Tag Archives: Deep Restoration

Restoration All Around Us

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Spring time is upon us once again, well for those of my readers in the Northern Hemisphere at least :).  This is such a great time of year.  The temperatures begin to rise, baseball begins, and we begin to see things come back to life.  We see trees begin to bloom, we see flowers begin to grow.  Green returns.  Life returns all around us.  Restoration has begun.  I was sitting outside the other day as I watched the dogwood trees begin to bloom across from my house and God reminded me the awesome metaphor that Spring is for Jesus Christ.  It is a constant reminder year after year of the works of Jesus and God’s continual pursuit of our hearts.

As I have shared many times before, Jesus offers healing and restoration by our faith in Him.  Isaiah 61 shows that he came to heal the brokenhearted an set the captives free.  He came to restore us.  We all know very well that we are born with a sin nature that covers every part of us.  We inherited this since the fall.  We are born into a world of sin and because of this nature we are in constant war with the world and with ourselves.  We weren’t designed for this sin nature though.  Man chose the world over God.  Adam chose Eve, this brought the fall of man.  Since then, God has been pursuing us to restore us.  He has been after our hearts to restore them to the good they were meant to be.

So I look at Spring.  I look at life returning.  I look at the new life around us and it just reminds me of the beauty of God’s pursuit of our hearts and the beauty of the restoration of our hearts.  All things made new.  The dictionary defines restoration as “renewal; revival; reestablishment” and also “the return of something to a former, original, normal, and unimpaired condition.”  That’s what happens when Spring rolls around.  Plant life is renewed.  The circle of life continues.  Life is reestablished.

Isn’t that exactly what God is doing with our hearts through the finished works (life, death, resurrection, and ascension) of Jesus?  I think so.  We are given a new nature in Christ.  Because of his finished works we are made new.  Our hearts are restored to the glory they were intended to have.  Ephesians 4 tells us to let the Holy Spirit renew us and to put on our new nature to be like God – truly righteous and holy.  Because of Christ, our sin nature is shed.  We can put off the old man, if we choose to drive a steak in the ground and seek His will above ours.

This restoration happens a little by little, every day that seek God and we have to make th choice to do so.  We can’t just walk around saying, “Yep, I’m saved” and then not seek Him for the healing we need just like I talked about in my deeper dive into the stream of deep restoration. Jesus began the restoration of my heart over the past few years, but it wasn’t until I decided to fully surrender that it just completely changed my heart.  Now today, I have to continue seeking Him.  I have to ask God to restore and renew every single day.  I ask for the full works of Christ over my life everyday.  I ask for the the counsel, comfort, strength, and guidance of the Holy Spirit everyday.  I thank God everyday for creating me and choosing me just as he chose all of you before He made the world.  It’s what I pray for everyday now.  I need restoration every single day.  We all do.

Again, we are all jacked up in some way.  God shows me new things all the time that I need His counsel and healing through.  Because of the wound of our sinful nature, we will always have to battle until we come to our full glory with Christ in Heaven and join him at the Wedding Feast.

Just think about all of this.  Look at everything around us as we see new life sprouting everywhere.  As we see the natural world around us become restored.  It’s an awesome feeling to know that God is working on hearts in the same way.  Restoring us to our original, unimpaired condition.  What we, as His image bearers, as his sons and daughters, were always meant to be. Jesus is making all things new and that includes us.  Our restoration begins with our walk with God.  As  Leanne Payne states, “The soul is restored through union with God.”  Walk with Him and seek an intimate relationship through Jesus Christ and He will bring you to restoration.

Diving Deeper – Deep Restoration

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Jesus stated his purpose on Isaiah 61. To heal the  brokenhearted and to set the captives free.  If you look at his works one of the primary things he offered was healing. The blind could see, the deaf could hear, the lame could walk, and so much more. He offered healing and the works were a parable to what he offered all of the human race. Jesus came to heal, to restore our hearts to what they were meant to be, but fell from. He offers this healing, this deep restoration still. In teaching the stream of healing, John Eldredge described the stream as the supernatural presence or Jesus within our hearts and his willingness to go into our hearts and heal our brokenness.

We all have wounds within us. They are the result of circumstances or things that have happened through our lives and often times we let it define our existence.  Even those that believe and many across modern Christianity don’t focus on or even teach that Jesus offers more than forgiveness of sin. He offers healing and restoration from our sin and to free our hearts from the bondage that it can keep us in. His desire is to give us our whole heart back. Many do not recognize this or even seek it. I sure didn’t for a long time. I just looked at it as a part of who I was, but never thought to seek Christ for healing and restoration.  Believing and actually seeking his are two different things. The demons in Scripture show they know and believe who Christ is, but don’t seek his offer, yet they fear him.

