Restore

Today at church something was said that has stuck with me. God wants to restore us as individuals and as a church but we have to be willing to get rid of the old stuff so God can do his new thing in us.

What caught me was the term restore. Restore means to bring back, reinstate, to repair/renovate, to return to an original condition. It does not mean to demolish and start over. There is a difference.

I think when we think of new chapters and God bringing something fresh, we assume it's time for demolition. That everything we know and love will be leveled and it's time to start over. And that is scary!

But that's not what restoration is about. When God wants to restore, we can rest in the fact that he sees and knows there are good bones to our house. That there is something strong to build upon. Yes, the walls may need to be tore out or the bathroom gutted, but the foundation stays the same. The essence of the house remains.

The struggle in the restoration is the number of layers of wallpaper that have to be pealed back. It's all the times we tried to cover up what we didn't like with another layer of what felt good or our preferences. All the while we were hiding the beauty of God's plan, the truth of His Word with what we thought was good for us. Restoration is about getting back to God's intentions. The bare bones in it's purest form, not manipulated by human opinion or experience.

The second struggle within restoration is our expectations/experiences. Since restoration is going back, we assume we know what God wants because we've been there before. We assume we can easily identify what needs to be removed to go back, and we depend on our efforts rather than listen for instruction from the restorer. But we have to remember it is our best intentions that brought us to a place where restoration was needed. We can never depend on ourselves and our experiences, but must intentionally go back to God's word, our ultimate authority.

God, I'm ready for restoration. Lead me, show me where I left your ways for my own, love me back to your best and help me become all you originally intended, without all the baggage that has tainted me.