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Episode 053--Restoration

What does restoration really mean? It means to \\u201cbring back something to a former or original state.\\u201d It is many times used in the Bible to mean being brought back to life either physically or spiritually.\\xa0

I would not have known the real meaning of restore at the beginning of this year. To be restored, I had to face my own mortality. I\\u2019ve faced it many times. Now that I\\u2019m through my recent abdominal surgery, I can talk about it more. There is just something that happens inside you when a surgeon says, \\u201cThis is what we want to do, but to tell you the truth, we\\u2019ve never seen this before and we don\\u2019t know what we\\u2019ll find when we get in there.\\u201d\\xa0

My restoration will take a while. Healing from the inside out can\\u2019t be rushed and is a necessary part of recovery. One big part of restoration for me has been rest. If you know me, you know I don\\u2019t like to rest. It feels very unproductive.

Yet when I go in every other day to get my dressing changed and the nurse tells me how much I\\u2019ve healed, I realize it has all been due to me being able to rest enough to give my body time to do that.\\xa0

That\\u2019s the physical restoration, but there is also a spiritual restoration that takes place when we rest in God and trust Him to take care of us and He always does. The other day God brought a line from a Keith Green song to my mind. \\u201cRestore unto me the joy of thy salvation.\\u201d The words are from Psalm 51:12 KJV and the song I was remembering was \\u201cCreate In Me A Clean Heart. \\u201c I wondered just what David, the writer of the Psalm meant when he penned those words?

David wrote this Psalm after the prophet Nathan pointed out his sins of adultery and murder. David, the man after God\\u2019s own heart, had been trying to \\u201cfix\\u201d the wrong he had done. He hadn\\u2019t faced his sin. If you think about it this was at least nine months after his sins. The baby he had illegitimately conceived with Bathsheba had been born and then, died. During all this time, David wrote no Psalms.

Writing the Psalms was David\\u2019s way of talking with God. He was running from God, not physically, but spiritually. He felt far away from God. I\\u2019m not sure if he felt like he was above God\\u2019s rules and laws and because he was king he could do what he wanted or if he really felt that God\\u2019s salvation had been taken from him.

But after Nathan helped him see his sin, He confessed, repented and asked God to create in him a clean heart and renew a right spirit within him. He cries out to God and entreats Him to not throw him away from God\\u2019s presence and not to remove the Holy Spirit\\u2019s anointing and presence from him. Then he asks God to restore to him the joy of God\\u2019s salvation.

He is recognizing that God and God alone is the giver of salvation. He realizes he is far away from God, but God had been there all the time. He was simply waiting for David to come back to Him. David recognized the distance and with the distance went His joy. He longed to be close to God again, to feel the joy that comes from listening to the Lord and following Him. He needed that again. He realized He couldn\\u2019t remain being a king without that close relationship with God.

As I began to understand what restoration meant to David, I saw a parallel in my own life. David at least spent a year not repenting of his sin. However, I spent a whole lot more time than that before I really repented before God. I had fallen into a trap I think a lot of us fall into where we don\\u2019t think of eating that extra piece of cake or that little bite of this dessert or an extra helping of mashed potatoes as a sin.

We\\u2019ve been doing it for so long we don\\u2019t see it as a big deal. We aren\\u2019t a dirty, rotten sinner like David who was an adulterer and murderer. Or are we? Do we really believe that no sin is greater than any other sin? Or are these little sins that morph into much bigger strongholds the longer we do them ok?

We have to understand that the devil is smart! He knows all he has to do is grab us in one area and wheedle his way in until he has made a comfortable cozy nest in our lives, which he then expands to take over everything about us. When he has successfully set up his stronghold in us, he sits back and watches us squirm.\\xa0

We don\\u2019t like what we\\u2019ve done to ourselves, but we can\\u2019t seem to get out of the pit we have dug for ourselves.\\xa0

God has good plans for us. He wants us to be healthy in order to fulfill those plans. He is ready to restore the joy of our salvation to us. He wants us to understand that we are His sons and daughters, whom He loves. That means He wants the best for us. Not all the goodies we can eat, but all the spiritual blessings He wants to reign down on us.\\xa0

Remember when you first accepted Jesus as savior? Remember the joy you had? Where has that joy gone? What would it be like to have the joy of your salvation restored? What has covered up that joy? What might you have to do to uncover and rediscover that joy?\\xa0

Are there areas where you are disregarding God\\u2019s voice because you think that little areas of disobedience like what we put in our mouths doesn\\u2019t matter?\\xa0

Overcomers Link: https://TeresaShieldsParker.com/overcomers-christian-weight-loss-academy/