Ezekiel 37:1-6
"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 you shall live, and you shall know that I am Lord."
We have now reached the point of our trip where the majority of students have gone home following the end of their final exam period which concluded on Friday. As I reflect on the last two weeks it has been amazing to see how God has worked to provide relationships for us with students through random conversations that have happened everywhere from the park to the student union. During this time we have been able to share the gospel with around 50 students from the universities, and in nearly all of these conversations we have found that many students have not every really heard anything about the person and work of Jesus, and have spent essentially no time thinking about their eternal realities. This is what led me to think of the above verse from Ezekiel. We have seen that the Lord has led us into a valley of dry bones, where people walk around dead in their sins and they are completely apathetic to their state.
So we find ourselves like Ezekiel in the midst of an entire people who are seemingly dead and to say that they may come to life through faith in Jesus Christ would require a miracle, and thankfully this is the business of our great God. We see further in this passage that God uses the prophesy of Ezekiel over these dry bones to bring them to life fulfilling his word, laying flesh on them and putting breath in them. This is now the hope that we have that the students whom we have shared the good news of our great lord Jesus Christ with, will see the hopelessness of atheism and agnosticism, and that God would use our speaking of his word to bring them to life. Therefore we ask that you join us in prayer that the lord would allow these students to see that the free gift of the water of life is so sweet that they cannot abstain from it, and that they cannot keep it to themselves but that they would want others to know about the great love that God has given us through his son.
Now as we move forward you may be wondering: with all of the students are gone so what are you going to do now? Well that is a great question. Over the next two weeks we will be spending a good amount traveling around the UK and Ireland in order to further investigate the spiritual climate and to evaluate universities in the surrounding area to determine the viability of sending a full time ministry team here to the UK. Therefore tomorrow (June 16th) we will be traveling to Birmingham which is about an hour south of Sheffield for the day in order to look at three campuses, and then on Thursday we will be heading off to Ireland for three days in order to investigate some campuses in Dublin and hopefully see some castles! So please pray that this time traveling would be fruitful and that the information that we receive will be useful, and that we would have safe travels to Ireland and Birmingham this week. Following these two weeks we will be spending our remaining time with international students, and we have already developed many relationships among these students so please pray that God would continue to provide opportunities to build relationships and that we would be bold with them.
Finally we want to take the opportunity as a team to recognize your work as supporters, through prayer and financial support people from all over the world have been able to hear about the glorious grace of the father through Jesus Christ. Know that your support has the opportunity to change an eternity for someone, and that is not a small thing, so know that not only are we grateful but that God sees your faithfulness. So may “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit.” (Philippians 4:23)
