From chapter one

Prophesying to the Bones

We are not living in a time just like any other. There is an urgency in the air. Like Ezekiel, we are called to prophetic obedience so that the peoples can receive the promise of the Spirit (Galatians 3:13–14, Acts 1:8). God is not primarily waiting for us to bring gentle, incremental improvements to the surrounding world in our spare time. He is summoning us to see his global vision with him and to begin to act and prophesy in the Spirit's power.

Look around at the world in your generation. So much evidence of God's design and creativity is visible in the peoples of the world; yet there is also so much hatred, so much anger, so much destruction, and so much death. Hopeless ranks of people appear already dead inside as they file toward their graves. They have tremendous significance and value; yet they are also fully compromised by selfishness, injustice, and sin.

We who follow Christ sometimes resemble an army of dry bones. We often fail to see or care about the peoples of the world. Something in us needs to be called back to life. We need a renewed infilling of the divine breath so that we too may live, accepting our potent role in his mission. How else can our generation find God and inherit his gift of a transformed life? Jesus' followers inherit an astonishing potential to advance his mission, and yet so many of us don't realize it.

Something in us needs to be called back to life.

I pray that you will see your God-given potential in these pages. Much of what you see will be surprising, unnerving, and unforgettable. It is sobering to look at our world through the worldview of God. A journey into God's mission can reveal just how often we have resisted our calling to bless all nations and how slow we are to obey when the Spirit urges us to prophesy to the bones and to the breath.

There are a lot of dead bones, and they are very dry. Yet God is still calling us to participate in his mission, and he is the God who brings dry bones to life. Those who care to listen can still hear the Spirit whispering his quiet question in their ear, “My child, can these bones live?”