Okay, I want to take you on a little journey to look deeper in to the deep healing and restoration that is offered in Christ.  As I mentioned, we all have broken places in our hearts.  Jesus assumes this to be the case, that our hearts our broken.  In Luke 4:18, we see that when Jesus begins his public ministry in Nazareth, he reads from Isaiah 61.  Out of all of the Scriptures he could have quoted, he goes for this, which says, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He anointed Me to preach the Gospel to the poor, He has sent Me to proclaim release to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free those who are oppressed.”  Jesus is offering freedom and healing.  He is out to restore our hearts to be whole again as they were meant to be.  As they were before the fall of man.  He assumes we are already broken and has been sent to heal all of us.  That’s the core of his mission.  Yes salvation is critical, but it is restoration of the heart of man to what it was always mean to be and this is a critical piece missed by so many in the church today.

As with the other streams (Walking with God, God’s Intimate Counsel, and Spiritual Warfare), the stream of Deep Restoration, Deep Healing, is something that I never even thought about.  Never thought about getting into the core of my brokenness.  Never even acknowledged my brokenness to any degree.  I just figured I was a wreck in many ways and did my best to either hide those places in me or move through life without letting it take hold of me.  This helped lead to the false self, to addictions and fears, worries and anxieties.  Things that I just started to accept as a part of who I was.  I never sought Jesus through any of this.  I was what many of us see today, a surface level christian, if even that.  Never knowing what Christ had to offer me, I never truly sought Him in any of it.

So think about this.  John Eldredge points to some critical things in teaching this stream.  Look at our lives.  We have places where we have silly addictions whether it be food, collecting things, or any of a number of just off the wall things, we have wild fears and anxieties, maybe the dark or heights or small spaces, we may worry a lot about a lot filled with heavy anxieties.  There are so many things in us that we have, but we never try to get to the root of what causes any of that. Often times, those addictions or fears get so big in our lives that they begin to run our lives.  Again turning to food when we are depressed, maybe turning to pornography or other sexual additions.  You name it, something is there in each of us.  It all comes from our brokenness, but we have to take time to try and get to the root of it.  Why do we have those and can we ever heal from them?

First, the enemy knows us.  He knows our brokenness.  He knows those young places in our hearts.  Where things come up, such as being around family or being called to speak as examples and then we are all of sudden 9 years old again.  He uses those to try to set up shop and keep us in bondage in our wounds.  In our brokenness.  He comes to steal our hearts, to kill our hearts, to destroy our hearts.

Many in the christian faith will immediately say, “Oh that’s sin, you need to repent and ask forgiveness.”  It’s more than that though.  Yes, sin can be a big part of it.  But simply asking forgiveness is not going to heal it.  You have to get to the root of what the issue is, you often have to go way back, because a lot of this stems from wounds we received as children.  You have to go there.  You have to go deeper.  “The great weakness in the North American church at large, and certainly in my life, is our refusal to accept our brokenness. We hide it, evade it, gloss over it. We grab for the cosmetic kit and put on our virtuous face to make ourselves admirable to the public. Thus, we present to others a self that is spiritually together, superficially happy, and lacquered with a sense of self-deprecating humor that passes for humility. The irony is that while I do not want anyone to know that I am judgmental, lazy, vulnerable, screwed up, and afraid, for fear of losing face, the face that I fear losing is the mask of the impostor, not my own!”  -Brennan Manning, “Ruthless Trust”

I’ve always remembered the thing we are taught about being saved.  About asking Jesus into our heart as our Lord and Savior.  I made that profession of faith when I was about 13 and was Baptized.  Being saved and asking Jesus to be Lord of our live gives us the opportunity to now be fully healed.  This is only the beginning though.  How can you be fully saved if you have not allowed Christ in to heal you?  You have to invite him in.  I never did that.  Being so, I was never fully saved or healed.  Again, Christ came to free us and restore our hearts.  To restore us to the men and women we were always meant to be.  So, I had a great deal more to go myself.  Still do.  When I began to get into Scripture daily 4 years ago, the wheels began to turn, but I had a great deal more to go.  I had to learn to really walk with God.  I had to learn to seek Him.  I had to allow Christ into the depths of my heart to surface my wounds, agreements, and sin so that I could finally and fully repent for everything hidden and be healed.  I could finally be restored.  I could finally come alive.

