In our home are several pieces of furniture that are more special to me than any other. Part of my affection for them is how they came to be ours. One is our dining room table, now over 80 years old, which came from the attic of my parents’ home. Another is a Hoosier Cabinet complete with flour sifter and pull-out bread tray from the early 1900’s which came from my wife’s great grandparent’s kitchen. A small triangular telephone table that served as the resting place for my wife’s grandmother’s land-line telephone is the third. Last is a little child’s wooden chair that came out of the childcare facility which my wife’s great-aunt owned and operated and which my wife attended.
Whereas where they came from and who owned them are big contributors to my affection for them, the main reason is all the sweat, toil, time, and expense I expended in refurnishing each of them. My goal was to restore them as much as possible to their original condition and appearance by addressing chipped and faded finishes, loose legs and damaged drawer handles, and gouges and scrapes in the wood. After stripping off the old, discolored finish, after carefully sanding and smoothing the imperfections with sandpaper and fine steel wool, I then experienced the thrill of applying the new stain and seeing the wood grain come to life. Once I sealed the stain with a clear finish, I was not only pleased, but to be honest, very proud of how each looked and the work that I had done.
One time as I was refinishing one of them, the thought occurred to me that what I was doing in refinishing that piece was in a small way, what God does with human lives all the time. He restores them. He takes the down and outs, the up and outs, and all the outs in between who are broken by the impact of sin, heavy-laden by the circumstances of life, hopeless due to shattered dreams and unfulfilled promises, and/or suspended awkwardly spiritually between faith and doubt, and restores them to what He intended them to be when He created them.
Imagine what it must mean to God when He restores a life. If Luke 15:10 tells us, “In the same way, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents,” then how much more joy must God experience—whether that restoration be a person’s initial salvation, or it is his/her restoration from going astray as a believer. If I was pleased as punch and ready to bust my buttons when I finished restoring those four pieces of furniture, can you imagine how God feels when that broken life described above is saved and restored by His grace. By His grace, I mean by those indescribable, unearned, and unmerited gifts He gives to repentant individuals. Gifts such as forgiveness of sin, and biblical hope built, not on the frailties and inconsistences of man’s wisdom, but on faith and understanding of God’s sovereignty, power, wisdom, holiness, mercy, lovingkindness, and truth. For example:
- Imagine what it meant to God when King David was restored after he had committed adultery with Bathsheba and had orchestrated what amounted to the murder of her husband Uriah. (2 Samuel 11-12; Psalm 51)
- Imagine what a thrilling moment it must have been for God when Jesus took a woman He met at Jacob’s well and restored her from her empty, man-filled search for meaning and contentment in life. How? By leading her to believe that He was the Living Water for which she was truly thirsting. (John 4)
- Imagine God’s joy when a woman was caught in adultery and then brought to Jesus by the legalistic Pharisees in their attempt to trap Jesus. Instead of being condemned, she was restored and set free by Jesus to “go and sin no more.” (John 7:53 -8:11)
- Imagine God’s rejoicing when Simon Peter, filled with shame for denying Christ three times just hours after he had bragged that he would die for Christ, was restored to meaningful ministry by Christ along the shoreline of the Sea of Galilee. (John 21)
- Imagine the joy in God’s heart when a man named Saul was restored by Jesus on the road to Damascus, which he was traveling with intentions of persecuting, and even killing, every Christian he could find. That restoration included his commission by God to speak the name of Christ all over Asia Minor, Greece, and Rome. (Acts 9 ff)
Now think about this. If you have been restored by God to salvation through your repentance and reception of God’s initial gift of grace through faith, and/or if you as a follower of Christ have been restored by God from your wanderings through your repentance and reception of His ongoing grace, then if the angels in heaven are thrilled, just imagine how much more is God. Let’s take comfort in that thought today.
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