Father's Day: I've Got You • Ps Enzo & Chris Maisano

Sep 05, 2026

Devotional

Day 1: Dry Bones Rattling in the Valley of Despair

A valley of scattered, sun-bleached bones stretches endlessly. Death’s finality seems undeniable. Yet God asks the unthinkable: “Can these bones live?” The question isn’t about possibility but perspective. In moments where addiction, failure, or shame choke hope, God sees an army waiting to rise. He invites us to name the dry places in our lives—not to deny their reality, but to confront them with divine vision. What looks like a graveyard to us is a canvas for resurrection to Him. [02:38]

Then he said to me, “Prophesy over these bones, and say to them, O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. Thus says the Lord God to these bones: Behold, I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. And I will lay sinews upon you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live, and you shall know that I am the Lord.”
(Ezekiel 37:4-6, ESV)

Reflection: Where in your life have you accepted “dry bones” as permanent? How might speaking God’s words over that area shift your perspective?

Day 2: Singing “Bring Him Home” in the Darkest Night

A father weeps in his driveway, begging heaven for his son. No polished prayer, just raw ache set to borrowed lyrics: “Lord, bring him home.” When words fail, God gives songs. The cry isn’t a demand but a surrender—an admission that human strength has limits. In rehab rooms, prison cells, or lonely bedrooms, the Spirit hovers, turning desperate hums into holy intercession. Even when chains seem unbreakable, melody carries hope. [14:38]

I waited patiently for the Lord; he inclined to me and heard my cry. He drew me up from the pit of destruction, out of the miry bog, and set my feet upon a rock, making my steps secure. He put a new song in my mouth, a song of praise to our God.
(Psalm 40:1-3, ESV)

Reflection: What “song” has God given you in past trials? How could singing it again bring light to someone’s darkness today?

Day 3: Prophesying to Bones When Hope Feels Dead

Ezekiel stares at disconnected ribs and scattered skulls. God says, “Speak.” Not because the prophet has magic words, but because obedience unleashes divine breath. Parents whisper “you will live” over a son’s addiction. Friends declare “freedom” over a marriage in shambles. Prophecy isn’t positive thinking—it’s aligning our voice with Heaven’s reality. Every “it is finished” began with “let there be.” [21:12]

So I prophesied as I was commanded. And as I prophesied, there was a sound, and behold, a rattling, and the bones came together, bone to its bone. And I looked, and behold, there were sinews on them, and flesh had come upon them, and skin had covered them. But there was no breath in them.
(Ezekiel 37:7-8, ESV)

Reflection: What lifeless situation have you stopped speaking to? What single phrase might God want you to declare over it today?

Day 4: Finding Home in the Hospital for Broken People

Rehab smells of bleach and hope. A man used to nightclubs now sings off-key hymns in a chapel. The “perfect” church kid finds more grace here than in pews. God’s hospital isn’t for the whole—it’s where the addicted, the bankrupt, and the ashamed discover their wounds make them candidates for healing. Community isn’t a luxury; it’s the stretcher that carries us to Jesus. [28:46]

But when he came to himself, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired servants have more than enough bread, but I perish here with hunger! I will arise and go to my father, and I will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you.”’ And he arose and came to his father.
(Luke 15:17-20, ESV)

Reflection: Where have you avoided “broken” community? How might stepping into it unmask pride and deepen healing?

Day 5: Restoring Years the Locusts Have Eaten

Ten years clean. A son who once hid in shame now holds his own children. God doesn’t just forgive—He rewrites timelines. The enemy steals to make us mourn lost decades; Jesus repurposes pain to fuel purpose. What was meant to destroy becomes a sword in our hand. Restoration isn’t a return to “before” but a launch into “beyond.” [32:01]

I will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten, the hopper, the destroyer, and the cutter, my great army, which I sent among you. You shall eat in plenty and be satisfied, and praise the name of the Lord your God, who has dealt wondrously with you.
(Joel 2:25-26, ESV)

Reflection: What “lost years” do you need to surrender for God’s redemption? How might your story of restoration ignite hope in others?

