This coming Sunday I get the privilege of teaching at PFB. The topic that I feel like God is leading to teach is the topic of Restoration. As I've been reading through Jeremiah the past couple of weeks, I've come across many verses that show God's frustration with the Israelites that sound just like this:
I have seen your abominations, your adulteries and neighings, your lewd whorings, on the hills in the field. Woe to you, O Jerusalem! How long will it be before you are made clean? — Jeremiah 13:27, ESV
That's pretty strong language. In fact, in all my years of growing up in the church, I never once had a teacher read me this verse and emphasize the word "whorings." This is not a verse of encouragement but of rebuke and confrontation. God was upset with the way that the Israelites were living. In fact, this was the type of thing that led God to hand them over to the Babylonians for a time, until...
"Again I will build you, and you shall be built, O virgin Israel!" — Jeremiah 31:4, ESV
God's idea of restoration is complete. Think about it: God restores, or promises to restore, his people from a place of "whoring" to a place of virgin. The power behind those words/concepts are so powerful. Two completely and drastically different places in life and yet God can bridge the gap and restore back to purity.
So what's in your past? What keeps you from totally surrendering to Jesus? Is it shame? Pain? Embarrassment? Maybe you think that your life and the things that you've done are far beyond God's ability to reach. Here's the thing: it's with the span of God's hand that he measures the universe. His arm can reach anywhere and grab anyone from anything to bring that person to a restored place and relationship with himself. Have you sinned? Me too. Everyone has. But if you don't know him, let me introduce you to Jesus: the one who restores you completely.
Send an email to brian@bigbholla.com if you would like to have someone explain to you how you can have a relationship with Jesus. He wants to restore you. And if you do know Christ: be reminded of his restoration process. It is absolutely incredible what Jesus can do in a life. You're included in that incredible work of Jesus.
Not only can he restore us from our sins, he can restore relationships such as marriage to their rightful place. He can restore parent/child relationships and friendships, his ability to cleanse our hurts and restore things to the proper order is unending! He can restore the alcoholic, he can restore the criminal, he can restore those in sexual sin, he can restore all the lost! Joel 2 sums up his ability to restore YEARS of ruin and damage: Joel 2:25 (RSV) I will restore to you the years which the swarming locust has eaten, the hopper, the destroyer, and the cutter, my great army, which I sent among you.
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