Be Restored

I was thinking today about restoration. We talk about God's restoration, and think about the years, the children, the money, or the health we want restored. And that’s right and that’s good.

But then I began thinking about the other things we lose that aren’t as obvious or as tangible. Jesus was the innocent lamb. We are told we must enter the Kingdom as a little child—a picture of innocence.

Yet so early, that innocence begins getting twisted. The humanism that is running rampant in our society perverts even the concept of love—that love is getting what you want when you want it. Our picture of service is one of humiliation and degradation. Sacrifice is a bad word, and giving is some kind of exceptional gifting for just a few.

So when we come to God, we are on an entirely different page than he is. We don’t understand Jesus' life, or how and why he lived as he did. And when we talk to him about restoring what we have lost and he begins to deal with our ideas of these basic concepts, we start backing up.

When he begins to show us what needs to change, when he digs deep to reveal how and where it got twisted, we think, “Surely this can’t be God! This isn’t comfortable, this is ugly, surely he doesn’t want to look at that.”

God is a God of restoration. But in Jeremiah 1:10, God talks about uprooting, tearing down, destroying and overthrowing, then building and planting.

So maybe you’re like me, and still in the process of God uprooting and destroying things. It’s not very comfortable, and sometimes I wonder if all the old stuff will ever be gone.

But I know that every time something is torn down, there’s more room for God to build. For everything that is uprooted, there is a place for him to plant something of himself.

And really, it’s not until I get these basic concepts straightened out that I’m going to be able to deal with the bigger stuff. I have to learn what it means to love before I can have real relationships. I have to understand God's way of giving to handle more income. I have to know what it really means to serve and sacrifice to be able to properly use anything he gives me.

So I open myself up, tell him there’s nothing in me, my past, or my present that he can’t reveal and deal with—and watch the restoration begin.