaker
And so I did something crazy, I hit rewind. you You used to have to go back and rewind. And so I i waited for it to go back and it clicked and it started over. I listened to the whole thing again.
00:19:34
Speaker
And then on the way home, I listened to it a third time. I was in a season in my life where I was just so, I didn't realize I was starving for preaching. For someone to just take the Bible and explain it and exhort and encourage and admonish me as a young man.
00:19:50
Speaker
And there is all throughout Christian history a connection between revivals that begin and strong preaching. There's a desire for the preacher to preach. There's a desire for those who hear to be preached to.
00:20:04
Speaker
And Ezekiel looks at the what appears to be the worst audience a preacher could ever draw. They're all literally dead. They're not just asleep. they're they're dead They've been dead so long, there ain't even skin left.
00:20:18
Speaker
And he says, what do you think is about to happen when you start preaching my word? Do you believe? and the power of my word. And Jesus would come along and say, truly, truly, I say unto you, whoever hears my word and believes will have eternal life. John 6, 63, the words I have spoken to you are spirit, they are life. Romans 10, 17, so faith comes from hearing and hearing through the word of Christ. First Peter 1, 23, you have been born again, but not of perishable seed, but of imperishable through the living and abiding word of God. The word of God is an agent of regeneration.
00:20:53
Speaker
It changes people's lives when it's preached. And what we learn about God, yes.
00:21:01
Speaker
In this passage, just three things. He's the only one that can cut through to our heart. He's the only one that can bring order to chaos. And he's the only one that can bring revival to our souls by the sound of his voice, by the word of God.
00:21:14
Speaker
Man, you still want to get to the New Testament? I mean, this is pretty good stuff.
00:21:20
Speaker
Now, let's see how we can comp apply this to our lives. I try to think about three unique ways, what this might mean for someone sitting up there in that seat. And I came up with three. i think because Ezekiel 36, 37 exists, number one, I can release control over other people.
00:21:38
Speaker
I can let God be God. I can bring all of my hopes and desires for my children, for my spouse, for my friends, for my loved ones. I can bring all those to him who can carry them and handle them and process them and act accordingly. I don't have to be the one that steps in and saves people. He does that.
00:22:00
Speaker
But it's hard, isn't it? I mentioned parenting just a few weeks ago. Lindley and i took another kid off to college, an experience that many parents can testify about. is It's really hard. It's hard to explain to others who haven't done it how hard it is to push a bird out of the nest and say, I hope you have learned to fly by now.
00:22:20
Speaker
and In the back of my mind, the the questions that that were haunting me on that day are all the condemning ones. Did you have enough devotions with this young man? Did you do enough family devotions? And the answer that would be no.
00:22:35
Speaker
Family devotions have always been very hard in our family. We've never been very consistent. um Did you set an example for this young man? Did he see a person of integrity?
00:22:48
Speaker
The person who the joy of the Lord is your strength, did you model that for him every single day? the answer is no. Because unfortunately, I'm in the middle of sanctification too. So he had front row seats to watch me fail a lot.
00:23:01
Speaker
And it dawned on me that day as I'm dropping off my son that I was not enough for him. Because I could never be enough for him. But there is one who is enough for him because he who began a good work in him will carry it on to completion into the day of the Lord Jesus Christ. I don't have to worry about that.
00:23:18
Speaker
So whether I got an A minus or a D minus the week before he went off to college makes no difference. It's what God is going to do in that young man's life. And I have given him a foundation that he can build on. But isn't it still tempting to want to guilt him into doing the right things?
00:23:32
Speaker
I still like to take a good guilt jab once in a while. But my job now is to pray for him. I put in the bookstore and in the library three really great books on prayer. if If this is something that you struggle controlling people,
00:23:48
Speaker
The answer is to learn to rely more on prayer. And so I put one book in there, Ian Bounds, Power Through Prayer. That's really more for people like to preach and teach. But a book by Paul Miller called a Praying Life.
00:24:00
Speaker
I found it to be one of the most human, relatable books on prayer for those who really struggle to keep their mind focused during prayer. And then Pastor Steve wrote a book on prayer. um Pray like it matters. And I confessed to him I hadn't read it today.
00:24:15
Speaker
And I confessed my sins and he he healed me. Okay, so I'm going to read it. But it is also available in there and I'm sure it's great. But there are three books on prayer in the bookstore and library. Number two.
00:24:26
Speaker
Because Ezekiel 36 exists, I can invite other people into the messy moments of my life.
