My heart nearly skipped a beat when my phone rang yesterday and I saw the caller ID. So much has happened lately—sickness, passing of relatives and friends, what news would I get this time? I nervously answered, “Hello.”

“And I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you in your own land. Then you shall know that I am the Lord; I have spoken, and I will do it, declares the Lord” (Ezekiel 37:14 ESV).

Live!

After my dad went home to be with the Lord at just 55 years of age, my sister Gwen, who was 27, committed to staying with our mother and taking care of her until Mom went to be with the Lord 35 years later. During those years she was faithful not only to Mom but to our home church in Tillery, N.C., assisting Mom as church secretary and record keeper. She was attentive to the needs of everyone who was sick in the extended family and the church. She battled breast cancer in her early 40s and again recently, but God has kept her! She attended weddings/receptions for all her sisters and brothers while remaining single and taking care of seemingly everyone else. It was not that she did not want to be married. It just did not seem possible because of circumstances or timing.

In July of this year, Gwen turned 75. It’s been a lifetime of serving God and His people for my sister. I am so thankful for my sister who took me to school with her one day when she was in the 5^th grade, and I was five. I remember that old wooden Andrew Jackson Elementary School with a potbelly heater to keep everyone warm in the winter. It would be torn down and replaced with a new more modernized building before I started school a year later. I have never forgotten my day in school with my sister, Gwen.

In Ezekiel 37, the prophet is taken by the Spirit into a valley filled with very dry human bones. He was told to prophesy to them and tell them to live! The bones obeyed the word of the Lord! They came together and God breathed life into them. Perhaps you have a dormant, dry, dead dream that you think will never be revived. Prophesy to that dead dream, that dry, dormant goal or vision, and tell it to live! Let God breathe life into your dream!

Oh, the phone call! It was my sister Gwen. She is getting married next month to one of the finest men I have ever known! I can hardly contain my excitement. It’s not too late to reach your goal! Speak life over your God-ordained vision! Step into it and LIVE! Do not allow the devil to confine you in a grave when God says live!

Focus Quote: “I will open your graves of exile and cause you to rise again.”

 –Ezekiel 37:12 NLT