Restoration

We've talked about restoration a lot around here lately…for God to restore you, your broken relationships, your heart, your life, etc. And I’ve seen it happening all around me! Praise the Lord!!

Whenever I hear the word “restore”, my mind usually thinks something along the lines of “set back to default” or “the way it was”. Basically, it’s almost like I picture a giant Reset button that can be pushed and you get to start over. But as I think more about restoration, I’m not sure that thought is completely accurate.

In Revelation 2, the church in Ephesus is praised for its good works, its perseverance, and its intolerance of wickedness. But immediately after this, they are warned in Verses 4 and 5, “Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken your first love. Remember the height from which you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first…”

The Lord calls them to “do the things you did at first”, and to remember their “first love”. Depending on your interpretation of the whole account that warning is probably referring to the love they had for each other and/or the love they had for Christ. Let’s assume the passage means Christ (and if it means Christ, then it also automatically means love for each other because that is the natural progression of love for Christ anyways). Thus, the Lord is reminding and warning them that although their works have been wonderful they need some kind of change in their lives where Christ is the center of their attention again.

Herein lies where I think I’ve been slightly off in my thinking of restoration. God tells them to “do the things you did at first”. I used to view this primarily as a call to put things back to the way they were when I first came to know Jesus, and to do the things I did when I first accepted Him as my Savior. I’m sure you’ve heard others reminisce about how amazing it was the first time they felt the love of Christ, got baptized, and got set free of their past ways. They may even talk about how “on fire” they were for God back then. So my thinking has usually gone to how I could recapture the way I felt and acted in the summer of 1997 when I first accepted Jesus Christ as my personal Lord and Savior.

But I don’t think restoration only means hitting reset. I think by restoring Christ to the center of your attention the most critical thing you do is to restore Him to His rightful place—the place of your first love. You again sit Him at the highest and most important place in your life. To merely hit reset is to erase all of the things that have happened since your conversion. Although there’s surely some crap in there that you wish never happened, there is also a history with God. There is stuff in there that God doesn’t want to be erased because it brings glory to His Name now that you are back on the right track!

This whole idea is rocking me right now! It’s changing my entire perception of restoration. I pray God continues to reveal His perfect concept of restoration to me, and that He shows the same thing to you. Lord, please open my mind and my heart to the depths of your love, redemption, mercy, and restoration...and the fullness thereof. Reveal these things to me and I pray that they manifest themselves in my life more and more. In Jesus Christ of Nazareth’s Holy, Loving, and Awesome Name, Amen.