To heal, requires our full surrender.  Our full surrender to God’s will.  To fully trust him and who he says that we are to him.  A.W. Tozer says, “God rescues us by breaking us, by shattering our strength and wiping out our resistance.”  We have to open our hearts to Christ.  To let him in deep within our hearts and pull out those wounds.  I first felt this at in the weeks leading up to Wild At Heart Bootcamp.  When I was spending each day in prayer and felt like God was pulling me somewhere.  He was pulling me first to unplug from the Matrix.  Once at Wild At Heart, I fully let Christ in.  He came into the depths of my heart.  Pulled out things that I either did not want to acknowledge or even forgot about, but had fully defined my brokenness.  Christ took me there.  Then I had to acknowledge them ask forgiveness for allowing those wounds to define me and living in them and then forgiving those that brought me there as well.  Renouncing the agreements I made and bringing the power and works of Jesus Christ between us.  God opened my heart, gave me the eyes to see, and the ears to hear.

Healing is different for each one of us.  God is still doing a work in me each day to pull out those wounds so that I can renounce them and healing from them and be restored.  For each one of us, healing happens in different ways though.  Look at Christ’s work, especially in healing the blind.  He never heals a blind person the same way.  He may touch them, rub mud in them.  Healing is always different.  This parrables the healing we are offered.  We are all unique in our creation and Christ wants to heal us based on our own uniqueness.  We have to invite Christ in however.  Invite him in and pray for healing and restoration of our whole heart.  This is after all what God has been after since the fall of mankind.  He has been after our hearts.  Restoring our hearts to the glory that they once were.  Christ is the doorway to that restoration. He is the answer to it all.  He was nailed to a tree and shed his blood so that we can be free from our sin, from our brokenness.  He was resurrected to conquer death and give us a doorway to restore us to the glory God created us for, and he ascended to Heaven to show that the enemy has been defeated and all authority in Heaven and on earth is now his.  We can now be made fully alive and restore.  When we are healed and restored, we are fully alive.  As Irenaeus says, “The glory of God is man fully alive.”  Come alive and be restored.  Christ is out to set your heart free.  Let him set you free.

Let God Father You

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I have come into a lot of growth over the last couple of years.  Learning more about God and growing in my faith in Jesus Christ.  One of the biggest things I have grown into is learning about God as my Father, my true Father.  My life has gone through a series of twists and turns in the fathering I received.  Events growing up led to a mix of seeing my earthly dad as a great man, while at the same time coming to terms recently that I was never fully initiated as man nor received the full validation I needed and that every boy needs coming into manhood.  I married early and pulled away from the family.  As I neared my 30s, things began to change in how our relationship grew stronger.    We spent some great times just hanging out and talking.  Then all of a sudden, he was gone.  I’ve shared this on many times, but it ripped my heart out losing him the way we did.

So what to do with all of this.  Not having my dad any longer I was lost.  I grew in my faith and it began to have a lasting effect on my life and my family.   I looked to God as my father now and I have wanted to grow in knowing him.  Something changed in me recently though while at Wild At Heart.  Before, I was looking to God as a backup father.  My dad, gone, so who do I turn to.  Ephesians 1 tells us that God is the originator though.  He adopted us into his family as sons, as his sons and daughters.  Verse 4 says, “Even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ.”  He is not the backup plan. He was my Father before I was created and has always been, and will always be.  God desires to bring us into Sonship with Him.  To allow him to Father us.

Morgan Snyder from the Ransomed Heart team shared some pretty remarkable things about this and has some awesome audio about Sonship on the Ransomed Heart site.  One thing He mentioned is that God is orchestrating a rescue of us.  Our earthly dad was meant to point us to the father, but never sufficient to take the Father’s place.  This is just a small snippet, but it’s pretty profound.  The invitation of the Father is to be his son.  He wants to Father us.

What does this do for our hearts and our lives when we allow God to father us?  One thing I can say for sure is that you feel alive.  Aside from addressing my wounds, the thing that made me most alive in my journey at Wild At Heart was truly learning that I was God’s son and that he believed in me as a man.  I heard one of the guys say that it allows us to be young again.  I believe this to be true.  In coming alive, I feel like I can do anything again and allowing God to Father me is leading me in a pretty awesome direction.  He’s initiating me into adventures and what feels like a new beginning.  I noticed my overall demeanor has changed.  I think it brings us to a point to where we just enjoy life.

We need to seek Sonship and seek God to Father us each day.  Know that we are our Father’s son and he loves us and believes in us.  Whether or not you had a good relationship with your earthly dad, coming to God as the Father is on a whole new level.  He has a name and identity for us. Spend time in prayer with him and get to know him for who he is and he will tell you who you are.  I’m paraphrasing, but George McDonald said that it’s better to not know the Father than to have learned him wrong.

