Can These Bones Live? Hope for Our Unsaved Loved Ones

“Son of man, can these bones live?” 

To Ezekiel, surrounded by a valley of dried bones, God’s question seemed . . . absurd. 

Heart-wrenching and hopeless. 

Maybe even cruel. 

I’ve stood at the bedside and caskets of dead loved ones. If anyone had asked me, “Can these bones live?” I would have answered as Mary did long ago, “‘I know he will rise again in the resurrection,’ But not now. He’s dead” (John 11:24). 

Ezekiel wasn’t sitting beside a deceased loved one or standing by the coffin of someone who had passed away. He was surrounded by a vast expanse of beyond-dead bones—bones that had laid there so long they were one footfall away from dust. And yet God asked, “Can these bones live?” 

Ezekiel, faith-filled prophet and priest that he was, answered God’s question in a way that defied the obvious and left room for a miracle. 

“Sovereign Lord, you alone know” (Ezekiel 37:3). 

How many times have you looked at a loved one or a friend and seen what Ezekiel saw—a valley of dry bones? Not physical bones like those that littered the plains of Ezekiel’s vision, but spiritual ones? Dry bones that housed a soul running hard away from God and in danger of disintegrating when the next crisis came? 

How often have you cried over, prayed for, begged, and witnessed to someone you love who seemed determined to march straight into eternity separated from God? How many times have you stopped praying, thinking there was no hope, only to shoulder the prayer burden again, clinging to the knowledge that it’s not God’s will that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance? 

With rare exception, physical resurrection belongs to the realm of the miraculous, but spiritual resurrections happen all the time. 

The apostle Paul was one. His spiritual bones, though zealous and religious, were deader than dead. “For you have heard of my previous way of life in Judaism, how intensely I persecuted the church of God and tried to destroy it” (Galatians 1:13-14). 

Yet the God he blasphemed called his name. Rebuked him for his sin. Filled him with faith. And breathed spiritual life into his soul. Paul passed from death to life in a transformation so glorious he never stopped talking about it. 

Unlike Paul, I had no religious cloak to cover my spiritually dry bones. I was lost without pretense or hope. I couldn’t claim, as he did, that I was seeking to please God. I was seeking to please myself. I was number one, and there was no number two. 

Yet, to borrow from Paul’s testimony in Galatians 1:15, God, “set me apart from my mother’s womb and called me by his grace.” 

God’s been breathing life into dry bones for millennia. He began with Adam. Then He plucked Abraham out of the pagan land of the Chaldees, and made of him a great nation. 

He chose David from the sheep folds and transformed him into a man after his own heart. He plucked Josiah, a tiny boy of eight, and Methuselah, an aged man of centuries and made them compatriots in the vast army of believers. 

He’s summoned into life the dry bones of princesses and prostitutes, drug addicts and doctors. No heart is too hard, and no sin too great for God’s breath to resurrect. Over and over again I’ve seen him replace hearts of stone with hearts of flesh, transforming haters of God into lovers of God. 

If someone you care about looks like a pile of spiritually dry bones, and you wonder if they could ever live, I invite you to stand in the valley with Elijah. Lift your eyes from the dead bones to the living Savior and say in faith and hope, “Sovereign Lord, you alone know.” 

“And as I was prophesying, there was a noise, a rattling sound, and the bones came together, bone to bone. I looked, and tendons and flesh appeared on them and skin covered them, but there was no breath in them. 

“Then he said to me, ‘Prophesy.’ So I prophesied as he commanded me, and breath entered them; they came to life and stood up on their feet—a vast army” (Ezekiel 37:7-10). 

Unlike Elijah, we can’t command spiritual life into anyone, but we can ask God to work. 

I invite you today—will you join me, in faith and trust, and invite the Lord God to breathe life into our loved ones’ souls? May we live to see God raise up a vast army of Jesus followers from the dry bones of those we love, for their good, and for His glory. Amen. 

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