Welcome to Redeem the Commute. I’m Ryan, your host for this daily challenge. It’s Thursday, the day we try to apply and live out what we’ve learned this week from the Bible. This week we’ve been studying

I asked yesterday what needed to happen to God’s people for them to experience God’s kingdom as described in this passage.

Israel needed cleansing, and saving, from their sins.  That’s how God will restore them to their land, their identity as a nation.  And in so doing, he will write a new covenant on their hearts like Jeremiah described, and inhabit them with his Holy Spirit.

This is all the kind of language used about Jesus.  He saved the world.  He cleansed people of their sins.  He was the messiah, the king they always needed, he was the new covenant.

Jesus is the turning point for Israel – this wasn’t just about land and temples, it was about their salvation from sin.  God was telling them what he would do in and through Jesus a few hundred years later.

He was also telling us what he would do for every human on earth, when he died on the cross, and then rose to new life again.

God can breathe new life into the dead bones of our lives, and Jesus was the living proof.  But he was meant to be the first, not the last.  Because of sin, our lives end in death.  God did it for Jesus, so we could follow him through death and into new life as well.

This is a reality for us when his kingdom comes, when the faithful are raised from the dead to live in his kingdom like Ezekiel described.

But it’s also a reality we should live today.  Our lives can feel dry, dead and broken like those bones.  But the same God who can raise us from literal death, can breathe his holy spirit into us today, and live and worth through us even before death.

Why so many people say their life was empty until they met Jesus!

Challenge: What areas of your life feel dry, dead and broken?  Ask the Holy Spirit to breathe new life into this, and picture it in your mind as you pray..