When You've Done All You Can Do, God Is Not Done!

A substitute Sunday School teachers was upstairs struggling to open a combination lock on the supply cabinet for some supplies for her students. She had been told the combination but couldn’t remember it. She went and found her pastor to see if he could help. He went upstairs and began to turn the dial. After the first two numbers, he paused and then looked heavenward while his lips moved silently. Then he looked back to the lock, quickly turned to the final number, and opened the cabinet. The teacher was amazed and said, “Wow. I’m amazed at your faith, Pastor.” To which he responded, “It’s really nothing. The combination is on a piece of tape on the ceiling.”

Of course, the analogy is, when all else fails, look up. Christmas is a season of hope. And hope is a predominant theme in the Scriptures. Time after time, God shows up and works in miraculous, though sometimes mysterious ways.  To people whose situations seem hopeless, God moved on the scene and transforms their hopeless situation. It was in the midst of one of these hopeless situation that David declares in Psalm 42:5 “Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God....”

However, out of all the hopeless situations in the Bible where God moved into a downcast, disturbing situation, none appear more hopeless that the one Ezekiel finds himself in in Ezekiel 37. In chapter 37, Ezekiel is transported by the Spirit of the Lord to the middle of a valley. God wants to show him, and us,  how to have hope in a hopeless situation. In Verse 11, the words from this valley are: “Our bones are dried up and our hope is gone…” Their spirits were shriveled up inside them. Have you ever felt that way? Do you feel that way today? While this chapter is dealing specifically with God bringing the nation of Israel out of Babylon and putting them back in the land of Israel, there are at least four things that we learn from Ezekiel's experience that we should emulate when we feel hopeless. But before we explore anything we should do, let's emphasize the main point of Scripture...When you’ve done all you can do, God is not done! That is why we can "put our hope in God...."