Come Alive!
Remembering Who We Are
There is a moment in Lauren Daigle’s Come Alive that really gets me every time. It’s the line where the enemy whispers lies and leads the prodigals off as slaves.... one by one.
No one marches into chains with eyes wide open. People drift. They follow voices that promise relief, freedom, belonging, or safety. They wake up far from home, burdened by weights they never expected, their hearts hollowed out.
When that line hits, I see Ezekiel’s valley. I see bones scattered across a barren field, bleached white by endless sun, with no trace of the lives they once held. These aren’t rebels shaking fists at God. They’re prodigals who have forgotten who they are
“Our bones are dried up, our hope is lost; we are cut off completely.”
The words echo like a final breath, despair so deep it erases memory.
I feel it in my chest, this ache for a people who once breathed as God’s people and now lie reduced to dust, their identity worn away by time and exile.
Forgotten Identity
In Ezekiel 19, God makes it clear. These dry bones are the whole house of Israel. Not only Judah. Not a faithful remnant. The entire family.
They are scattered, exposed, and assimilated, lost among the heathen. Not bowing in pagan temples to stone idols, but dissolved into systems that consume identity. Cultures shaped by productivity, consumption, and survival, where lineage fades, stories dissolve and promises are dismissed as myths.
The bones speak first.
“Our hope is lost!”
The confession is the first step. Before resurrection, despair must be named. Before awakening, forgetfulness must be faced.
This is the prodigal’s far country, feeding pigs in a land not his own, starving for food he can’t touch. He didn’t begin by hating his father. He believed the lie that freedom meant separation, that autonomy was life.
Israel fell the same way. They weren’t dragged away in irons, but whispered to sleep.
The enemy doesnt roar. He murmurs.
- You are on your own.
- Belonging costs too much.
- Covenant is a chain.
- God is distant.
- Identity is yours to invent.
- You missed your chance.
- You are no different from the rest.
- Remembering only hurts.
- Authority always breaks you.
- Freedom is forgetting.
The lies sound reasonable. They feel like survival. And that’s why they enslave.
Babylon and the Heathen
Ezekiel’s heathen aren’t only ancient empires with foreign gods. Babylon is a system, a way of organizing the world that turns people into units, worth into output, rest into guilt and distraction into anesthesia.
Babylon doesn't demand open rebellion against God. It prefers you asleep.
In Babylon, identity becomes a commodity. People are defined by jobs, trauma, diagnoses, politics, desires. Lineage becomes entirely irrelevant. Covenant becomes merely symbolic. Memory becomes dangerous.
The idea that God is still gathering, still speaking, still restoring feels embarrassing, naive or threatening.
This is Israel’s sleep among the nations. Not in literal chains, but bound by calendars, algorithms, debt, screens and endless noise. Bones don't dry overnight. They wither slowly, subtly, until even longing for more feels inconvenient.
Prophesying to the Bones
God doesn’t begin with breath. He tells Ezekiel to speak.
“Prophesy to these bones.”
Truth comes first. Words are spoken. Bones rattle and come together. Sinews bind. Flesh appears. Bodies form.
But there is still no breath.
I find this detail haunting. It is possible to look alive and still be dead! Structure can return. Beliefs can return. Even community can return. Without the Spirit, it is still a shell.
This is where the lies thrive most easily, when people are almost whole, almost awake, and tempted to settle.
Then Ezekiel is commanded to prophesy again, this time to the wind, to the breath, to the Spirit, Ruach.
Ruach: Wind, Breath, Spirit, Presence
When Ezekiel is told to prophesy to the wind, the word used is ruach.
This word has multiple meanings. Ruach means wind. It means breath. It means spirit. The text doesn’t ask us to choose between them, because life itself doesnt arrive in pieces.
- Wind is invisible, yet unmistakable by its effects.
- Breath is intimate, internal, and necessary for life.
- Spirit is unseen, animating, and divine.
Israel doesn't live because the bones assemble correctly. They live because God breathes.
Here is something that deepened this for me, pointed out by friends who have spent time studying Hebrew.
In Hebrew, ruach is a feminine noun. When scripture speaks of the Spirit of God, Ruach Elohim, it uses the feminine directly. When scripture speaks of the presence of God dwelling with His people, it again reaches for feminine language. Later tradition would name this indwelling presence Shekhinah, a word used to convey God causing His presence to dwell among His people.
