Restoration
That word brings up lots of thoughts to me. I’ve watched my parents restore old beat-up and run-down furniture and make it useful and pretty again. I’ve seen homes restored to better than new condition. I’ve seen lives restored from complete brokenness to a beautiful place.
The Restoration process is often time-consuming and tedious work. Whether I’m rebuilding a piece of furniture or a house. It takes time to do restoration right. The same is true with our lives – restoration takes time and is often tedious work. I believe that much of life is lived out in the details. We see and notice the big events, but miss the detail that made the big event happen. Sometimes we see the finished product of restoration and don’t realize the depth and the amount of work that went into that project.
God is restoring His people. He does it differently. Check this out…
24 “‘I will take you from the nations and gather you out of all the lands and bring you back into your own land. 25 Then I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean. I will cleanse you from all your uncleanness and your idols. 26 Also, I will teach you to respect me completely, and I will put a new way of thinking inside you. I will take out the stubborn hearts of stone from your bodies, and I will give you obedient hearts of flesh. 27 I will put my Spirit inside you and help you live by my rules and carefully obey my laws. 28 You will live in the land I gave to your ancestors, and you will be my people, and I will be your God. (Ezekiel 36:24-28 NCV)I love the picture of God putting a new heart inside. He’s basically rebuilding His people from the inside out. I have been affirmed many times over that the Lord starts in the heart with His rebuilding process and He works deep inside my spirit – filling me with His Spirit and the outward results will follow that inside-the-heart detail work.
Over the years of my life, I have had many devastating events take place, from job loss, to divorce, to cancer – very painful and life-shattering events. The Lord did some things inside my heart every time. The end result of all of those places of brokenness was restoration beyond what I could have hoped for or imagined. I’m simply choosing to walk with Him through everything. He is the ONLY ONE WHO can help me make sense of everything and show me the way to walk through it. He is the ONLY ONE WHO restores completely.
Pressing On! Dwayne