Have you ever said (or thought), “This isn’t how it’s supposed to be!”?

This content is from OPEN, a new online resource that serves as a guided journey through the Bible.

Broken Dreams

Ezekiel had spent his whole life preparing for ministry in the temple of God, but at age twenty-five, in the middle of his training, war broke out and he was carted off to the Chebar canal. A priest’s thirtieth birthday was the day on which his ministry in the temple would begin, and if Ezekiel had been back home, it would have been a great day of celebration.

But what can a new priest do if he is seven hundred miles away from the temple?

Ezekiel was a man with crushed hopes and shattered dreams. Circumstances seemed to have blocked his path to ministry, and he found himself among a group of confused and discouraged people in a backwater near Babylon. Perhaps you can relate to Ezekiel. Maybe you had high hopes and big dreams, and you never imagined you would be where you are today.

If God Moves You

Ezekiel saw the glory of God when he was thirty years old. He was a gifted man in the prime of life, yet he found himself relegated to an obscure backwater in Babylon. His prospects seemed bleak, his personal hopes for the future shattered. Maybe you have felt like that. Something happened in your life and you find yourself saying, This isn’t how it was supposed to be!

Or perhaps God has taken you from a place where you were happy and moved you somewhere else. But God’s glory and His blessing are not limited to one place. If God moves you on, His presence will go with you. He says, “I will never leave you nor forsake you” (Hebrews 13:5).

There is no place on earth where His presence cannot go.

The Glory of Jesus

Seventy years after Ezekiel’s first vision of God’s Glory, a community of exiles returned to Jerusalem to rebuild the city and the temple. And about five hundred years after that, Jesus Christ was born. He is “the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature” (Hebrews 1:3). The Lord of glory came down among us, and in Jesus Christ, the glory of God came to His temple.

But the people did not want Him, so the glory of God left Jerusalem, not on a flying platform, but carrying a cross. The Glory appeared and the Glory departed, but thank God, the Glory will return.

Jesus Christ rose from the dead and one day He will return in power and glory. When He does, we will see Him, we will be like Him, and we will enjoy Him forever.

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