Two summers ago I read Ezekiel and it was probably the most depressing book of the Bible I've ever read. There was so much destruction and it was all at the hand of God. His people had gotten so far away from what He wanted for them that He sent disaster after devastation after awesome display of destruction. It was a really hard book for me to get through because it was a side of God that I didn't want to see. I wanted God to be the God of grace and mercy, the God of love and forgiveness. I wanted to limit Him to His attributes that I find pleasing or attractive. After I'd gotten about a third of the way through the book I had to stop and question God. If He is the same yesterday, today, and forever then where was the grace, mercy, love, and forgiveness in Ezekiel's day? I asked Him to show me His heart for His people at that time, to let me see this destruction from His point of view. After that I started to feel God's heartbreak for His people and how His extreme love required extreme discipline. Towards the end of the book I was struck by how often He would say He'd do something, and "then they will know that I am the LORD." I started to underline it every time He'd say it. Then I forgot about it.
In church yesterday my pastor was preaching on God's holiness and he had a passage from Ezekiel. I saw a place that I'd underlined "then they will know that I am the LORD" and I remembered how I hadn't noticed it until the last few chapters of the book. So I made a note to myself to look on Bible gateway where it occurs in Ezekiel so that I could underline all of them. There are variations of this statement (i.e. "then you will know that I am the LORD," "then all the inhabitants of Egypt will know that I am the LORD," "all flesh shall know that I am the LORD," "all the trees of the field shall know that I am the LORD," etc.) all over the book. God says it over 70 times! The book only has 48 chapters. God did all of this to prove that He is indeed the Lord God and that He deserves our love, obedience, and our everything.
So here's what I've been thinking about since I finished marking up the book of Ezekiel: how often has God proved Himself in my own life? Countless. So then why is it so hard for me to trust Him? I know that He's God and I know that He can do anything and I know that the only way for my life to mean anything is for me to give up my will, my power, my dreams, my grudges, and my hurts and let Him take over. I know all of this. But when it comes down to acting upon this knowledge, I find it really hard to believe that it's all true. So yeah, I can read Ezekiel and shake my head at the Israelites for their ignorance, for their refusal to return to God and let Him take over. I mean, c'mon, it's so obvious that He's God and they're really still doing whatever they want to do? Dumb!! But I'm in the same boat as them. Why is it so hard to believe something that you know is true? Maybe God shouldn't have said "then they will know that I am the LORD," maybe He should have said "then they will believe and act like I am the LORD."
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