Sermon Summary

Ezekiel 37 gives the frame for a family’s darkest days: God brings Ezekiel into a valley full of bones, completely dried out, and asks, “Can these bones live?” The valley tells the truth about despair. God does not ask Ezekiel to pretend the bones are not dead. Yet God sees more than death. God sees a people who can receive flesh, breath, life, and stand up as a great army.

The wound of rejection planted itself early in Chris’s life. Church and family gave him love, praise, and belonging, but school gave him “ditch Chris,” loneliness, and the feeling that faith was the thing making him different. The hunger to be accepted drove him to hide who he was, run with the wrong people, and build a double life. Success in design, money, big brands, nightclubs, cocaine, and hundreds of so called friends made life look awesome from the outside, but ice stripped everything away.

Despair hit the family when the truth came out: addiction, huge fines, warrants, and a son slipping further away. God met that collapse with the question from Ezekiel and with a simple song that became a prayer for years: “Bring him home.” God called the family to face the reality without surrendering to what reality appeared to say. The gold in Chris had to be seen beneath the disappointment, lies, pain, and shame.

The word of God also had to be spoken. God could have raised the bones without Ezekiel, but God chose to put Ezekiel in the redemption story by giving him words to say. Prayer and prophecy were not hocus pocus or abracadabra. God’s word, spoken in faith, kept declaring life over a son who could barely see any life in himself.

Shame kept Chris looking through the rearview mirror at what he once had, until even he was playing “ditch Chris” on his own. God heard a desperate prayer in a dingy room and led him into rehab, a hospital for broken people. The worship, Scripture, and steady work of the Holy Spirit brought him to surrender his life to Jesus. God restored what addiction had ruined: freedom, family, calling, marriage, fatherhood, and a life serving the kingdom.

The Father still says, “Come home,” to prodigals, to the brokenhearted praying for them, and to every person who has wandered down a dark path. God remains the rescuer, restorer, and rebuilder.

Key Takeaways

1. See the gold beneath the ruins God does not ask people to deny the terrible reality in front of them. God asks them to see that reality through His eyes, where dry bones are not beyond His breath and a broken child is not beyond His reach. Faith makes room for grief while refusing to make grief the final word. [16:58]
2. Speak God’s words into darkness God gave Ezekiel words to speak because God wanted him involved in the redemption story. Prayer is not a way of controlling outcomes, but it is a way of standing with God’s promise when human strength has run out. The word and the breath of the Holy Spirit bring life where people cannot yet see change. [21:12]
3. Shame makes people hide from love Chris did not push his family away because he did not need them. Shame convinced him that being fully known would mean being finally rejected. The Father’s love breaks that lie by receiving people not after they clean themselves up, but when they finally come home. [23:33]
4. God restores more than survival The family initially hoped only for freedom from drugs and a return to Jesus. God brought restoration that reached into relationships, calling, marriage, fatherhood, creativity, and service. The years the locusts have eaten do not limit the kind of future God can build.

## [32:01]

Youtube Chapters

[00:00] - Welcome
[00:26] - A Story of Addiction and Hope
[00:48] - Can These Bones Live?
[01:49] - Hope in a Dark Place
[05:04] - Chris’s Early Family Life
[07:06] - Rejection and the Double Life
[09:15] - Success, Nightclubs, and Cocaine
[11:20] - Ice Addiction Takes Everything
[12:25] - A Family Learns the Truth
[15:58] - Seeing What God Sees
[20:52] - Speaking What God Says
[26:32] - The Decision to Enter Rehab
[28:09] - God Meets Chris in Rehab
[30:36] - Surrendering Life to Jesus
[32:49] - Rescuer, Restorer, and Rebuilder
[35:15] - Prayer for Prodigals to Come Home
[36:43] - The Father’s Invitation to Return

