MEN OF VALOUR: THE RISING OF A VAST ARMY – PART 5

Part 5 – Allow the Lord to Open your Grave

“Behold, O my people, I will open your graves, and cause you to come up from your graves, and bring you into the land of Israel. I will put my Spirit in you, and you shall live…” (Ezekiel 37: 12, 14)

A graveyard is a place of lifeless, inactive dead people. Anybody in the graveyard has ceased from contributing meaningfully to the affair of the people on earth. The graveyard is a place of decay. Every human being by birth is dead and confined in a grave. There is no way he could be useful to God.

Similarly, sin brings a man to the place of decay. Therefore, there must be an end to the old natural life before a man could stand and serve in God’s army. There must be a born-again experience. The natural life is not only weak; it is actually dead. There must be a resurrection of a new life before an effective service could be ensured. Jesus said, unless a corn of wheat falls on the ground and die it remains alone and unprofitable (John 12:24). God’s army are those who are dead to sin and the world’s pleasures but are alive to God (1 Jn. 2:15-17). They are people whose only purpose in life is to please the Lord and shun every other distraction. For those who have experienced the new birth however, there must be a deliberate and genuine consecration for the release of the life of God.

Paul painted the picture clearly in 2 Timothy 2: 4, 20 thus: “No one engaged in warfare entangles himself with the affairs of this life, that he may please him who enlisted him as a soldier. But in a great house there are not only vessels of gold and silver, but also of wood and clay, some for honor and some for dishonor. Therefore, if anyone cleanses himself from the latter, he will be a vessel for honor, sanctified and useful for the master, prepare for every good work.”

Let me conclude with these fiery words by Leonard Ravehill: “God is looking for men; men who are honest, sound in all ramifications; men with conscience as steady as the needle to the pole; men who will stand for the truth if heaven totter and earth reels; men who can have courage without shouting it; men in whom the courage of everlasting life runs still, deep and strong; men who neither flag nor flinch; men who know their message and tell it; men who know their place and fill it; men who know their business and attend to it; men who will not lie, shirk or dodge; men who are not too lazy to work, not too proud to be  poor; men who are willing to eat only what they have honestly earned and wear only what they have genuinely paid for; men who are not ashamed to say “NO” with emphasis and who are not ashamed to say “I Can’t afford it” when they can’t indeed. Such is the army God is raising for this end time battle. Such are the men that can effect the needed change in this generation.”

May God find you and make you such a man in this generation and nation in Jesus’ name.

Therefore, go and burn for GOD!