She stopped speaking about a year ago and nobody noticed, because she never stopped attending.
That is the thing about this particular drought. It is invisible. She is there. She helps. She is one of the people you can ring on a Saturday. What has gone is the speaking: she does not pray out loud any more, and she does not say anything over her own life, and when somebody asks her to agree with them about something she says of course and means it and does not open her mouth.
If you asked her why, she would give you an answer that sounds like integrity, and I want to take it seriously because it is nearly right.
She would say: I am not going to say words I do not have anything behind. There is nothing alive in me at the moment. Speaking out of that would be noise, and I have heard enough noise, and I would rather be quiet and honest than loud and hollow.
I respect that more than I can say, and I have watched it dry a woman out for a year.
Because here is what actually happens in a drought like that. Silence does not preserve integrity. It preserves the drought. Nothing is going to stir in a place where nothing is being said over it, and so the condition she is waiting to have lifted is being maintained by the very thing she is doing out of honesty.
She is waiting for the valley to look alive before she will speak to it.
That is you with your mouth shut.
You've decided, honourably, that you will not say anything you cannot feel. And the silence has gone on long enough now that it has become the weather, and you are waiting for something to stir in a place where nothing has been spoken for a year.
God tells him to speak to the driest thing in the valley
Ezekiel is set down in the middle of a valley of bones, and the text is careful to tell you they were very dry, which is the writer's way of saying there was nothing to work with at all.
And then look at the instruction.
Again he said unto me, Prophesy upon these bones, and say unto them, O ye dry bones, hear the word of the LORD. Thus saith the Lord GOD unto these bones; Behold, I will cause breath to enter into you, and ye shall live.Ezekiel 37:4-5
Prophesy upon these bones. Speak. To bones. Before anything has happened. That is the order, and it is not negotiable in the passage: God does not breathe first and then invite comment. He tells a man to open his mouth over a valley of dry bone, and the breath arrives afterwards.
You are able to speak over a dry place before it stirs, and the speaking is what God asked for first, and I am not making this easy: Ezekiel 37:4 puts the command in writing before any movement, and it is the Holy Spirit rather than my volume who can get that into a woman who has been quiet a year.
Now, notice what Ezekiel is actually told to say. Hear the word of the LORD. He is not told to say something out of his own supply. He has no supply; he is standing in a valley of bones and he is as dry as they are. What he is told to do is repeat what God has already said, over a place that shows no sign of it.
That is the difference between speaking hollow and speaking honest, and it is the whole answer to your objection. Hollow is claiming a feeling you do not have. Honest is saying what God said, out loud, while stating plainly that nothing has stirred.
You have something true to say that does not require anything alive in you to say it, which is written into what Ezekiel was told to say rather than into my encouragement, with the Spirit of God able to open a mouth that a year of integrity has kept shut.
I come from a tradition that makes noise, and I will tell you honestly that not all of it is full. But I have never once seen a dry place come up in a silent room, and I have seen a great many come up in rooms where somebody kept saying the true thing before there was any evidence for it.
This is yours to say this afternoon, over a valley with nothing moving in it, because Scripture puts the prophesying before the breath, and the Holy Spirit is the one who does the breathing rather than waiting for you to feel it first.
Open your mouth.
Not to claim a feeling. Not to manufacture heat. To say what God has already said, over a place that shows no sign of it, exactly as a man was told to do in a valley of dry bone with nothing at all to work with.
Your silence has been honorable and it has also been the drought's best friend. Nothing was ever going to stir in a valley nobody was speaking over, and the year of quiet has not preserved your integrity, it has preserved the condition.
You are commanded to speak first and promised the breath after, and that order is God's rather than mine, because Ezekiel 37:4 comes before Ezekiel 37:5, and the Holy Spirit is the one who does the part you have been waiting on.
Say the true thing this afternoon into a room with nothing in it. That is what prophesying to the dry means.
Declare this over yourself
Say them out loud, in whatever voice today has left you, and a dry one is exactly right. The standing to say them is not something you work up to and it is not on loan from a full week: Christ is in you, and the authority in these words belongs to Him and has been given to you in Scripture, made living by the Holy Spirit rather than by what stirs while you speak. Jesus put the faith required at a mustard seed, which is His way of setting it under the line where anybody would trouble to measure, and then He said the part that carries: speak to the mountain. The mountain here is not the dryness. It is the silence you have been keeping over it. Speak to that. What He does with everything else He does in His own way, and the step is yours to take today.
- Silence I keep because nothing has stirred, you are not obedience, and in the name of Jesus I open my mouth anyway. Scripture has a man told to prophesy over dry bone before one thing moved, and the speaking came first in that valley and it comes first in mine.
- Fear of being loud and hollow, you have kept an honest woman quiet for a year and kept the drought exactly where it was. Scripture told him to say hear the word of the Lord, so what I have to say was never out of my own supply and you have nothing left to accuse me with.
- Lord God, You put the prophesying before the breath and You kept the breathing for Yourself, and I am standing one step further on than I was a minute ago with my mouth open. I thank You, because Your Holy Spirit does the breathing and Your word gave me the speaking, and I am received in the dry valley and not at the end of a stirring I was told to wait for.
Ezekiel 37:4-5
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