Bible Study Guide

Bible Reading

Ezekiel 37:1-10
“The hand of the Lord was upon me, and he brought me out in the Spirit of the Lord and set me down in the middle of the valley; it was full of bones. And he led me around among them, and behold, there were very many on the surface of the valley, and behold, they were very dry. And he said to me, ‘Son of man, can these bones live?’ And I answered, ‘O Lord God, you know.’ Then he said to me, ‘Prophesy over these bones, and say to them, O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. Thus says the Lord God to these bones: Behold, I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. And I will lay sinews upon you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live, and you shall know that I am the Lord.’ So I prophesied as I was commanded. And as I prophesied, there was a sound, and behold, a rattling, and the bones came together, bone to its bone. And I looked, and behold, there were sinews on them, and flesh had come upon them, and skin had covered them. But there was no breath in them. Then he said to me, ‘Prophesy to the breath; prophesy, son of man, and say to the breath, Thus says the Lord God: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe on these slain, that they may live.’ So I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived and stood on their feet, an exceedingly great army.” [02:22]

Joel 2:25
“I will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten, the hopper, the destroyer, and the cutter, my great army, which I sent among you.” [32:13]

Isaiah 43:18-19
“Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old. Behold, I am doing a

Sermon Clips

53s

#FamilyRestored

“God has restored the relationship I had left I had left in absolute ruins with my family. They're sitting right here. I get to share the platform today with the greatest dad I have, and no, the only dad I have. But on top of that, god has blessed me with the most beautiful wife, Rachel, who is way out of my league. If there's a picture behind me, you can see that. And I now get to be the father of two of the most amazing boys, Luca and Noah. I am living proof that no matter where you find yourself, our God is a rescuer Yes. Yes. A restorer Yes. Yes. And a rebuilder.”

36s

#ComeHomeToJesus

“And maybe today you've come into church and you're a guest and you've never given your life to Jesus or maybe you did in the past, but you've wandered away. The father's saying, come home, please. Come home. His arms are open wide. No matter what you've done, no matter how bad you've been, no matter how dark path was, there's a light that's shining in front of you right now. The father's saying, come home. Say yes to Jesus.”

50s

#WordsHavePower

“He'll give you the words when you don't know what to pray, when you don't know what to sing, when you don't know what to say anymore. He'll give you the words, and we started to prophesy over Chris that his life would change. You know, saying the word is not hocus pocus or abracadabra. We know that life or death and death are in the power of the tongue, and our words have a creative power when they come from God. And so we started to prophesy over Chris, and, you know, sometimes he'd shrug it off. Sometimes he'd be in bed for hours on end, and I'd go to the end of his bed, and I would prophesy, you will come back to life. God will bring you back. God will bring you home. But somehow it got worse.”

60s

#SurrenderFromShame

“And so I pushed them away. The more they tried to help, the more they reached out to me, the more I would hide from them. Out of shame, I would ignore them as much as I could, avoid them as much as I could. And I'd be agitated. I'd be aggressive whenever I did speak to them. Whenever they'd ask me what's wrong, I would push them away. And, again, I'd avoid them for weeks at a time. It had gotten so bad that I remember one night falling to my knees in a dingy room somewhere and just sobbing, crying, and praying for the first time in a very long time. A really simple prayer. God, if you're real, you're gonna have to do something because I don't wanna live like this anymore. knew my life would end if I kept living the way I was.”

39s

#FreedomThroughFaith

“And from that day, I went back to rehab. I opened a bible, and I said, prayed a really simple prayer. God, if you're real, you're gonna have to talk to me. I kept praying, God, you're real. I know God's real now, but at the time, I wasn't so sure. And he really did a work in me. I could not put the bible down, and he started to transform me from the inside out. And after twelve months, I walked out of that place a whole man and drug free.”

30s

#HeartForProdigals

“I I have a real heart for the prodigals. The ones that have strayed, and I know that in this room, there's people that are brokenhearted because their kids are away from God, and maybe they were in the church at some stage, but they've wandered away. I'm gonna pray for you that the father brings them home, that they'll come to their senses and that the father brings them home.”

49s

#SeeWhatGodSees

“You know, can these bones live? And I looked at that scripture over and over. I came to the conclusion that the answer to your problem, the answer to your dry bones, the answer to our situation is, firstly, you need to see what God sees. Because when you're in the middle of it and you see what you're seeing, it is death. It is horrid. It is life sapping. Nothing is funny anymore. And so God says, god Ezekiel saw a valley full of dry bones. There was no life in them, but God saw something else. Ezekiel saw reality.”

