The God Who Restores

“So I will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten, The crawling locust, The consuming locust, And the chewing locust, My great army which I sent among you” (Joel 2:25).

One of the things I’ve learned rather slowly in life is that for every one of my actions there are always corresponding reactions.  In general terms, we can say good decisions are usually met with positive results and wrong decisions usually result in negative results. Or more to the point of this passage by the prophet Joel, willful sin by God’s people will always be met with the focused attention of our Heavenly Father and His corresponding discipline for His children.

His discipline is meant to correct and bring back those who have strayed because He loves us enough not to just let us go our own way. He is after all the Great Shepherd of our souls. Our God is fully able to restore and bring back to usefulness and fruitfulness His people who will turn to Him regardless of their past disobedience.  He loves to meet our repentance with His restoration.  As the invitation by God illustrates in this same chapter:

“Yet even now,” declares the LORD, “return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning; and rend your hearts and not your garments. Return to the LORD your God, for He is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love; and He relents over disaster” (Joel 2:12-13).

Here’s a point or two about the God Who Restores:

First, our God is in the business of restoring broken hearts and broken dreams. It is His practice to mend that which is torn. He picks up the pieces of our dashed hopes and seals them back together again. He heals that which is has been injured  and He relieves the pain with soothing balms of love and compassion. He is the God of Compassion, Love and Restoration.

Secondly,  His method of operation is to make things even better than they were before. He has a track record of doing just that. You can check it out. Just ask Job or Joseph or most any follower of Jesus. God goes beyond what we would consider a gracious act of love. He restores. Restoring means more than simply putting things back where they were. He gives back what was lost and then some. Whether it was lost promises or plans, whether it was lost days or years, they are not lost, they are restored. He doesn’t rest until things are made more than right.

From my own experience, I know that He likes to more than make things like they were, He likes to make them even better.

As I reflect on my own life, I’ve seen God take my wrong turns (otherwise known as sins) and turn them into going the right direction with angelic escorts leading the way! Praise God!

Revived, Renewed And Restored,

God’s Best,

Dar

Time To Turn The Page

Turn, Turn, Turn (to Everything There is a Season) – The Byrds

In October of 1965 the American rock group, The Byrds recorded “Turn! Turn! Turn! (to Everything There is a Season).” The following month it became a No. 1 hit on the top 40 charts.

Almost all the words come from the book of Ecclesiastes 3:1-8. The words make clear that time itself will bring about inevitable changes to our lives. But, on the other hand some changes are not inevitable, they are a result of our own choices. These changes have the potential to be positive, both for ourselves and for others, but we must be willing to turn to them.

There are some things in life we can’t change. For instance we can’t change our own personal histories. We can’t reverse the rising of the Sun and go back in time for a few redos of our life events. For most of us, there are a few things that, given the chance, we would really like to do over.

The lack of taking many of my classes in high school very seriously sort of jumps out at me at the moment. But if I think about wrong decisions in school, I have to be honest and say it all started in kindergarten for me. That’s when it was determined that I couldn’t be trusted with scissors in group activities. I had never been trusted with scissors before I got to kindergarten and I guess, as it turns out, for good reason.  But alas, the fact remains – what is done is done and anyway, hair does grow back.

With this New Year, we “turn the page of our lives” again. In a way it is a real opportunity, if we choose it, to have our own personal redo. Not a redo of the past but a present change of course and a future direction for our lives. For many of us that’s good news. What would you like to change (that can be changed) about your life this year? With God’s help change for good is not only possible but highly probable.

The Apostle Paul wrote to the Philippian Church that “For I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength.” In Christ, we can turn the page. We can turn the page on wrong actions and life choices we have made in the past. We can turn the page on things that have kept us from enjoying the kind of relationship with Christ that deep in our hearts we long for. We can turn from grudges to forgiveness, we can turn idle thoughts into action, we can turn from our complacent self-centeredness to a renewed trust and service to our Lord and King, Jesus Christ. For it is in Jesus and Him alone that we find sure and certain strength for the road and guidance for our paths.

The last line of  The Byrds rock ballad, “Turn, Turn, Turn,” is a soulful pleading, “I swear it’s not too late”. And of course in Christ, as long as we have the breath of life, it is not too late – but why wait? Today is the day to turn the page and live a new song.

Turning The Page – In Christ, Through Christ And For Christ – A New Song I Sing!

Dar