This isn’t a metaphor layered on later. It’s embedded in the language itself.
Another insight expands this even further. Joseph Smith taught that when God breathed into Adam, it was the breath of life. But when the same word ruach is applied to Eve, it should be translated lives, plural. Breath in Adam. Breath of lives in Eve.
Life multiplies where the feminine is present.
That is significant in Ezekiel’s valley.
Ruach doesn't arrive as force or command. It arrives as presence, as indwelling life, as breath that doesnt merely animate, but sustains, multiplies and restores. The same Spirit that hovered over the waters at creation, that breathed into Adam and Eve, that dwelled with Israel is summoned again to a field of bones.
Some traditions invite meditation on the letters themselves. Ruach is spelled רוּחַ.
- Resh (ר) can signify the head, the person, the beginning. Breath is not an impersonal energy. It moves toward persons. God breathes toward His people.
- Vav (ו) is a connector, a peg, something that joins. Ruach moves between heaven and earth, spirit and flesh, God and man. It connects what was separated.
- Chet (ח) carries the sense of enclosure or life force. It’s a guttural letter that can’t be spoken without engaging your own breath. You feel it in your body when you say it. Life here isn't abstract,l but embodied.
Taken together, the word itself mirrors the vision, a personal breath from God, connecting heaven and earth, dwelling within flesh, restoring life from the inside out.
This is why awakening cannot be manufactured. This is why argument cannot resurrect Israel. This is why Babylon -for all its power- cannot give life.
Babylon organizes bodies, assembles systems, keeps people busy and functioning, yet it cannot breathe.
Ruach comes only from God. And when it comes, it doesn't simply fix Israel. It remembers Israel. It restores the interior awareness that life has always depended on God’s nearness, rather than human strength.
The Stick of Judah and the Stick of Joseph
Only after the bones stir does the Lord introduce the two sticks.
Judah and Joseph are written and named, then joined. Writing does matter. Naming restores memory.
Judah represents the visible covenant line, scripture, kingship, and record. Joseph represents the scattered tribes, the lost inheritance, hidden among the nations.
Their joining isn't political. Its relational. It’s memory healed.
God says He will do it. He will gather. He will unite. Human hands hold the sticks, but God makes them one.
David My Servant
The chapter culminates with a name.
“David my servant shall be king over them; they shall all have one shepherd.”
I think we all understand that this isn’t ancient David resurrected, but a pattern. A shepherd king who gathers rather than conquers, serves rather than dominates, unites rather than scatters.
David isn’t defined by flawlessness. He’s defined by repentance, loyalty to God’s anointing, patience and a heart oriented toward God’s unity rather than personal power.
If God names someone David in our day, the name isnt a crown. It’s a burden, a call to stand obedient while God breathes life into His people, without claiming ownership of the breath.
Awakening and Remembering
Awakening is a sudden recognition that startles the mind into clarity.
When truth is spoken without coercion, something stirs. Bones rattle. Longings surface. Grief rises, Buried questions return.
This is Israel remembering itself among the nations.
The prodigal returns home drawn by the memory of his father’s house. Memory alone breaks the spell.
The Song
Come Alive undoes me through sorrow, never through spectacle.
Prodigals led off as slaves because they do not know who they are. That is Ezekiel’s tragedy, the prodigal’s exile, Israel’s Babylonian slumber.
Resurrection to life begins discreetly, with truth spoken.
To invite breath. To awaken memory. To let God dwell again among His people.
Dry bones aren’t failure. They"re a promise.
God specializes in resurrecting what looks finished, forgotten, and beyond repair. And when the sleepers finally rise, standing and breathing, the beauty is almost unbearable.
The Lord often speaks to me through music, and this song is what first drew me into a deeper study of Ezekiel. From the opening lines, it confronts the human perspective. Through the eyes of men, it appears we have lost, as we trace the path of prodigals wandering farther and farther from home, deceived one by one and led away as slaves. Yet almost immediately, the song counters that despair with truth: “But we know that You are God, Yours is the victory!”
Then this verse intensifies the plea: “Rescue every daughter, bring us back the wayward sons and by Your Spirit breathe upon them, show the world that You alone can save.” The valley of apparent defeat is transformed by God’s breath.. Ruach....
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