57s

#DiscipleshipSaves

“God did a miracle in that he put godly people around us, and we formed a a connect group in our church that is still going to this day. Beautiful people like pastor Paul and Joe, pastor Melinda and John, other friends, Rob and Ellie Palmer became our lifeline and prayed for us and carried us through that time. Now let me sidetrack and say to you, if you're a Christian and you're planted in this church and you're not part of a discipleship group, let me say succinctly to you. You're a disaster waiting to happen. I'll just leave it with you because they carried us. They prophesied to us. They cried with us. They advised us. They stood with us. They stood with Chris, and now they're part of the redemption story. So you have to see. Amen.”

61s

#HeartSoftenedInChapel

“I didn't know it yet, but God had heard my prayer in that dingy room. And he'd heard the prayers of the people that were praying for me. And slowly, he began to do a work in me. Rehab has a very rigid kind of structure and program to it, and you kind of have these set days. But every Wednesday, we would have a mini chapel service where 40 guys would walk into a room, and we would sing old songs on broken instruments very out of tune and have a little service with the guys. And I remember sitting there, and tears would stream down my face, and I couldn't explain why. It kinda felt like home, felt like my childhood, felt like the days when we would go to church as a family. And God slowly softened my heart in that place as the big lights began to turn on.”

42s

#DrugsRuinLives

“Was at that time I was introduced to ICE. Within weeks, I spent thousands of dollars. Within within a couple of months, I spent tens of thousands of dollars. Beyond that, I started to lose everything, not to mention all my best and closest friends. I pushed them completely away. I pushed my family away. Any good or positive influence, I pushed away, and I lost everything. When people tell you drugs ruin your life, take their word for it and mine. They really ruin your life.”

34s

#ServingTheKingdom

“That was almost ten years ago. I went on to do bible college. I then went on to work at a small church, you might have heard of it, called Hillsong as their global art director. I now work in an organization called Alpha, where we get to serve the church globally in their mission to go and make disciples and help people explore faith and come to know Jesus. And it is an honor and a privilege to be able to serve the kingdom.”

34s

#HospitalForTheBroken

“But it wasn't like that at all. We're in the middle of the Blue Mountains in Sydney where I live now, and it was this beautiful place. I don't wanna say magical because that's not what it was, but it was it was like the Holy Spirit just hovered over that place. And the guys there, they came from different walks of life, but they they were happy. There was there was joy in them. In a lot of ways, it was a hospital for broken people, much like a church, actually.”

55s

#AfraidToBeKnown

“I was so caught up in the shame of my addiction, but I had never set out to hurt anyone else. I was desperate to hide who I was and who I had become because I wanted honestly to make my family proud. I don't know anyone who doesn't wanna make people proud, and I certainly did. The last thing I wanted was my family to know that I'd been up for weeks on end, high on ice, living in cars and in an office or sleeping in hotel rooms from, hopping from place to place, awake for days, weeks at a time, sometimes seven days without sleep. And so I would avoid them as much as I could because I had convinced myself that if they knew me, if they knew the real me, they wouldn't love me anymore.”

48s

#EverydayCocaine

“I started doing cocaine at the club on Fridays. Fridays turning to Saturdays, Saturdays turning to Sundays, Sundays, Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays. I did cocaine every day. I would do cocaine to work on creative pitches, and it felt extremely socially acceptable. It felt like everyone was doing it. If you read the paper, all the celebrities do it. It's it can't be that bad. It's just cocaine. And I'd tell anyone give it getting in the way of my lifestyle that I was simply busy or traveling for work. And I'd push every good or positive influence away and stop eventually stop going to church.”

36s

#SpeakLifeLikeEzekiel

“God could have easily spoken and those bones would have come back to life. Why did he want Ezekiel to speak? This is the creator of the universe who says a word and light happens. The universe happens. God could have made that change, but the fact is that God wants to use you in the redemption story to be part of it and say God's word so that you are part of the solution. So he gave the words for Ezekiel to say, and he prophesied.”

Ask a question about this sermon

LIFE Melbourne This sermon · AI assistant

What does Ezekiel's valley of dry bones symbolize?

How should Christians prophesy life into despairing situations?

What role do community groups play in restoration?