Where will you restore?

If we’re honest, it is really hard not to compartmentalize. For most of us reading this, myself included, we live in a world where everything has its place and needs to know its place. Often, many of these bear labels that help shape the identity when in those places. The sole purpose of a barista at Starbucks is to make you your dairy-free triple shot extra whipped soy latte perfectly. The sole point of signing your child up for camp after camp after league is to develop them into the best athlete they can be in hopes of achieving whatever dreams or goals you/they have set for themselves.

So let’s press in here. Whats the purpose of your faith? Not the church, fuzzy squirrel answer. The depth-searching, between myself and Jesus answer. Is your faith something you wear on a Sunday? Or is it a belief that is transformative of your everyday?

For some of us, we sing a lot of songs about God/Jesus. Holy Holy Holy is the Lord God Almighty. But do we know what Holy means? Do we know what comes with attributing someone as Lord? Or have these become empty words from our mouths, not truly bearing reality in our lives. A lot of this has to go back on yesterdays post, which you can read here. Before we can look at restoration, we need to be honest about whats inside of us. And not just inside our head [knowledge] but in our hearts [belief/reality]. Jesus said in Luke 6:45 “A good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and an evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. For the mouth speaks what the heart is full of.”

What are you full of? The Gospel? Do you believe that each and every person is completely and utterly broken and living against God’s intended ways, unable to do anything by any power to save themselves? That Jesus is the way, truth, and life – not just for your someday but for your everyday. That Jesus doesn’t just save us but trains us (Titus 2), that we are a new creation in Christ (2 Corinthians 5:17).

If we truly believe that the Gospel is for everybody, we have to stop waiting for people to show up in front of preachers and start believing that Jesus didn’t just save us from something but actually saved us to something: the restoration of all people to himself.

So, what happens when we begin to see the spaces and places we are at not with the goal that the world sees but with the new identity that Jesus has given us?

What would happen if, at our kids sporting events, when the refs don’t make fair calls, we don’t fall in line with the other angry parents but instead fall in line with our Savior who didn’t make a fair call on us? When we deserved judgment, he bore the wrath and took our place, extending grace and mercy.

What if people began to wonder: how can you live in such a way? Because if my hope is that everything goes my kid’s way, I will be sorely disappointed. If my hope is my job meeting all my needs, I will never get to reveal God’s glory as provider and sustainer when I walk through the desert of loss, wandering through the wilderness of the unknown.

Can you imagine if we began to embrace the spaces we are at as spaces God has called us to reach? Not for some event at a physical building but recognizing that the Spirit of God dwells within us and gives us all we need as contributors in the great work of the Gospel to restore all things back to Him.

Maybe today we would ask the Spirit to search our hearts, to  begin to identify where he has placed us and give us new eyes to see these places not through the lens of the world but through the lens of the Gospel, that God’s Spirit would be poured out on all people, so everyone who calls on the name of the Lord would be saved. (Joel 2:28, 32)