Being a son was a the center of Jesus’s life.  He sought the Father for everything he did.  He came to do the will of the Father and new he was the apple of his Father’s eye.  He was one with Him In John 14, Philip asked Jesus to show them the Father.  Jesus replied that anyone who has seen him has seen the Father.  They are one.  We are the image bearers of God and God desires us to be drawn into Sonship with him as well.  In John 17, Jesus’s invitation is to know the Father through Christ.  This is the path to eternal life.  In Romans 8 Paul says that all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God.  So you have not received a spirit that makes you fearful slaves.  Instead you received a spirit of sonship.

The invitation is right there.  God desires to Father us.  To bring us close to him as his sons.  God has rigged the world so that it does not work, apart from him.  Without him, things fall apart.  With God, there is life through Jesus.  The enemy has used many tools to draw us away from this.  In our wounds with our earthly dads or other men in our lives. The enemy hates the father son connection and is out to destroy it.  Look to the Father though and he will reveal the Truth to you.  Look in his Word and all he has shared.  He desires for us to be drawn to him as sons.

As you grow in Sonship and I am still growing, you’ll be amazed at the ways God will Father you.  He will come at you directly.  He will also use other people in your lives to Father you.  I have definitely found this to be true in the guys I’ve connected with and the conversations I’ve been able to share with others.  I may not have recognized it all before, it God’s definitely showing it to me now.  It’s pretty amazing to see.  There’s a place for us all in the fellowship of man if we open our hearts to the Father and let him in.

Healing the Broken

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We are all broken people.  We all have lives that are filled with wounds and jacked up places that when you get down to the deep core of your heart will break you down.  I don’t care who you are.  If you have never allowed those things to come to surface to reconcile and renounce them, then you can never fully come alive and break away from that struggle.  Your heart can never be set free.  If you sit in your daily life and just let things be, one day, it will either all blow up in your face in some way.

There is one answer to your brokenness.  That answer is God.  He wants nothing more than to restore you and pull you out of that struggle.  He will go right into the heart of it all to pull you from the fire.  He is orchestrating and rescue of your heart.  We have to be willing to repent, let go, and forgive.  Find it in ourselves to let it all come to light and drive forward from that. Psalm 147:3 says, “He heals the brokenhearted and bandages their wounds.”  Job 5:18 says, “For though he wounds , he also bandages. He strikes, but his hands also heal.”

Now you may read that last verse if you’ve never heard it and think, whoa! God wounds us and strikes us?  That sounds like a double edged sword.  Why would he want to wound and strike us.  Well, I’ll tell you why.  Sometimes we need to return to our wounds in order to be bandaged and healed.  At Wild At Heart, John Eldredge shared that God is raising the fatherless place so He can heal and restore us to Him.  When we have been wounded in our lives, sometimes it takes the need to go back to that place in your heart.  To feel that pain again, in order to bring it out and be able to truly renounce it and be healed from it.  It’s not easy to do by any stretch but often it may be necessary if we are just filled with junk that just will not come to the surface and we continue to make our agreements with the evil one there.

I’ll share something from my own experience here.  I’ve gone through some ordeals in my life.  Junk in my early years that lead me to seeking validation from my wife as opposed to God and then with the loss of my Dad 5 years ago, to be in a world of just utter brokenness.  When I was unplugged from the world and sitting in total prayer and communion with God, He brought it all out.  Things I never thought would come to the surface, I never even thought about in my story, or would never admit to even myself came to light.  God reached right in and pulled it out and said “here you go.  This is what you need to deal with.  This is what has made your false self.”

But then He said, “this is not who you are, though.  You are more than this.  You are a son ready to come alive, you are a son ready to do battle.  You are a son…You are MY SON. ”

God reached right into me.  He broke me down to my core like I never had been before, but then allowed me to be healed.  He pulled me from where I was and where I had been in my life.  He brought me to life like I had never been before.  He brought me into sonship and showed me that He wants to Father me the rest of the way.  To let go of all the junk and let Him Father me now.  Let Him be my Dad.  He is my true Dad after all just as He is for all of you.

In his book “Waking the Dead,” John Eldredge shares that “The work of Christ in healing the soul is a deep mystery, more amazing than open-heart surgery.”  It is absolutely amazing.  Something we can never fully understand in our own fallen wisdom, but it is most definitely true.  The Lord has many ways that He will reach into lives and heal us.  He takes our heart in pieces and puts it all back together again.  It’s quite amazing to see and be a part of.  To know that we are loved that much as God’s children.  He will will pull us from wherever we are and makes us new.  We just have to be willing to say to God, “Yes Father, I will let you heal me.”