00:24:34
Speaker
If your life is chaotic, one of the things that God wants you to learn to do, reactionary, is to reach out to other Christians and say, I need help. It's very difficult to overcome our pride and admit we need help.
00:24:47
Speaker
So even this week in my moving disaster, I found a television but no power cord. And college football starts this Saturday. This is a crisis of epic proportion proportions.
00:24:59
Speaker
So I found the power cord, but then I realized I really don't wanna put this on the wall. i I have too much going on to figure out how to put this TV on the wall. And they've lost the legs to the TV, so what am I gonna do?
00:25:11
Speaker
So I heard about a couple of guys at Bellevue that are somewhat handy, and I rolled the dice, and they did a good job. They came over, and they helped me put the TVs on the wall, and it was so great. um Yeah, I guess we're we're clapping for handy people at Bellevue.
00:25:26
Speaker
My point is this. it was so hard for me as a man to call a couple of other men and say, will you come and bring your tools and do things for me?
00:25:38
Speaker
I read a story about a pastor's wife who was not wanting to have company one day because she didn't want a lady in her church see how messy her house was. She was not in the mood for visitors. She was tired and this lady was really strong. She wanted to drop by.
00:25:50
Speaker
And she wrote this, Hospitality before pride. I reminded myself dismally, determined. I welcomed the woman with warmth, invited her into the unsightly rooms and refused to embarrass her with apologies. I consciously let go of my pride.
00:26:05
Speaker
And her response amazed me. She said, I used to think you were perfect, but now I think we can be friends.
Community, Connection, and Genuine Faith
00:26:14
Speaker
This is how relationships work. It's the strangest thing. When we let other people into the mess of our lives, they feel a certain freedom to be themselves and to meet us in our need.
00:26:28
Speaker
But we have to swallow our pride when we feel overwhelmed and admit that we need help. Maybe for you today, It's a big step to let a brother or sister in Christ know that you're struggling, and you need some help, you could use some help.
00:26:41
Speaker
Finally, Ezekiel 37 teaches me this, I can trust that God will bring me back to life. The Bible is a book about eternal life. I had a professor in seminary that said, if you could summarize all the Bible in one word, what would it be? And everybody jumped in said, love, love is the greatest thing. And there were other words tossed out. but He said, I think it's life.
00:26:57
Speaker
Because Jesus came to bring one main thing. He came to bring us eternal what? Life. The Bible is not a book just about how to get better at doing your life. It's a book about having life after your life is done.
00:27:10
Speaker
About eternal life. And he was clear in his intention. And yet what Ezekiel saw was God's ability not just to preach the word of God, but this word would would would bring dead people to life.
00:27:22
Speaker
And if you're here and you've never received salvation through Jesus Christ or what he did on the cross, no one can force you into the kingdom of God. You have to want to go there yourself.
00:27:34
Speaker
The late Eugene Peterson tells a story in his memoir, one of my favorite evangelism stories. He was bullied as a child, and this boy named Garrison liked to catch him on the way home and rough him up a little bit. And he tells about the terror he felt every day on the way home, that he'd finally just had enough. And these are his words.
00:27:51
Speaker
Something happened to me one day, unexpectedly. i was with my neighborhood friends one day when Garrison caught up with us and started in on me. And that's when it happened. Totally uncalculated, totally out of character. Something snapped in me and I grabbed Garrison.
00:28:05
Speaker
To my surprise in his, I realized I was stronger than he was. I wrestled him to the ground. I sat on his chest and pinned his arms to the ground with my knees. I couldn't believe it. He was helpless under me at my mercy. It was too good to be true. I hit him in the face with my fists. It felt good and my friends cheered me on.
00:28:23
Speaker
I said to Garrison, say uncle.
00:28:27
Speaker
He wouldn't say it. I hit him again. More cheering. Now my audience was really bringing out the best of me and my Christian training kicked in. I said, say I believe in Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior.
00:28:40
Speaker
He wouldn't say it. I hit him again. More cheering. Say it. I believe Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior. And he said it. Garrison Johns was my first Christian convert.
00:28:53
Speaker
And he adds this, many years later when my wife and I visit my hometown, I like to drive down 4th Street and point out to her the site of Garrison's conversion experience. I share this story in jest because we all know how silly it is to think that we can force any human being to just say it.
00:29:14
Speaker
I believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. There's only one person that can really get inside there and cause you to want to say that, and it's the Holy Spirit. And whenever I preach, I always want to believe that there's at least one that the Father has drawn into the room that has never really said it and meant it.
00:29:36
Speaker
Because the reason God brings you to church is to remind you that it's only through him that you have life in this life and life in the life to come.